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.

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.

"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

Last week, Bryan Villarin was harassed while shooting photos of a building in downtown Los Angeles by the misinformed building securitytheatre guards. Rather than just slink away when threatened by the overgrown schoolyard bullies, he stood up for his right to shoot, and with the help of Discarted — another Los Angeles area photographer — set up a photographers rights demonstration in front of the building.

The photographers were well organized, shot photos and video, and presented the results of the excursion. Taking video was a nice touch, since it lets people see how ridiculous and unreasonable these securitytheatre guards really are.

This post is beginning to get some attention, which is a good thing. It has appeared on the LA Weekly Blog, and you can Digg it here.

Photography is not a crime. If you are in a public area, you have the right to take photographs of whatever you can see. Kudos to the photographers in Los Angeles who took the time to stand up for their — and all of our — rights as photographers.

This is the exterior of the San Francisco Museum of Art. Until recently, they had a strict no-photography policy. The museum recently changed this policy to read as follows:

Photography is not permitted in the galleries. Flash photography is permitted only with a handheld camera in the Atrium.

Apparently not all of the museum personnel got the memo. Yesterday, Thomas Hawk was kicked out of the museum by Simon Blint, the Director of Visitor Relations for the museum. Why was he kicked out? For taking a photo in the atrium of the museum.

This kind of behavior is inexcusable. This person is a horrible reflection on a place like SFMOMA, and it is my sincere hope that the people higher up in the management make him accountable for this action. There is no way this person should be allowed to hold the title “Director of Visitor Relations” after exhibiting this kind of flagrant disregard for museum policy toward a guest of the museum.

This morning, photo sharing site Zooomr rolled out some new features, improving their already excellent photo sharing experience.

The navigation bar at the top of the screen is now much cleaner, and includes drop-down menus for accessing features:

Discover has undergone some major changes as well. The algorithm has been tuned to better represent shots that are truly awesome. Discover is now paged as well, so you can see more than just the first 100 photos that show up. There are also alternate Discover views available, including Pro and Undiscovered. The Undiscovered view is particularly nice because it allows you to find photographers that you have not yet interacted with. Here’s an example of some of the great shots that I found using Undiscovered:

The latest release of Zooomr has introduced the idea of “Awards”. Many users on Zooomr have been tagging their photos with “fav10″ when they get 10 faves from other users. The Zooomr team have taken this idea a step further by automatically adding an award tag when photos get 10 faves. All the awards given to a photo will show up under the “Awards” section to the right of the photo. Awards are just tags, so they can be used to create SmartSets and can be used in searches:

Another recent feature is the ability to share a photo on popular social networking sites with a single click. Underneath each photo is a “Share this with Friends” section that lets you send the photo to Facebook, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Pownce, and more. This is a great way to leverage the social aspect of photography:

In addition to these very obvious changes, the Zooomr team has been improving the back-end processes that keep the site going. The last few months have seen substantial improvements in the speed and reliability of the site. Uploads are now working as expected. The API is working, which allows third-party applications such as JUploadr to work with the site again. The site is smoother and faster overall.

Thanks to Kristopher and the Zooomr Team for all the hard work! Zooomr is getting more awesome all the time!

Carlos Miller, the photographer who was arrested in Miami for photographing police activity, finally has a trial date.

This is something worth keeping an eye on if you are interested in your rights as a photographer.

Carlos Miller has an interesting post over on his blog about a new policy that the Seattle Police Department has issued regarding photographers.

Andy Carvin has a post on his blog detailing how he was almost arrested for taking photos at Union Station in Washington, DC.

Apparently, three security guards told him three different reasons why photography is not allowed in Union Station. He finally got to speak to a supervisor whose business card identified him as Robert H. Mangiante, Assistant Director, IPC International Corporation. They were told “Pack up and leave, or you will be arrested”. Mr. Carvin handled the situation perfectly, as far as I am concerned.

First of all, in a private space, of course management has the right to determine what can and cannot be done in the space. However, to me, Union Station is something in between a public and a private space. It may be owned by a private company, but it is open to anybody, and sees many, many people come through it every day. Their web site even promotes it as a tourist destination, and guess what? Tourists == photography! The only mention of photography on their web site states “If you are interested in utilizing Union Station as a production site, please fill out this application and return it to our office for prior authorization.” And judging by the comments on the blog post, they generally allow photography and have established a precedent of allowing non-commercial photography. There are no signs posted. There is no clear policy forbidding non-commercial photography on their web site.

