New York Street Photographer's Rights???

[Bryan Murray]

Today i was photographing (hand held) in Brooklyn on the sidewalk of prospect park. A park sanitation worker got some people to wave me down ( i was wearing headphones and ignoring his yelling) and he asked if i was the police or press. I told him i was an art photographer and he said ok and started to walk away. I asked him why and he said that he would have to fine if i was not an art photographer. That seemed really weird, paranoid and slightly threatening. I would like to see him fine a policeman

My question is does anybody really know what our rights are here in New York/Brooklyn as an art photographer whether you are in the street or parks?

I called the park service and they told me i would only need a permit if it was for business, like a photo shoot. They told me a tripod was ok too. I'm guessing the guy was just a werido but it makes you question what's up.
thanks,
Bryan

 

[MikeSeb]

Guy was, like most people, ignorant. And anyway, unless he has some kind of arrest power, you are free to tell him to f**k off until, and if, he summons police. I give "polite" one chance, then I escalate to aggressive verbal defense of my rights to photograph in public. I'm pretty tired of getting harassed by the terminally stupid, so maybe my normal veneer of civility is getting a bit worn....

Ignore him and others like him, and go about your business. If someone gives you sh*t, tell them to call the cops while you go about your work. If they harass or intimidate, or try to take your film or camera, definitely call the cops and file assault or harassment charges.

Granted, the cops' presence is no guarantee that things will be fixed---since some of them don't seem to know the law, either---but you have a better chance of encountering a cop who knows the law than finding the same level of understanding among the general public, most of whom think they actually have privacy rights when they're out in public.

I had a woman once upbraid me for (supposedly) photographing her kid. I hadn't even noticed the little crumb-snatcher, and if he was in the frame at all, it was incidental. She got rude rather quickly after I politely informed her of these facts, and I further schooled her on privacy rights and their lack for anyone, of any age, in public. She tried to argue with me about it, so I just walked away. At that point, I put a page on my website about privacy, so that when I'm accosted I can simply hand the fool my business card and refer him/her to my website for enlightenment.

I really think we need to be less timid about asserting our rights, lest they be lost completely. As I said, I always give "polite" a chance, but I won't suffer patiently an ignorant and/or aggressive interlocutor.

 

[2F/2F]

Today i was photographing (hand held) in Brooklyn on the sidewalk of prospect park. A park sanitation worker got some people to wave me down ( i was wearing headphones and ignoring his yelling) and he asked if i was the police or press. I told him i was an art photographer and he said ok and started to walk away. I asked him why and he said that he would have to fine if i was not an art photographer. That seemed really weird, paranoid and slightly threatening. I would like to see him fine a policeman

My question is does anybody really know what our rights are here in New York/Brooklyn as an art photographer whether you are in the street or parks?

I called the park service and they told me i would only need a permit if it was for business, like a photo shoot. They told me a tripod was ok too. I'm guessing the guy was just a werido but it makes you question what's up.
thanks,
Bryan

All he did is find out if you were shooting commercially, which would require a permit. Big deal. He's ignorant for even thinking that you might be doing so when you are out photographing by yourself with a hand held camera, but he did not attempt to restrict your Constitutional liberties. I am sure they have problems with bootleg commercial shoots all over the place, and that he has been informed of this by a superior.

 

[Bryan Murray]

All he did is find out if you were shooting commercially, which would require a permit. Big deal. He's an idiot for even thinking that you might be doing so alone with a hand held camera, but he did not attempt to restrict your Constitutional liberties. I am sure they have problems with bootleg commercial shoots all over the place, and that he has been informed of this by a superior.

i guess my question would be where does the park start? i was standing on the sidewalk outside the park.

 

[2F/2F]

i guess my question would be where does the park start? i was standing on the sidewalk outside the park.

The park is public property just as much as is the sidewalk adjacent to it, so whether or not it was in the park does not matter. You simply need a permit from the city to do a commercial shoot on any public property within their jurisdiction, and the guy working in the park is simply the city employee who happened to see you. His only "crime" in what he did was being ignorant of the specifics of photography...as most people are! Even then, he was humble enough to believe you when you gave your answers, and the most you had to suffer was a few questions. Believe me, I am all about knowing and enforcing ones civil liberties, but, while ignorant of photography, the guy was just doing his job, and he did not do you any harm. He was just making sure that you were not financially exploiting the city (the public).

