This is from an old post on flickr, but still great.
Photographer Jeremy Brooks came upon this angry guy yelling at a homeless man on a corner in San Francisco. He went over to investigate, camera in hand, and the angry man soon turned on him. Mr. Angry Overreaction Man, as Brooks dubbed him, screamed and yelled, threatened him, bumped him with his chest, and told him if the picture ended up on the internet he’d call his lawyer. Brooks stood his ground and got this shot, which fittingly, is now on the internet.
Brooks says:
So, Mr. Angry Overreaction Man, your photo is now on the internet. Call your lawyer. Tell him somebody on a public sidewalk took your photo while you were on a public sidewalk. Then tell him you physically assaulted the photographer. See what he says.
Read the whole post on Jeremy Brooks’ flickr page.
We’ve gotten a few inquiries about the wearable recording device that Shawn mentioned on Digital Village this morning. It’s called the Vievu PVR-PRO 2 and it captures your perspective (about four hours’ worth at a time) and is downloadable with a USB device. It’s priced at $399.95, but if you’re a regular street and events shooter, the protection it affords is undeniable. There are reports that the price might come down too.
Our own discarted will be on Digital Village, the KPFK (90.7FM) show about new technolgy, this Saturday morning at 10 am. He and Peter Bibring of the ACLU will be talking about harassment of photographers and photographers’ rights.
If you’re not in Southern California, you can stream it live on KPFK.org or find the archives here.
Whether on land or at sea, LA photographer Bryan Villarin has a knack for arousing suspicion. We posted about his encounter with private building security in downtown LA last July.
And this past weekend he was sailing the waters of Los Angeles Harbor off San Pedro with some friends when they were stopped by Port Police. As Bryan posts on his blog, they were told there were reports about their speed, which he says was about five knots. In addition, they said they had video of the group taking photographs.
Soon there were two Port Police boats surrounding them. The sailors were pulled over, detained, given background checks and questioned about their ethnic origins and professions. The police insisted Bryan’s friend Danita hand over her social security number, which she did. They were told the stop constituted a warning, and now they were in the database as a non-threat.
Bryan asks some good questions in his post, namely:
Our information is in their office on some slip of paper and/or their computer system. Danita was asked to give her Social Security number, but that was wrong. What would’ve happened if she refused to give them that information?
Being in a public area, weren’t we free to photograph as we please?
Would they stop a cruise ship if some of their passengers had DSLR cameras with super telephoto lenses?
The story is unbelievable and goes to show you the lengths law enforcement will go these days in “keeping our country safe.” So safe, in fact, that now it’s routine to overreact to what used to be normal, everyday activities. As is almost always the case in these situations, it boggles the mind that these officers thought this leisurely sailing trip around the harbor was some sort of terrorist reconnaissance mission.
Due to their content, and more importantly, their unforgettable cast of laugh-out-loud characters, it’s amazing that these two videos went under the photographers’ rights radar.
My favorite character, reminiscent of a powerless, rage-induced, temper-tantrum throwing 4-year-old screaming over and over because he’s not getting what he wants, is definitely Arnoldo #08458.
Rather than making a fool out of himself, maybe he should have just used his walkie to check with his supervisor regarding the validity of the videographers’ claims (which in the end were true).
It’s evident by Chad Michael Buchanan’s video that these guys don’t like power trips, are well trained, deserve to keep their jobs, and don’t have anger management issues (at all).
Regarding the second video, my favorite line from this gem is definitely, “Ah, ah, ah, ah.” That woman, and her boy’s regular with bangs, are priceless.
In all seriousness though, if the videographers were trespassing on private property and breaking the law, just call the real cops, press charges, and let the police deal with the problem.
Turning yourself into a belligerent moron is not the right way to prevent someone from videotaping or photographing a newsworthy event, or anything for that matter.
Plus, when you act this way, you become the main story and get plastered all over the internet for your friends, family, and neighbors to see you behaving like a “d-wad.”
A special thanks to freelance news photographer Chad Michael Buchanan for personally providing us with these deece gems, and allowing us to tag them with our site’s name.
That way whenever someone watches these videos on a different site not pertaining to photography and the law (we all know these things do get around), they’ll see the URL and hopefully come to our site where they can learn about photographers’ rights.
Unlike other blogs on the web, our site is not about us patting ourselves on the back and repeatedly telling ourselves how great we are, however. If we have to put our URL on a video or photo that was provided to us (granted we have permission of the owner), we will do that in order to get the photographers’ rights message out to more people. But only if we have the owner’s permission.
944 Magazine and the UnScene Photography Tour are sponsoring a photo contest of “untold Los Angeles stories – people, places or things.” The five lucky winners will show their work at a gallery event in March, and the winner will be announced at the end of the night. Details can be found here.
As street photographers, photojournalists or documentarians, we are under the assumption of, and at times actively identify as being, dispassionate observers. Detached messengers of an uncolored truth. However, the truth is relative, and as human beings the concept of dispassionate observation, while considered an ideal, is an impossible fallacy. We expect to straddle the roles of man and machine, and seem to ignore the idea that one created the other.
The persistence of this myth is tied to the progressive, democratic aversion to a controlled news media. We demand a dissemination of the facts as they are, without agendas, often expecting the breadth and accessibility of the internet to be the causeway that lets that information stream run. We look at bias as a detriment to the story and to prejudice as the corrupter of its information. Is it only because our culture has raised these as buzzwords as evil? We are not only kidding ourselves, we are overlooking the fundamental nature and legacy of humanity.
