amateur and professional photographers all over the country are being stopped and harassed with no legal basis. As digital cameras proliferate wildly, so do attempts to restrict what you can shoot and how you can use the picture. And not all attempts to quash photography have to do with national security concerns. Some invoke copyright and trademark protection, others the privacy both of celebrities and ordinary people. But you can fight back. Knowing your rights and restrictions as a photographer is a good first step. When cases reach the point of legal proceedings, they’re usually settled in the photographer’s favor, according to lawyers who have represented photographers in court. However, sometimes your own understanding of the law isn’t enough. According to his suit, when Jim McKinniss told the police officers that he was on public property and thought it was legal to photograph, “One of the officers asked if [I] had heard about September 11 and asserted that, since the terrorist attacks…it was illegal to photograph bridges, airports, and refineries.”

This is a crock. There’s no law in California or anywhere else in the U.S. that prohibits shooting such places from a public locale. You can even photograph inside airports, if you don’t point your camera at security checkpoints.

“These laws just don’t exist,” explains McKinniss’s attorney, Robert Myers, who took his case pro bono. “A law that attempts to prohibit photography from places open to the general public would be unconstitutional.”

The piece features some great, quite scary, stories plus some tips on how to handle the situation if it ever happens to you.

Technorati Tags: photography, law, tips, news

the Charlotte Observer has sacked a staff photographer for altering the colour of an image to, as he states, “to restore the actual color of the sky”. He said the color was lost when he underexposed the photo to offset the glare of the sun.

OK this is plainly ridiculous, the “truth” of the story was restored by this superficial change, who cares what colour the sky was though really? So either way, an over reaction right? How about this one …

The Miami Herald’s Spanish-language sister paper acknowledged Friday that it manipulated two photos to make it appear that two Cuban police officers were ignoring prostitutes gesturing to a tourist.

In this one the image was intentionally created to show a false impression of Police neglect of the prostitute problem. As far as I can tell this photographer was not sacked.

Technorati Tags: photography, news, law, ethics, media

Cruz, 21, told the NBC 10 Investigators that police arrested him last Wednesday for taking a picture of police activity with his cell phone. Cruz said police told him that he broke a new law that prohibits people from taking pictures of police with cell phones. “They threatened to charge me with conspiracy, impeding an investigation, obstruction of a investigation. … They said, ‘You were impeding this investigation.’ (I asked,) “By doing what?’ (The officer said,) ‘By taking a picture of the police officers with a camera phone,’” Cruz said. Cruz’s parents, who got him out of jail, said police told them the same thing.”

This is very worrying, society needs to know that the Police are accountable and that means the ability for a citizen to make documentary evidence. I just hope it is a one-off bad judgment by an individual police officer and not policy.

Technorati Tags: photography, law, news

Brian Larter » Blog Archive » Snappers to defy police ban

“The police have got no place making such warnings,” president Brian Walters SC said. “Merely to threaten is exceeding police powers and is an abuse of power.

While I am all for photographer freedom I think advising photographers to go against an explicit police warning is irresponsible.

Technorati Tags: law, photography, tips, property