 

[samcomet]

Have a look here and see if any of these help you:

USA

Attorney Bert P. Krages II is the man to consult here. Both his PDF summary "The Photographer's Right" (2003), along with his book "The Legal Handbook for Photographers" (2002), cover every possible aspect of photographer's rights in the USA. A slightly more recent (Dec 2005) "Legal Rights of Photographers" summary is also available by USAToday.com columnist Andrew Kantor. Ditto the National Press Photographers Association "Memo on Photographer's Rights in Public Places" (summary and PDF download, Aug 2005).

For a more whimsical overview, see this "Land of the Free" column by Mike Johnston. If you are specifically interested in how to respond to Police questions when taking photos in public, see the "Should Photography be Illegal" article by Jim McGee. Want to know about state-by-state Privacy Invasion standards? — see the "Photographer's Guide to Privacy" by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Finally, for up-to-date news and discussion on USA photo rights, see <photopermit.org>.

In July 2005 photo-consent became a hot issue in the USA, when Philip-Lorca diCorcia was sued for $1.6 million by Erno Nussenzweig, for taking his portrait without permission in Times Square in 2001. As you can imagine this caused a lot hand-wringing by photographers worldwide. Luckily in February 2006 Nussenzweig lost.

The above came from:
http://4020.net/words/photorights.php#oseas

the links are on the website if they do not work as a copy paste here...
cheers,
sam

 

[fschifano]

Hey Bryan, it's fuckin' Brooklyn, ok? Come on. This is the borough where, up until the friggin' hipsters started takin' over the place, the weak are killed and eaten. This guy was sizing you up. Seein' if you were prey or predator.

 

[Bryan Murray]

Hey Bryan, it's fuckin' Brooklyn, ok? Come on. This is the borough where, up until the friggin' hipsters started takin' over the place, the weak are killed and eaten. This guy was sizing you up. Seein' if you were prey or predator.

that's funny

 

[fschifano]

There's more truth to that than you'd think.

 

[Bryan Murray]

There's more truth to that than you'd think.

the really funny thing is that after i talked to the guy i actually did eat him.

 

[John Koehrer]

Big deal. He's ignorant for even thinking that you might be doing so when you are out photographing by yourself with a hand held camera, but he did not attempt to restrict your Constitutional liberties. I am sure they have problems with bootleg commercial shoots all over the place, and that he has been informed of this by a superior.

By yourself without a tripod=amateur?
Gibson,Eggleston,Salgado,Frank=amateur? Care to ad to the list anyone?

 

[lxdude]

the really funny thing is that after i talked to the guy i actually did eat him.

You know, "Eat me!" is normally just a figure of speech.

 

[Steve Smith]

And anyway, unless he has some kind of arrest power, you are free to tell him to f**k off until, and if, he summons police.

Do the general public not have powers of arrest in the US? In the UK we can make a citizen's arrest. This allows us to take that person to a police station (or a magistrate).

However, photographing in a public park if a restriction is in place is not a serious enough crime for a citizen's arrest.



Steve.

 

[2F/2F]

By yourself without a tripod=amateur?
Gibson,Eggleston,Salgado,Frank=amateur? Care to ad to the list anyone?

Oh please, John. Give me a break and read what I actually wrote! Where did I say amateur or professional? I did not! The differentiation I made was commercial versus personal or fine art. And where did I say that the alone with a tripod thingy was the case in truth? What I said was that being alone without a tripod makes one seem/look non commercial.

So, if you want to argue with what I actually said, give us a list of famous photographers who do commercial work in public without permits, hand held, and alone...and even then, all I said was what it looks like, not what it is.

 

[lxdude]

Steve, regarding citizen's arrest-

It's the same here. A citizen's arrest is OK for a criminal act like say, purse snatching, but not for infractions like violating an ordinance. A citizen cannot arrest for something a cop wouldn't. The only way a cop would arrest someone for shooting without a permit would be if a permit could not be produced and they continued against the cop's order to stop. The arrestable violation would be refusing to stop after being ordered to. The order, to be lawful, would have to be based on clear violation of the ordinance, e.g., number of people, amount of equipment, etc.

