Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

This one has been brewing for awhile.

I have an urgent need to let go and rant – and seeing as this is my blog I suppose its as good a place as any!

The subject is photography in public. The issue is the ignorance and paranoia out there.

Here are some recent times when I have been harassed.

At a public sports ground – several acres of open ground, with a tarmac cycle track around it on which a variety of people (adults and teens) were riding their bikes fast in training. I knelt and took two photos of riders beside the track – out in plain sight. Next minute I’m embroiled in an discussion with a shirt wearing government employee who was purportedly training these kids for triathlons. I in plain language told her they had no right to privacy, explained I was just randomly taking photos and that any body could do so. She brought over the parents who had been several hundred metres away and I proceeded to delete the (crappy) photos to shut them up and then went into the middle of the ground and took pictures of a land sailor.

See the kids in the background? they are probably 300-400 metres away from me at this point.

The next one was while sitting out in the parking rank at Brisbane airport taking pics of cars and baggage trolleys a security guard wandered up and asked if I was taking pics of the security guards. I said no. He proceeded to try and tell me that was illegal (which it isn’t).

Picture of baggage trolley at airport and a lady who may or may not have been or loved a marine – judging by the tattoo on her foot. Click the picture for the large view of the tattoo.

The next time was a funny one. I was in the local shopping mall dressed in my running gear on a late night – after being at running club - when the mall was full of young teens and their phone cameras and hand cams galore. I snapped this picture of some donuts and then the interesting lacework on the back of this ladies dress. A security guard then told me I couldn’t take pictures in the mall. I laughed and said surely that’s a policy that would be impossible to police – had he seen all the kids in there with phone cameras? He got all high and mighty and said he did police it well. I was in there least week and took specific notice. I watched kids taking photos of the aftermath of a fight while the security guards and police stood around and sported it out. None of them approached the kids with the handy snap cameras.

Today was a classic case of ignorance in several ways.

I was standing on a footpath in front of a a vacant section (house burnt down years ago). I as taking photos of an ant on some leaves (see the picture). The next house over is on double frontage, set back from the road some 50 metres and was probably 80 metres from where I was standing. After leaving the tree I was walking to my car parked up the road a bit further when the lady drove into her driveway as I was about to cross it and wound her window down and asked in a very annoyed voice “why are you taking photos of my house with a telephoto lens?”. I was holding it in my hand – i laughed in amazement and said its not a telephoto lens, I wasn’t taking photos of your house i was taking photos of a tree and pointed at it some 30 metres away. I said its not illegal to take photos of someone’s house anyway. She got all feisty and demanded “so why were you?” I reiterated i wasn’t and showed her the pics of the tree.

My annoyance stems form two things.

First the apparent assumption out there that anybody with an SLR camera is some kind of peeping tom, pervert, spy photographer or similar. I don’t see anybody with a hand snap camera being hassled in the same way.

Second the total ignorance of the law, or a deliberate attempt to ignore it. There exists NO RIGHT TO PRIVACY people except in places where you would reasonably expect it – e.g. a public change rooms or toilets or in your house. If you go out in public, expect to be photographed. If your house or yard is visible from the road, expect to be photographed. Google does it – has anybody seen street view for goodness sake They did it and it was legal – it still is. This lady today lives across the road from the train station carpark were there are numerous cameras on poles videoing every move. The funny thing is I am quite good friends with her husband, though she and I have never met before. I’m looking forward to that first introduced meeting! Oh and by the way darling – this is Tim!

Links for legal stuff

• Street Photographers Rights in Australia
• NSW Photo Rights – most of this is applicable to the rest of Australia thought here are some NSW specific bits.
• A good summary of rights and exceptions

These links are to good advice around creating email policies for your organisation.

• Email Policy
• Internet and email policy

Level Up – an interesting website for 8-12 year old girls around purity and other teen girl issues – relevant for me with a 13yr old and 11 yr old daughter

Photography

Focus stacking tutorial – something to learn from

ZFlick – a cool lightweight app on the Adobe Air Platform for searching Flickr – very cool visual effects.

Zior Photo – some pretty cool photography

What stormtroopers do on their day off

11 tips to succeed with a Photo365 Project. See my 365 days of Bokeh photos on flickr

And some of my latest pics suitable for use as desktop backgrounds – If you want to download them just click on them to get the full size file. then right click to download to your computer.

We have had so much rain lately that everything is green – and i really liking it. Green is a colour with so many shades – and the constant source of arguments for my wife and I as to whether something is blue or green!

I have taken some really nice photos using the green colour in the background to offset the subject. I would love to have feedback on these pictures – which do you like, or not like and why?

Click read more to see the photos.

High Dynamic Resolution Photos are very cool right now – lots of people are doing them. So I looked up how to do them. I haven’t had the time to do any yet – but I will definitely shoot some in our upcoming strobist shoot later in January. I guess that means I will need to practice first too! In the meantime here are some tutorials and guides to the amazing world of HDR photos.

Note the photo below is not mine, it is from Smashing Magazine.

Links:

• Cambridge in Colour Tutorial
• Lifehacker review which led me to:
• Leviathors Definitive Guide to Realistic High Dynamic Range Images
• Abducted by Design tutorial
• DesignORA – best HDR Pics of 2009
• Nill Photoalbum Photoshop tutorial
• Smashing Magazine – 35 great HDR photos
• Photocritic ultimate guide to HDR photography

I have been having a lot of fun playing with the photography, learning new techniques and trying new things. I have a practice of finding one or two things every couple of years to learn about and become an “expert” in. Doing so requires lots of reading, benchmarking and networking with others in the same space and preparing to put in some hard yards. I love this initial phase of the learning process. As I start reading different blogs and researching different things there are so many ways you can go. I haven't decided what to focus on yet, for now I am reviewing lots and lots of things.

Here’s a sample of the things I have seen in the last few weeks I have bookmarked or kept open in my browser – time to make space for some new ones now.