Now I am not saying that they are wrong to have rules and enforce their rules. But they really do need to be clearer about what is and is not acceptable. Their own employees don’t understand the policy — how can the public be expected to understand what is expected of them? Rather than arbitrarily threaten random photographers, why not refer them to a PR person, or assist them to get whatever permission is required? It seems that would be a much better move for a place that considers itself the most popular tourist destination in the nations capitol.

If you’ve been following my blog, or my photostreams on flickr or Zooomr, you know I shoot all over the Bay Area, and I shoot a lot of neon signs. Many of these signs are in various windows: bars, liquor stores, corner grocers, etc. Occasionally, the people in the store will ask what I’m doing. Most of the time, they are just curious, and sometimes they even invite me in to show me the neon inside the building. That’s how I found out about this beautiful sign at a bar called Toot’s in Crockett.

Sometimes, however, the people think that I’m doing something wrong by shooting the signs, and get downright rude, nasty, or violent. And this post is a story of one of those times.

I was shooting in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco (not the greatest part of town) in the afternoon. I spotted a couple of promising signs in the window of a little store, and started shooting them. The person in the picture above came out and asked what I was doing. I explained that I collect pictures of neon, and I was just taking photos of the signs. He told me that I needed to ask him first. I politely told him that I was not going to go into his store, and that I would stay on the sidewalk, and continued shooting. He came over and shoved my camera back into my face, and told me that I could not shoot at his store.

At this point, I aimed the camera at him and took the photo you see here. I told him that I would call the police if he assaulted me again. He did not like this, and told me that we didn’t need the police, but that I should be “very careful”. He went back inside, and I took a few more shots and went on my way.

After I posted the photo on Zooomr, Thomas Hawk posted about it on his blog. Reading the comments on that post got me thinking about what I feel is the right way to handle this kind of situation, as opposed to what my rights are.

In the situation described here, it’s pretty clear that I was well within my legal rights to take these photographs. I was not trying to take photos through a window into a private place; these were photos from a public sidewalk at a sign in the window of a business that is open to the public. Was it the right thing to do to take the photos? I believe that it was, and I believe that I handled the situation in the right way. I did not yell at the person. I did not speak to him rudely. I did not act violently towards him. In fact, if he had not pushed me, I would not have even taken his picture.

I think that it is important for everybody to stand up for their rights. Free speech is not something that should be taken for granted, and allowing somebody to force you to give up your rights by trying to intimidate you is simply not acceptable. Of course, you should be mindful of your own safety as well.

So what kind of situation would cause me to choose to not exercise my right to take a photograph in a public place? One thing that I can think of is taking photographs of people. People have feelings, and it is understandable that some people would be uncomfortable with a stranger pointing a camera at them. If somebody asked me nicely, I would probably respect their wishes. I would most likely politely explain to them that I do have the right to take photographs in public, and that I will be taking photographs, but I would attempt to leave them out of the frame if it makes them more comfortable. I think that is a reasonable consideration to extend to somebody, and that it would be the right thing to do.

But people and buildings are different things. Buildings, signs, and storefronts do not have feelings. Generally, these are places that the public can enter and leave freely. Things are displayed in the windows to appeal to passersby and attract them into the store. I really do not see that there is any harm in exercising my right to take photographs of these subjects. If somebody asks me not to take the photo, I will be polite to them, but I will probably choose to exercise my right to take the photograph.

You might not agree with me, and that’s fine. I don’t expect everybody to agree with my thoughts on this subject. But if you enjoy taking photographs in public places, these are things that you may want to give some thought to. Thinking about these situations before you encounter them will help you to keep a cool head and be polite to others, even if they are being obnoxious towards you.

Which leads me to the bottom line: I think the key to handling these kinds of situations is to be as polite as possible. Don’t be afraid to explain what you are doing; often times people just misunderstand your motives. Don’t be afraid to carry a printout of the photographers rights and to share a copy with people. Be sensitive to the feelings of others, but at the same time don’t allow others to bully you into giving up your rights. It is possible to do the right thing, and still stick up for your rights.