Have You Ever Been Confronted by Authorities About Photography?
Here are the results of the poll we posted last week:
What file format do you shoot in?
- RAW (546 Votes)
- JPEG (196 Votes)
Total Voters: 741
Loading ...Apparently around 74% of PetaPixel readers shoot in RAW, which indicates most of you are pretty serious about photography. Awesome.
This week’s poll is related to all the photographer’s rights issues swirling around in England. I’m wondering if you’ve ever been confronted by authorities about photography. Maybe a police officer asked you to put away your camera, or a security guard saw that you were shooting and demanded that you delete all your images.
For me, I was confronted once at San Francisco International Airport a few years ago. After getting off the plane, I took some photographs in the customs area while waiting to pass through. A security guard/customs officer/person saw what I was doing, ran over, and demanded that I delete everything I had taken. After I had done so, she asked to look through the recent photographs to make sure they were indeed gone.
I think the system is somewhat flawed, since if I really was someone who was a threat, I could have just gone home and used any free disk recovery program to recover the photographs that I had “deleted”. Plus, I probably wouldn’t have been photographing so obviously, right? Oh well. Here’s the poll:
Have you ever been asked by authorities to stop photographing or to delete your photos?
- Yes, and I did (92 Votes)
- Yes, and I refused (149 Votes)
- No (217 Votes)
Total Voters: 458
Loading ...If you have in fact been confronted, we’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment telling us your story!
Image credit: Police Photographer by bthomso
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That's hilarious! :-)
Once got stopped my a cop who seemed certain that I was out looking for a rape victim. Got the fed the usual BS lines from them about how it is illegal to take certain types of photos, etc… Full write up can be found at http://www.kpraslowicz.com/2009/10/03/the-night...
It specifically Kapiolani Park, which is near Waikiki on Oahu. Yes, a public park, but not way out in the wilds.
It specifically Kapiolani Park, which is near Waikiki on Oahu. Yes, a public park, but not way out in the wilds.
[...] The 25 polls we’ve posted so far have received exactly 10,000 votes, and have sparked some pretty interesting conversations. [...]
On private property they may ask you to leave, or require that you stop taking photos if you wish to stay. If you do not oblige they can call the police and have you charged with trespassing.
Under no circumstances would the owner of a bookstore, or mall security ever have a legal right to delete your photos, or request you to do so.
now what if you had an eye fi card, knowing that the image you already deleted was in fact sitting in your inbox or on a server? =)