 

[hairygit]

All sounds like a script from police academy to me! A mate of mine who moved to the U.s. about 10 years ago told me he was rebuildind his old honda 750 motorcycle, and when he went into a motorcycle store to try and buy a chain and sprocket set with different gearing for better acceleration, he was reported to the F.B.I for attempting to order such contraband ( coz m/cycle emissions are measured per mile???) Land of the free all right? I know I've gone off the thread a bit here, but it does seem very petty that things are like that over there!!!!:confused::confused:

 

[Shawn Rahman]

There has been much made in the NY press lately about casual street photographers being falsely arrested because of some power hungry cops not knowing their own department's guidelines about photography. I now carry around this, just in case:

http://www.nycphotorights.com/2009/05/nypd-directive-on-photography/

 

[hairygit]

Maybe I'm out of order saying this, but sounds rather like communist Russia in the bad old days,maybe someone over there shoulds point this out to the petty lawmakers over there.We here in th U.K. have laws thrust upon us from brussels, and Tony Blair saw fit to sign away our rights to challenge laws they make which we don't like, or are not in our nations interest (the reason we have to protect hate preachers like Abu Hamza, and keep them at our expense, because deporting him back to Yemen where a death sentence for terrorism awaits him) because it would infringe his rights under the eu human rights charter! :confused: Permits for photography are just another tax! Very surprised our government hasn't cottoned onto that one yet! Everybody must fight for the right to photgraph freely in public places, it's an important record of social history, which we all owe to future generations!

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

In New York city, you don't need a permit to shoot with a tripod on city sidewalks and property generally, even for commercial use, unless the shoot involves five or more people or you want to do things like run lighting cables that could create a hazard, or you're doing something obviously hazardous like setting up in a very crowded area.

If you want to use a tripod in Grand Central Terminal, you can do so outside of rush hours, if you get a permit from the Station Master.

If you're in Central Park, you usually won't be asked for a permit unless you're shooting a major production that involves generator trucks, catering, and such, or maybe if you're part of a workshop where there are ten people with large format cameras blocking a road (done that--but even then, as long as we weren't blocking traffic, we were okay). Central Park is a popular location for bird photographers with tripods and big lenses, wedding photographers, small-scale film makers, and fashion shoots, most of whom don't have permits.

In other parks and particularly NY State parks in the city there are restrictions about commercial use. Note that city permits don't apply in state parks. In most such cases a ranger will ask you if you are doing a commercial shoot, and if not, they'll let you continue without a permit. This is typical in parks along the waterways in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and that may have been at issue in the original poster's case, though I'd think that Prospect Park would be more or less like Central Park in this regard. Maybe Bruce Osgood will chime in here, since I know he shoots in Prospect Park a fair bit.

 

[fschifano]

All sounds like a script from police academy to me! A mate of mine who moved to the U.s. about 10 years ago told me he was rebuildind his old honda 750 motorcycle, and when he went into a motorcycle store to try and buy a chain and sprocket set with different gearing for better acceleration, he was reported to the F.B.I for attempting to order such contraband ( coz m/cycle emissions are measured per mile???) Land of the free all right? I know I've gone off the thread a bit here, but it does seem very petty that things are like that over there!!!!:confused::confused:

That is such bullshit!

 

[bobwysiwyg]

That is such bullshit!

+1

About 5 years ago I restored my own 750, now 40 years old, after sitting in the garage for 20 years. Many parts are still available from Honda and no FBI, NSA, black SUV's at the door, or whatever interference. They just happily accepted my $$.

 

[Akki14]

+1

About 5 years ago I restored my own 750, now 40 years old, after sitting in the garage for 20 years. Many parts are still available from Honda and no FBI, NSA, black SUV's at the door, or whatever interference. They just happily accepted my $$.

Now you know not to read his other reply either... Riddled with inaccurate "facts"...

 

[John Koehrer]

+1

About 5 years ago I restored my own 750, now 40 years old, after sitting in the garage for 20 years. Many parts are still available from Honda and no FBI, NSA, black SUV's at the door, or whatever interference. They just happily accepted my $$.

You forgot the stealth helicopters.

 

[John Koehrer]

Oh please, John. Give me a break and read what I actually wrote! Where did I say amateur or professional? I did not! The differentiation I made was commercial versus personal or fine art. And where did I say that the alone with a tripod thingy was the case in truth? What I said was that being alone without a tripod makes one seem/look non commercial.

So, if you want to argue with what I actually said, give us a list of famous photographers who do commercial work in public without permits, hand held, and alone...and even then, all I said was what it looks like, not what it is.

Most people would equate commercial with professional. Not you.
While we're on the subject of comprehension and reading you might check your other replies. Nowhere do you say anything "looks" like an amateur or professional.
If you expect understanding, you should learn to write in a clear and understandable manner. Don't expect people to guess what you mean.
FYVM

 

[Bruce Osgood]

Only once in Prospect Park in the last three years I was asked by a Ranger if I was shooting (4x5) commercially. I told him I wasn't, but I wish I was, and that was the end of it.