Dealing with your own ethical mistakes.

TheGreatGasMaskMan

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I just need to vent this because this event keeps wrecking havoc on my mind.

As photographers, why do we get accused of being creepy even if we're blatantly doing something out in the open?

a couple weeks ago, I got called creepy and was asked to leave by an off duty police officer just because I was photographing a playground and there were kids around- despite me explaining I was photographing the equipment and so on.



and a year previous, some angry parents threatened to call the police on me despite my intent of doing an architectural shot, with a 4x5 camera. (this is a recreation of what I was trying to do at the time a couple months later).

What has the world come to? Security guards at industrial locations have been way nicer to me when asking me to leave, and those haven't bothered me at all.
 

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Sadly, this has a blow out discussion on popular topic written all over it. End result will be some insulting/derogatory commentary on unrelated matters. I say SADLY, because it's a fine topic to discuss. I say the rest because I won't. There is simply no way to not end up in the mine field of the mindless.
 

guangong

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This situation has evolved from two trends. When I was a child neighborhood kids played together without adults hanging around. Perverts withheld their lust because consequences could be severe. Nowadays, on the one hand many parents are overprotective, but darr has laid out the general situation that exists today about efforts to protect children. When I was a child, we came home from school and went out to play with no adult supervision. However, perverts (this word would not be considered pc by today's social workers) suppressed their desires because of severe penalties. As Johnson noted, the prospect of hanging causes one to gather one's thoughts. Nowadays, a lecture from a judge and a few months of therapy and free again. (Social workers play both sides.)
In my daughters community, full of little preschoolers and grammar school kids, two registered child molesters were able to buy a house within a few feet of playground,. Mother of one pervert politically connected, so rules don't apply. The only losers were the little kids. This is today's world.
Incidentally, we had a similar thread a few years ago by a photographer in England who was approached by law enforcement for taking pictures in a park.
 

radiant

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Lets see these scenarios with out-of-photography-scene perspective, from parents side:

Someone photographing playground and after questioning his reasons explainin "he is just shooting the equipment" - yeah right. That's pretty normal to take photograph of playground equipment?!

--> You are being thought of creepy because you are. I remember: in the eyes of childrens parents.

Altough it is totally legal to do this (at least in Finland) that doesn't mean you should do it. But if you decide to do it, introduce yourself to the parents and ask if it is OK. If it is not, then thank and leave. If you continue you are probably stressing out the parents who still think you are bit creepy. They will probably do anything to stop you, parents protective instinct is not controllable.

The other possibility is making you not-creepy: that is how you present yourself. You can even invite the parents and kids to see the image on focusing glass, kids are probably thrilled. Have a nice chat with all and - boom, suddenly everyone smiles at you and you can work even more freely than you would imagined. But that is how you play your cards. By default you are playing "110% creepy and odd" card.

It's all about your ego. Get over it and find something else to photograph. There are other subjects and only your ego is forcing you to continue or question. If it is legal, it sometimes isn't just worth it.
 

VinceInMT

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I recently did some shooting at a nearby playground but, being aware of how things are today, I did so when there were no children present.

A year or two ago I was working on a motion/blur assignment for a photo/art class I was taking. I walked up a block from my home to a street where there was morning go-to-work traffic. I set up my camera (35mm) on my tripod and took low shots of cars going by. I was taking notes for each shot as the class required and noticed a police car driving by while I was writing. I didn’t pay attention until he’d gone around the block, pulled up, got out of the car, and demanded to know what I am doing. I told him I am working on an art assignment for a class I am taking at the university just down the street. He said he wanted to know what I was really doing and what was this equipment I was doing it with. I handed him my assignment sheet and my notes. He glanced at them, handed them back, and kept his attention on the camera. I told him it was a camera and that it used film because the class in is analog photography. (It’s a Minolta SRT-101.) He gives me a doubting look. We stood there at an impasse. He finally said he really had his doubts about all this but can’t see what I am really up too. I suggested that he call my professor and said I could give him her number. I’d have gotten a bit surely but had no ID on me (I was a block from home) and didn’t feel like riding in his car. I did ask that if I’d been standing here taking pictures with a phone would that have looked suspicious and he said it wouldn’t. He ended up leaving and that was that. Maybe it’s was an age thing. I’m nearly 70 and he was about 30.
 

radiant

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VinceInMT said:
He gives me a doubting look. We stood there at an impasse. He finally said he really had his doubts about all this but can’t see what I am really up too.
Click to expand...

