Check out my web site to see what I shoot.

Americans, never very good at nuances and prone to over-reaction, have gone nuts since 9/11. They see a terrorist behind every telephoto lens, and security guards and local cops enforce their own anti-photography rules even where no official ones exist. Bystanders report me and I get rousted by Barney Fife fairly often for doing what I’d been doing without any problems for years before 9/11/01.

Meanwhile, the NASCAR dads and their families can run around the same venues popping the flashes on their 3mp point-and-shoot cameras, annoying people and being obnoxious, and no one bothers them. It’s the pro camera, deliberate, careful composition, and unobtrusive available-light shooting that marks me as a “suspicious person.” Most folks have no clue to serious, quality-oriented amateur photography. I know better than to even try to use a tripod in a railroad station — not that anyone has any idea when Amtrak might arrive, anyway.

A person intent on destruction doesn’t always need photos to plan his actions, and if he did, he wouldn’t likely be using a big DSLR hoisted to eye level while leaning against a post or wall to steady himself in poor lighting. Americans have simply freaked out. They don’t know what to do, so they just do everything they can think of without giving much time to the thinking.

As someone who enjoys our status as a free country, though, I have to say these situations drive me crazy, because they lead to crackdowns and restrictions that inconvenience everyone. Cameras were banned from most courtrooms after the spectacular abuse of the Sam Sheppard trial, and it took years to get them back in. (Except in Indiana, where they’ll wait another half-century or so.) My movie-critic friend is always bitching about having to surrender his cell phone in advance screenings to prevent piracy. It’s the rule of fourth grade all over again: Because some people can’t follow the rules, everyone has to stay after class.

which raises the serious question - should cameras held by non-family/non-press people be allowed into such events? And if they are - shouldn’t the schools and the identified people in the pictures have recourse against this sort of mis-use (or unauthorized use) of their images?

And the article says that the Stokke image was indeed snapped by an accredited photo-journalist…so indeed maybe existing copyright laws and so forth maybe could be brought to bear against these gateway websites that have lots of traffic

(refrain)

“The day Christie and her gigalo jumped off the Tallahatchee Bridge”