Photo by cinemafia
When a photographer points his lens at a subject and records an image, there is a basic human process taking place. The choice of what matters is a form of prejudice. Not everything has importance, and in fleeting moments it takes instinct to find what is. When that photographer then selects the best representatives from those images to distribute to the public, there is again bias. But, to strive for the cold, clinical characteristics of the presumed un-slanted documentary is to remove this process, and leave a trail of data where intention and feeling once was.
Despite several embarrassing incidents for Amtrak in the news recently (in NY and DC), Amtrak employees are still woefully uninformed when it comes to photographers’ rights.
A local LA photographer, who goes by ShutterBuda, was taking photos at Union Station downtown yesterday morning for about an hour when he snapped an Amtrak employee who told him to not take photos. ShutterBuda continued shooting, when another Amtrak employee told him that he didn’t have permission to take photos. At this point, a commuter chimed in that he also objected to his picture being taken.
This guy, who claimed to be an ex-Guardian Angel, quickly became belligerent and escalated the situation into an ugly scene, yelling that ShutterBuda didn’t have permission to take his photo and threatening to “take him down” and “smash his camera.” All three were now demanding that he delete his photos. In quick succession, the Amtrak employees called a manager over and the manager called a security guard.
Not knowing how the law applied inside Union Station, ShutterBuda complied with the demands to delete the images. “Out on the street I never would have deleted those photos – I would have said no,” he says, “but I was kind of in a grey area there.” Plus, he says, they were being abusive and he didn’t want to deal with the scene.
Soon enough three LA County Sheriffs were on the scene.
If you can imagine it: Four Amtrak employees and three sheriffs for a man taking photos of commuters inside a public building.
The sheriffs backed up the Amtrak employees, with one claiming, ShutterBuda says, “that I needed permission from whoever owns Union Station and that I should comply with [the Amtrak staff] because they’re ambassadors for the law in some sense.” One sheriff asked to see the camera to check that the images were deleted – all of which ShutterBuda was able to get back later using recovery software.
The issue, it seems, was not ShutterBuda being there (i.e., trespassing or security risks) but that he didn’t have permission to be there. Which is a blatant fabrication. You do not need permission to shoot handheld in a public place. And you certainly do not subject yourself to the seizure of your images if you do so. That is downright illegal and possibly a Fourth Amendment issue. A court order is required for anyone to view your photos.
There’s also the issue of whether Amtrak and the sheriffs violated copyright and intellectual property laws by deleting these images, which of course is well beyond their pay grade. They are just blindly following some order they think they have the right to enforce.
For those of you who followed the story here back in October and November, you’ll remember that Mike Anzaldi is the freelance photojournalist who was unjustly (some would say ridiculously) arrested twice in Chicago for trying to shoot footage at crime scenes. The conclusion to the story is that a judge finally ruled in his favor, but the path to that point was predictably convoluted and drawn out.
After several court dates over the past few months, and coverage by the Chicago Tribune, the city and state decided that they would indeed press forward and charge Anzaldi with breaking the law. (Anzaldi heard that the coverage by the Tribune was in part responsible for the decision to move forward.) He was charged with two ordinance violations by the city and three counts of obstruction by the state.
Anzaldi picks up the story here:
Several court appearances went by with no real clear indication of what I was being charged with. The judge agreed, but allowed the state to amend their charges so that they made sense. This happened a few times. If it sounds silly, believe me, it was better being there. Even after the judge held the state’s hand through these pre-trial follies, the state still didn’t satisfy the court.
The day of the trial, my attorney made a few pre-trial motions to dismiss a couple of the charges. The state was arguing that I obstructed the commander by filming. My attorney argued that it was impossible to obstruct by filming. The judge agreed, and tossed out that charge. The problem for the state was that their whole case was based on that notion; they argued that my filming created a chilling effect to the people who were gathered around me when the commander came over to interview them about the shooting. Never mind that it never happened. There was no interviewing, and no one was chilled.
But, that was their made-up story, and they were going with it. Again, the judge threw that out before the trial began, so it was like the whole day, and their whole strategy, was out the window by 10 a.m. The rest of the charges were equally hollow and ridiculous.
At the end of the day, the judge admonished the state for failing to defend their claims. He also mentioned that the commander’s testimony was surprisingly different than what was recorded on tape. While stopping short of calling him a liar, he said he didn’t understand why he would testify something different from what we would see on tape.
That said, the judge also indicated that if the state had successfully argued that their case was based on me chilling potential witnesses due to my filming, that he would have likely accepted that claim. Again, that didn’t actually happen, nor did the state have that opportunity due to their own incompetence.
Anzaldi is contemplating his next move. And he still has his video of the first incident, which he says is fairly tame, but it does prove his innocence without question. He says he may or may not release it one day.
Graphic, Article, Sentences, Punctuation and Grammar by discarted
I realize that this is completely off topic, but in a world where many are giving themselves far too much credit than they deserve, or giving themselves credit where credit isn’t even due, I am marking my territory before some blogger stakes claim to what is not rightfully theirs.
So in order to claim ownership/inventorship/responsibleship of “deece,” a word that has been sweeping my little community ever since I invented it in my kitchen six months ago to describe something that is really good, I will say it right now, before “deece” begins sweeping the internet and invading other communities around this great country we call America…
Deece is mine!
For a complete definition of the word “deece” and an audio recording of how it can be used in a sentence, feel free to contact me via email.
Photo by 
Photo by 
Photo by 
Graphic, Article, Sentences, Punctuation and Grammar by 
boywithgrenade.org 