Taking account how police has been acting in US this isn't surprising me at all. Meaning: he understood the situation really well but couldn't just admit it, apologize and leave.
 

benjiboy

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I avoid photographing children when out with my camera because the world has gone paedophile mad.
 

neeksgeek

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My photographic work rarely involves people in the first place, but I had an incident where I was accused of “photographing buildings” (Yes, I was, I’m guilty! Wait, you mean that’s not a crime?) before work one morning, by a coworker who has actually known me for more than 30 years, and knows I’m a photographer as well. I saw him talking to the guard and then the guard came over to me. It wasn’t a joke, the security guard was deadly serious, asking me for my ID, what was I photographing, etc. I don’t work in some kind of high-security facility, I was taking pictures of a building that was about to be demolished. I was on a city sidewalk when making the pictures, so technically the guard had zero jurisdiction. Sometimes people get caught up in the paranoia of modern security theater. Having said all that, I’m not pointing my camera at kids unless there’s a paycheck involved!
 

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just be lucky you are Caucasian*. I've photographed places and had bottles thrown at me and in my neighborhood grown up children of my neighbors told me I didn't belong in his neighborhood and wasn't allowed to photograph the tree limbs with my speed graphic on a tripod pointed UP. ( I POINTED to my house when he asked who I was ). I now call the police whenever I am photographing like that in public so I can call them ... probably won't help much since I was followed into my own neighborhood by a sqad car when I was on my bicycle and told I wasn't allowed there ( I was 10 houses or less away from my house ).
regarding playgrounds. I know better than to photograph them with or without children and when my kids were little I'd photograph them at the playground ( once in a while )... but never anyone else.

* allegedly, I'm caucasian.

photographers have been called creeps and camera fiends and perverts and everything else since George Eastman marketed the KODAK.


--


you can say that again !
 
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Yup, post #7 starting to happen. I`m not participating. Just watching how long this thread will stay on the topic.
 

BrianShaw

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Witold said:
Yup, post #7 starting to happen. I`m not participating. Just watching how long this thread will stay on the topic.
Click to expand...
By saying that you are not participating, yet casting judgement on specific postings... you are participating. Please be honest or be quiet. Else you are trollish.
 

VinceInMT

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neeksgeek said:
My photographic work rarely involves people in the first place, but I had an incident where I was accused of “photographing buildings”...
Click to expand...
I few months ago I was driving past an apartment building and noticed all the air conditioner units sticking out on the backside of the building. Since I was looking for examples of repetition in composition, I pulled my car over to the side of the road and took a shot with my 35mm without even getting out of the car. As I was starting to drive away a car pulled in front of me and blocked me in. He started a tirade about how this was private property, an old folks home, and how it was illegal for me to take pictures of it. I told him that I was on a city street and that they eyeball cannot trespass. He got his phone out and said he was calling the police to come and arrest me. I told him to go ahead and to be sure to get my license plate because I wasn’t going to wait around. I assume that the police told him no crime had been committed.

One of my running partners is a professional photographer and has had a studio here for 30-some years. One of his clients is a real estate office and he does all types of photos for them. The client gave him an address and said they just needed a shot from the front for a new listing. He drives out to the neighborhood, a rather upscale one, stands in the streets, gets the shot, and when he gets back to the studio the sheriff’s on the phone saying they had a complaint and wanted to know what he is up to. Of course, the sheriff accepted his explanation.

I suppose it’s just the time we live in. My wife reminds me that we live in Montana and to keep in mind how many people are armed here so remember my manners.
 

Vaughn

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Anyone thinking parents are over-protective these days about strangers around their kids, most likely has never been a parent in these days.

Any man without kids hanging around a playground for any reason is creepy...sorry, that is the society we have built for ourselves.
 

pentaxuser

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The whole business of kids being photographed if they are not yours,related to you in some way or there isn't another adult there whom you know and to whom the kids belong has become a major headache to which there is not a simple answer. If there is a skateboard track or BMX track in a park and you want to practice action shots how do you go about it? You might say this is clearer than small kids playing on kids' playground equipment but is it? Plenty of paedophiles might target young people in very early teens.

If it is a public gathering of some kind and there are 100s of kids and adults watching or interacting with the likes of jugglers, Punch and Judy etc this makes it easier as it is obvious that the kids may be incidental or even crucial to the scene but the actual kids as individuals are incidental.So such events confer anonymity to the photographer but even here a lone adult male wandering around taking a series of shots may eventually attract attention.

