Andres! Ove! Look! Bicycles!!!
OK, sometimes you just can’t give it away. The agency that I’m volunteering with is called Caring Heart Hospice. I should start my actual volunteering next week some time. I’ve passed the background check and the minor medical tests that I need to. This morning I was talking to Kathy, the volunteer coordinator. She told me that this weekend she was going to be working with Special Olympics. Well, having worked with them before, a smile came to my face. I have fond memories of that.
Anyway, I told her that I wouldn’t be in town this weekend, but on other weekends I’d be happy to donate some of my time to take photographs. Well, she sort of frowned and looked a little embarrassed. She said that they, as a group, gave up on taking photos because the legal department requires them to have releases for everything, no matter what. She said that it is just not worth the hassle.
My! My! Of course I’ve heard of this before, but it still saddens me that photographer’s rights are dwindling every day as people soak up more and more fear.
Not to take away from the skill, work ethic, and tenacity of the photographers of the past, but I wonder how they would have fared into today’s climate of mistrust.
Even though I like to take pictures on the street, sometimes I feel uneasy. I never point my camera at children, even though that would be my favorite subject because they don’t care that a camera is pointing, they are going to continue doing what they do. However, the adults are so overprotective and scared that it’s instant branding. Pedophile!!! Sigh. I have had the park police called on me before because I was lying in the grass taking pictures of flowers that happened to be near a basketball court that happened to have kids nearby. See my post: Two Black Guys in a Ditch.
I remember asking a lady in Savannah if I could take her photo. She was about 25 or so. She told me no because I might put her face on someone else’s naked body on the Internet. Another long sigh, to myself, a thank you, and I walked on.
It gets tiring sometimes.
Note: I saw these bicycles this morning. They were sitting on the side of a building looking all lost and forlorn. I just had to take a shot for my two bicycle friends, Andreas and Ove! To you fellas! One bicycle each!
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13 Responses to “Just trying to help …”
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Oh, this makes me glad to see! A bicycle, just for me!
The issue you write about is nothing but sad. I have experienced this too often, the late years, that people come upfront and starts arguing with me because I made a photo where they might have been caught on. It doesn’t matter it was a street scene and the person in matter was at the other end of the street, at best visible as the three pixels to the left. Once, a completely mad man come up on me and wanted to hit me. What surprises me is the fear, it’s like the USA in the fifties, the fear for communism. It doesn’t even appear to be fear for being photoshopped and put naked on the Internet. It’s much bigger. It’s like all feels like they are part of a conspiracy, and that everybody is sort of megastars that people like me want to expose on the Internet. It’s like I’m a paparazzi and they are the poor, haunted celebrity. Like everybody all of a sudden are important people that everybody would drool over having their details revealed. Come on, I say…let’s get down to earth.
Studio photography, that’s the future.
I read your story “Two black guys in a ditch”, that was equally amusing as sad. You really don’t know how to act, should you laugh or cry about it? (Btw, your writing was equally good then as it is now. You have a way with the words that holds you until the last word has been read.)
Such an exciting time for photography as far as equipment development, and yet such a depressing time for photographers shooting in public and/or trying to make a living at photography.
I can only believe that it will swing back to a different public feeling about photography in the future, I just hope I live to see that day…
I hang out on various street photography forums and this topic comes up a lot. The general wisdom is in situations where you have the legal right to take the shot and your planned use for the photo falls into the realm where you don’t need a release (art, not advertising) just don’t ask permission and take the shot and deal with the repercussions. 99% of the time, if people look at you or confront you, just smile, tell them you are an artist, and that seems to disarm them most of the time. On the street, there is always gonna be the guy or gal who just doesn’t want you to take their picture, and on some level you have to be willing to endure that. Also, all agree that certain subjects these days just won’t fly (kids, especially). How accommodating you want to be depends on how much you want the shot and your style. When I was working on that project in Tempe, the only time I had *any* trouble at all was when four young women, clearly dressed up for dinner (it was 6:30 pm or so) came towards me and I put my Bessa up to my eye and they all got a little upset. What *I* saw was the dichotomy of everyone surrounding them is very casual attire (t-shirts, shorts) and the four of them in cocktail dresses and heels passing through the crowd on their way to the restaurant. Nothing happened, I got the shot, but I’m sure that comments about my motivation were muttered between them after they passed me. That brought into focus a comment I’d read on one of the boards which stated, in essence, “people’s reactions to your presence with your camera in public is more about them than you.”
