Jeremy Brooks

I recently saw a post from Troy Holden regarding being harassed by the guards at 555 Mission in San Francisco for taking photographs. I was somewhat surprised, since I have shot there several times without incident. I decided to shoot the building on my way to work this morning. Here’s what happened.

The shot you see above is the loading dock at 555 Mission. While I was framing this shot, I was approached by a security guard. He wanted to know why I was taking pictures; I told him because I like to take pictures, I take pictures every day.

He told me that because of terrorism concerns photography of the building is not allowed. I told him thanks, but since I am on a public sidewalk I will continue taking photos. At the time, I was standing across the street on a public sidewalk.

At that point, he got on his radio and announced that they had a "terroist". I had to laugh at that.

Soon two other guards came out and told me that I was not allowed to take photographs of the building. They threatened to call the police; I invited them to do so. I continued taking pictures, shooting the rear of the building, the window washers that were working at the time, and continuing to the front of the building.

As I was finishing with the shots I wanted to get, Security Supervisor Nicholas Torres came out and gave me a "Courtesy Card" explaining their photography policy. I told him that it didn’t matter what their policy was, it does not change what my rights are. He acknowledged that I had the right to take photographs from the sidewalk (which contradicts what the other guard was telling me), but then said that they do not want me to take photographs of the exterior of the building (contradicting the card), and that I could not take pictures from the plaza (again contradicting the card), even though it is designated as a Privately Owned Public Open Space (POPOS). The Courtesy Card looks like this:

Perhaps it is not too surprising that the guard was contradicting what the courtesy card said, since the courtesy card contradicts itself. The first paragraph indicates that United Protection Service, apparently the company that is contracted to provide security services for this property, respects photographers rights. The second paragraph forbids photography of certain subjects. However, photographers’ constitutional rights do not stop at loading docks, security personnel, building entrances, garages, security desks, or lobby areas. If these things are visible from a public location, they can be photographed. In addition, there seems to be a disconnect between the United Protection Service policy stated on the card and the guards statement that photography of the building and photography in the plaza is forbidden. According to these policies, the photograph you see above is forbidden, as are all of these photographs, even though they were taken from public property:

Troy has contacted the building management, and hopefully will have some answers from them soon. Ideally they will communicate to the security guards that photography is not a crime, so that photographers at this location will not be harassed in the future.

Photography is not a crime.

you can see all my photos from 555 Mission in my 555 Mission set on Flickr.

Update: Caliber SF has a post about this as well.

June Challenge, 2010

The image above is a montage of my images for the photochallenge.org June Challenge. The challenge for June was to shoot one photo per day in black and white. In addition, I composed all my shots for this challenge to be cropped square.

Click the image to see a slideshow view of the set on Flickr.

November was the last month of 2009 that had a monthly challenge from photochallenge.org. During 2009, there were six different monthly challenges:

January Challenge: one self-portrait each day of the month

March Challenge: night shooting, three photos each week of the month

May Challenge: the alphabet, one photo per day of a letter, in alphabetic order

July Challenge: the daily grind, three photos each week of people working

September Challenge: one photo per day in black and white

November Challenge: one photo per day using your mobile phone

The result? 144 photos, spanning January to November. Now, for your viewing pleasure (or boredom perhaps) are all 144 photos from the 2009 Monthly Challenges, with a soundtrack by Revolution Void:

Who feels like a photowalk? One of my Flickr friends, Håkan Dahlström, will be visiting from Sweden this week, and he wants to do some shooting while he’s here.

We will be meeting this Wednesday (November 4th) at the corner of Montgomery and Market, and head out through Chinatown and maybe North Beach, depending on what people feel like.

Then on Sunday (November 8th) we will be meeting in San Francisco around 4PM for another photowalk. The location for the Sunday walk has not been determined yet. We will probably decide on a location during the Wednesday photowalk.

With the sun going down earlier, we will have a chance to do some night shooting before everything closes. Come on out and shoot with us, and pass the word along.

Update: You can RSVP for the photowalks on upcoming.org:
Wednesday – Chinatown
Sunday – Location TBD

This is my second Workflow post. Previously, I talked about My Geotagging Workflow.

I shoot every day. After a while, all those photos start adding up. Often people ask me how I manage all those images, and what my workflow is for processing them. This post details the current workflow that I’ve developed, using Aperture and a combination of Projects and Smart Albums to automate the details.

At the beginning of each month, I create a new Project in Aperture. The project is named “yyyy-mm Photos”. So today, since it is the beginning of November, I created “2009-11 Photos”. Inside this new project, I create a Smart Album named “TODO” that shows all Unrated photos:

All the photos I take during the month will be imported into the Project for that month. After I import a batch, I click on the TODO Smart Album and take a few minutes and look at them, marking any obviously useless shots as Rejected. Marking them as Rejected automatically removes them from the TODO Smart Album, since it only matches Unrated photos.