It requires commonsense on all parties each of whom need to ask the question: Am I the photographer doing something or giving off bad vibes that might make parents, police have cause to be suspicious and if so what do I need to do to mitigate those suspicions. If I were to look down on the scene as a disinterested observer what would I think I am seeing?

Such commonsense and good judgement of such situations are not easily come by either on the part of all in charge of kids as parents, uncles, granddads etc nor often on the part of the photographers who know their rights but not how to judge how their presence appears to others. There just isn't an easy answer unfortunately

pentaxuser
 
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TheGreatGasMaskMan

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I don't know... this sounds exactly like the method a real creep would use to groom the parents and children.
 
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TheGreatGasMaskMan

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The first time I photographed this one factory, I had a police car drive by and do nothing. I know the officer saw me.
the second time (maybe a year and a half later), I got closer, was confronted by some employees, but they let me go.
this all makes perfect sense.
 
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TheGreatGasMaskMan

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here's the thing- I'm sure the pervs my age find their prey on the internet, before jumping into real life. this stuff never works the way people expect it to.
 
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TheGreatGasMaskMan

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My intentions had nothing to do with the kids, rather the juxtaposition of the silo above the modern playground, and the second one was more for color. But I need to keep reminding myself that people will not listen to me. I'll still post the stuff from the my backlogs, but I am officially done with playgrounds. I will not photograph any children unless they are family.
lesson learned.
hopefully, this thread helps me get out of my emotional flatline.
 

Ariston

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benjiboy said:
I avoid photographing children when out with my camera because the world has gone paedophile mad.
Click to expand...
It is not madness. I don't know how it is in the UK, but there is a large sex trafficking trade alive and well in the US. As someone above mentioned, why would a photographer in such a sensitive location ever wait for parents to approach him first? Go introduce yourself at the very, very least.
 

logan2z

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I had a similar experience a few years ago when I was taking candid photographs of people at an amusement park in California. Young kids were certainly not my primary subjects, but try and take a photo at a crowded amusement park without getting at least one child in the shot - it's nearly impossible. About an hour in, I was approached by park security and told that someone had complained that I took a photograph of their child. I explained to the security guard that I was just shooting pictures of the park in general, and not looking to take photos of children in particular. After a few rather uncomfortable minutes of discussion, during which he asked to inspect my camera (I refused), I left the park and haven't returned since. There were literally thousands of people at the park taking cell phone pictures, but somehow my 'real' camera attracted attention. So much for a Leica being 'invisible'

I look at old photos taken by people like Helen Levitt and other street photographers of that era and can't help lamenting the way the world has changed. You just couldn't do that sort of photography now without arousing suspicion. On that subject, I was recently watching an interview with Magnum Photographer Ian Berry and he addressed this exact subject. Apparently, a publisher asked him to re-shoot a modern version of his book 'The English' and he said "it's not worth the hassle". And this is a Magnum Photographer who has been jailed and shot at while photographing!

There's an interview with Bruce Davidson on YouTube in which he talked about photographing in the New York City subway system in the '70s for this book "Subway". He said that he carried a small portfolio of photographs with him so that if he was ever approached and questioned he could show his work and hopefully put people at ease with what he was doing. I may start doing that as well.
 

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I thought of doing the same exact thing, if approached and hassled show the hassler or the po-po the book or portfolio and say "see this is what it is" but at a certain point I realized someone who is going to make a stink or be a jerk doesn't really care about your photographs often times its a power trip.
 

Vaughn

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TheGreatGasMaskMan said:
here's the thing- I'm sure the pervs my age find their prey on the internet, before jumping into real life. this stuff never works the way people expect it to.
Click to expand...
Actually, the majority are relatives and friends...but as your statement indicates...molesters do "jump into real life" eventually. And a parent is not going to risk their child, and the possibility of living a life of crippling anguish and guilt, just to trust some guy without kids hanging around the playground. The fear is real, and any photographer foolish enough to pose a threat, imagined or otherwise, in that situation and ends up upside down in the nearest water feature has no cause to complain.

There is not a lot one can do about it. Sort of like driving in the Southwest on a Reservation that does not allow photography -- see something worthwhile, you just have to pass it up. It is a matter of respecting others.
 
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