This video is around 16 minutes long. OK, I know, YouTube viewers get bored after 2 minutes, but watch it right through, it’s good. The video documents what happened when six professional photographers and accompanying videographers set out into London to photograph in a public place.
It documents the two parties that are the bane of my life in my line of work – the Security Suit and the Hi Res Vest Man. Working photographing cars on location and buildings plus working around moving aircraft and helicopters when shooting aerial photography, we encounter this phenomenon on a regular basis. The level of ignorance and suspension of simple common sense beggars belief sometimes, together with throwaway, vague comments using buzzwords and phrases such as “Health and Safety, Mate” and “Terrorism Act, you know about 9/11, right?”
If I really did wish to covertly film a building, there are literally dozens of more discrete cameras than a Canon 1DS or, as one of the photographers in the video had, an 8×10 plate camera.
When I’ve raised this issue with friends and family unfamiliar with the law, the response is often “But surely they have a point? 9/11, July bombings and all that” The average person is quite rightly concerned about their personal security, so they pay little attention when seeing a photographer being challenged by a Hi Res Vest, simply assuming “Photographer = Pedophile / Paparazzi / Terrorist” That sweeping generalisation is right up there with thinking “Lamborghini = Footballer / Drug Dealer”
So watch this video, because there’s some great stuff. The Suits and the Vests are made to look like the ill-informed fools that they are and the Police show that these days they’re well up to speed on the laws on photography in a public place, displaying politeness and professionalism.
Finally, I was at a lovely grass airsrtip in Yorkshire a couple of months ago and I asked if Hi Res vests were needed airside, “No dear”, said the lady. “If you walk into a propellor, it will still kill you, Hi Res or not”.
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Great Video! Security guys acted true to form, but quite impressed by the Police response (on this occasion) The crazy thing is that in a ‘free’ country you even to make a video like this. I have lived and worked in one of the world’s few remaining communist countries for over 15 years… we have a police force infamous for intrusion and violence, and yet I have never once been questioned (or even approached) while taking photos. Go figure!
Thanks for posting this.
Hi Ian,
Glad you liked it. I’ve worked with Police outside of London and always found them fully clued up about the right to photograph in public places. It’s the man who’s given a Hi Res Vest who thinks he’s transformed into Judge Dredd that does my head in. No reason or logic, just loving his bit of power.
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