You are right that legally I had no obligation, but once she called them, I DID have to stay, just to make sure they got my end of the story and not only her lie-filled version. Also, it was outside a local grocery store where I do almost all of my shopping and am known to several of the employees, and a manager with whom I have had several conversations was called out to deal with the situation. He hadn't spent 2 minutes thinking something like this might ever come up and seemed to take my lead when I explained to her that no, they can't take my camera nor my film, and since there were no signs forbidding photography (a legal requirement for kicking a photographer off a business property in CO) I couldn't be sited for trespassing unless I did not leave if they asked me to. It is rather ironic that when things like this happen it is often right under the watchful eye of the store's security cameras and people never take issue with them.
Edit to add: Sticking around is something else I learned from the audit videos. In this case it may not have been so important because I was a known local being confronted by a stranger - she didn't even know what store she was at - but they are almost always the out-of-towners being confronted by locals, and the police are vested in their community. They always stay until after the police leave, or until it looks like they never will come. It shows they aren't intimidated, affords more control over the situation, and does usually forces the police to straighten out the confronter's understanding of the law.
Look at the bright side…you aren’t her husband!
He never thanked me for it but it seems a lot of people here got similar responses. What's with people?
I'll start, a car pulled up when I was walking down the sidewalk with medium format gear in a rough neighborhood. A young guy got out, appeared to be a pimp, mentioned being interested in having "photos taken of his girls", there was a scantily clad and dolled up young woman in the passenger seat. I told him I'm not a professional and just shot for fun.
Surely many people here have been out taking photos long enough to have odd stuff occur, what are your experiences?
To contrast these experiences, when we visited Rome some 8 years ago, we hit upon a fellow who was setting up a wooden box camera with a bucket to the side. I had just gotten into large format photography, so naturally, I was curious and struck up a chat with him. Of course, I also asked him to do a portrait of the both of us; after all, we were tourists and this was clearly how he made some money on the side. Turned out he was doing paper negatives, developing them inside the camera which doubled as a dark box. He would then mount the negative in front of the taking lens, photograph it again and thus invert it into a positive.
Several years ago I was hiking on a rustic trail which happens to border a shooting range. I had my Bronica mounted on a tripod and slung over my shoulder as I explored. As I approached a clearing I noticed a State Park pickup truck in the middle of the field and could see the lens glare of a pair of binoculars watching me. My guess is that someone saw me with what they must have imagined was a 50. cal. Barrett slung over my shoulder. After a few minutes the truck left and I was vindicated to continue my "safe" shooting.
Once I was out shooting 4x5. I had a spot meter in a belt holster. Someone asked me if I was a security guard. I thought it was odd, then realized he thought I had a pistol on my hip.
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