When I am ready to process some photos, I select a TODO Smart Album. Usually, I have several to choose from, since I am rarely caught up to the current month. I will look through the photos in the album, processing photos that catch my eye. Sometimes I will just concentrate on a batch of photos, rather than processing photos from different months.

When I am finished with the adjustments for a particular photo, I add keywords using the Keyword Controls window in Aperture. I have some predefined keywords that I use often assigned to buttons in the Keyword Controls window. For keywords that are not assigned to a button I just start typing and Aperture auto-completes them. I normally add geographic keywords (at least city and state), as well as keywords for photo type, objects in the photo, and anything else that will help me find the photo at a later date. Adding keywords in Aperture ensures that the exported photos that get uploaded to various web sites will always contain the keyword metadata.

After adding Keywords, I rate the photo from 3 to 5 stars. Any photo with a rating of three stars or higher will be uploaded to Flickr and Zooomr, and possibly other services. Five stars means the photo is a personal favorite. After adding the rating, the photo disappears from the TODO Smart Album, and I can begin processing the next photo.

When I am ready to upload photos to Flickr and Zooomr, I click on my Ready to Upload Smart Album. This is a Smart Album that matches all photos with a rating of three stars or higher, AND photos that do NOT have the keywords “flickr” and “zooomr”:

I select photos that I want to upload from this Smart Album, and then export them as JPG’s to a folder on my hard drive. After the export is complete, I add the keywords “flickr” and “zooomr” to the photos that are selected, which automatically removes them from the Ready to Upload Smart Album. I then use JUploadr to upload the exported photos to Flickr and Zooomr. After the batch has been uploaded to both sites, I delete the JPG’s, since I can easily re-export them again as needed.

Once I have finished processing all the photos for a particular month, I delete the TODO smart album for that month.

Using Smart Albums and Keywords in this way allows me to easily determine which photos need to be processed, which photos are ready to be uploaded, and which photos I have already uploaded. It greatly simplifies the details of keeping my photos organized, and allows me to concentrate on processing photos, rather than organizing photos.

"278/365: Vent" by Jeremy Kunz

As you probably know, I am one of the admins behind the photochallenge.org web site. We have quite a few people participating in the challenges, and it’s growing all the time. The Photochallenge.org Group on Flickr has almost 1,000 members now.

So I was particularly sad to hear that one of our members, Jeremy Kunz of Kamas, Utah, was killed while participating in a relay race in Nevada.

Jeremy’s photostream can be found on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkunz/

"there are some mornings when the sky looks like a road" by trixiebedlam, used by permission

One of my flickr contacts, trixiebedlam, is attempting to visit and shoot all 50 states this year. It’s an ambitious project that has produced some great results, which you can see in this collection on Flickr.

"li'l deb" by trixiebedlam, used by permission

She has visited 36 out of the 50 states so far, and is trying to raise enough money to cover the expenses involved in getting to the last 14. If you would like to help, you can head over to the 50 States Project kickstarter page. Kickstarter is a pretty cool concept: If the project has enough support, it will be funded. If not, nobody has to pay. She is offering some great incentives to supporters, such as a set of 50 state postcards or a photo book of the project. The economy sucks right now, but if there’s one thing worth supporting, it’s art.

"at the circus" by trixiebedlam, used by permission

"outpost" by trixiebedlam, used by permission

This is why I carry my camera with me all the time.

I have been by this fire station hundreds of times. I have driven by, walked by, been there during the day, and at night. But yesterday it just happened that I was walking by, and it just happened that the firemen were returning from a call, and it just happened that the doors were open. I looked in, and saw this sign on the back wall. If I had not had my camera, I don’t know when I would have had a chance to shoot it again.

My Neighborhoods photo collaboration project, week 13: The Tenderloin.

The Tenderloin is a dense downtown neighborhood located in the flatlands on the southern slope of Nob Hill, nestled between the Union Square shopping district to the northeast and the Civic Center office district to the southwest. It encompasses about fifty square blocks and a conservative description has it bounded on the North by Post Street, on the East by Mason Street, on the South by Mission Street and on the West by Van Ness and Ninth Streets.

Pictured here is the former location of the Black Hawk nightclub. The Black Hawk was a legendary San Francisco nightclub hosting a spectacular range of jazz talents during its heyday from 1949 to 1963. It was located on the corner of Turk Street and Hyde Street. The site of the Blackhawk is now a parking lot. The building next door on Hyde Street (now housing the 222 Club), where the tape recorders were set up to record the Miles Davis album, still stands.

(Source: Wikipedia)

My book of photos from the photochallenge.org 2008 challenges is now available on blurb.com.

This book includes the photos from the following challenges:

• 2008 Challenge: One photo per week documenting your community
• February Challenge: Color theory
• April Challenge: Entropy
• May Challenge: Weekly theme
• July Challenge: Light fixtures

The 74 page book includes 159 photographs and is available in softcover and hardcover editions. You can see a preview of the book here.