@Ove: Wow! I’ve never been approached by an irate person. I’ve been asked what I was doing and I simply response: Taking pictures for fun. They may not like it, but they usually don’t go any further with the questions. The other day I took a picture of a man taking a picture of his wife and kid on a swing. He looked directly at me and without being prompted, I said: I took a picture of you taking a picture of your family. I thought that it was a nice moment. He simply smiled and kept on doing what he was doing, taking pictures of his family.
@Eric: It certainly is an exciting time for photography, technology wise. I keep thinking that we are heading for a society like that seen in the movie V is for Vendetta where citizens have given up all of their rights for the sake of ‘safety’. No thanks!
@Chris: I don’t really have trouble with street photography and I know my rights as a photographer, such as they are today; What I found disturbing was that an agency that by its very nature helps people, has given up on photography and the ability to promote such worthwhile ventures as Special Olympics through photos. All because of the tremendous burden placed upon them by fear mongering lawyers … Better not to do it than to even try. Sad.
Chris, you’re right about “people’s reactions to your presence with your camera in public is more about them than you.” Nevertheless, you have to be like a non-stick frying pan, to take the heat without feeling awkward afterwards. I always feel bad for a couple of days after such an incident. I guess you have to be tougher to practice street photographing.
Being that today is 9/11, this is a very good post for the situation of trust and paranoia.
“Paranoia strikes
Something’s stalking me
What lurks behind the corner
I can’t f**king see”
The world will never be the same.
The local Prosecutor once asked me after a meeting what I thought was the problem with todays society was. I told her without missing a beat “To Many Lawyers”. She smiled and nodded.
We can thank the lawsuit happy population and lawyers for forcing groups such as Special Olympics to forbid photography. It is a sad thing indeed. I think Ove hits the target by saying you need to be a bit tough for street photography. I’m know that I am not up to it.
Careful, Paul, you may have started something with those bicycles. You know Ove and Andreas. They won’t be satisfied with one each. Who knows what you have gotten yourself into.
@Anita: Well, Special Olympics did not forbid the photography. The group that I’m volunteering for just doesn’t want to do it because of all of the releases that they have to get from parents, etc. It’s just become a huge hassle.
As for those bicycles, it was just a token gesture. But, just in case, I have a few more in reserve just for an emergency. (Shhh. Don’t let them know!)
This picture is bang on wonderful and I very much enjoyed it. Still enjoying it. Not sure why but I don’t have to understand why, right?
The tones are just so… yum…
Great news on the background check. Good on you Paul. Your family is going to get this back 10 fold. What a personal reward giving of time.
Sammy is going for his “service” test in a couple of weeks. Found out for my Human Service course that we have to do 20 hours of Vol work at a Nursing home and Sammy loves the work with peeps!
Really happy to see your giving back to humans here. Just really happy to see a good human do this.
occasionally I’ve had people come up with something like that ‘swapping heads on naked bodies’ fear. When faced with that I typically come clean and admit that that was exactly what I planned to do.
Typically a few seconds later a light dawns and they realise how insane they sound, then let me take their picture.
Oh my, I’m late, but, hey, thanks! A fine composition and wonderful tonality indeed
As to mistrust and all that, yup, it’s a crazy world. Do you remember when we had no firewalls? I had my Digital Unix workstation connected directly to the Internet, when I wanted to share a file, I put it up on my own Apache server, I had accounts on machines of other people and used plain telnet to log in. Oh dear, shady businesses and lawyers have brought us a long way
Same with photography. We face most of the restrictions, because everybody thinks they have to “secure their rights” and they might make money, and of course the post-9/11 paranoia was not helpful either. But then, there’s a lot of money to be made with security, be it on computers or in real life.