Tag Archives: Photography

Message to Pittsburgh Police: We’re All With The Press

by Editor

The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania police have arrested a 41-year-old man for using Twitter to post messages about police movements during the recent protests surrounding the G20 Summit.  Also, FBI agents entered the man’s home in New York City and confiscated computer equipment.  The man is charged with directing others to avoid apprehension.  The police declared the entire protest in Pittsburgh illegal, giving themselves the apparent freedom to charge anyone who helps the protesters.  But anyone could have read the Twitter postings anywhere in the world.  It was a public announcement about what the police were doing in plain sight.  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has stated that if this were happening in Iran or China, it would be condemned as a human rights violation.  It most certainly is.

Police movements are public knowledge.  Posting to Twitter about the whereabouts of police during a protest is simply the publication of public information.  There is absolutely nothing illegal about it.  If I stand on a street corner with my cell phone and Twitter about the movements of police cars, I’d be doing exactly what this man was arrested for.  If those cars happened to be on their way to intercept a criminal, could the police come and arrest me for aiding that criminal?

The problem of police brutality and illegal actions against protesters is wildly out of control all over the nation.  In Los Angeles you have the police violently attacking a peaceful gathering of immigration protesters in MacArthur Park.  The riot police beat up television journalists and smashed their cameras.  Later, the department had to pay over fourteen million dollars to private citizens and has even more to pay to the journalists they attacked.  In Minneapolis the police burst into a home containing the organizers of a peaceful group planning protests for the Republican National Convention.  The police held the organizers at gunpoint, tied-up on the floor for hours, just to keep them away from the convention. These were young highly-educated people with attorneys present on scene being held at gunpoint by a police force with no other intention than to prevent the exercise of their right to free speech and public assembly.

Look at this video from the G20 protests in Pittsburgh.  Pay special attention during the arrest and assault on some protesters at the 5 minute and 12 second mark.  What do you see?  It’s a press photographer clearly wearing some sort of credential on his chest.  He saunters through the melee without concern.  He’s carrying a camera.  The cops ignore him because he’s got that press credential. Then at the 6 minute and 15 second mark you hear a cop arresting someone and he says: ‘You’re with the press?  Who are you with?’  Presumably, he’s going to let a member of the press go instead of arresting him.

I think this video is fascinating because it shows who the free press really is.  Look at what the protesters are doing. They are using cameras against the police. Everywhere you look someone is trying to point a camera at the police.  The press is the people with all the cameras pointed at the cops.  The credentialed press photographer is walking around with his credential.  He’s filming nothing at a moment when protesters are being abused, beaten with sticks, and pepper sprayed.  The press is the other people.  The ones with the cameras who are being chased and beaten.  That’s the press.  We are the press.  We film bovine imbeciles with sticks and helmets and we upload our movies to YouTube.  There’s always something to film when a cop’s got a stick in his hand.  Everywhere you turn someone with a camera is catching some jackass cop murdering or beating someone.  It’s a war.  Cameras against cops.  And the big one hasn’t hit yet.  It’s coming.  Something will snap and when it does it will be covered by the free press on the ground live in the struggle right up close in a cop’s face.

The fact of the matter is that most of these G20 protesters are highly educated literate people. They are vastly more intelligent than the cops. The cops actually know that. It irritates them and they are itching to beat people up.  It’s universal to all police forces.  When you get a crowd of these people in body armor with sticks and guns you have an extremely volatile situation on your hands.  The masks confine the cops’ breathing and vision, increasing anxiety and tension.  These cops don’t think well and they are far more dangerous than the crowds they are trying to control.  I’m all for sticking cameras in their faces.  And Twittering about their movements.  It’s legal.  It’s free speech and it’s protected.

And yessir, Mr. Pittsburgh cop, we’re with the press.

We’re All With The Press.

Philadelphia Thinks Photographers are Terrorists

by Editor

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania thinks people who take photos of its SEPTA trains might be terrorists.  CBS3 in Philadelphia prints what I can only interpret as a serious article about a cashier at a train station who reported two men taking pictures near the train lines as ‘suspicious.’ This cashier actually questioned one of the photographers about his activities while waiting for police to arrive.  The photographer understandably left the scene before the officers could arrive.  I would have too.

How do you take a suspicious photograph?  I’ve always harbored ambitions of taking some suspicious photos but I’ve never quite been able to figure out how.  Do you hold the camera behind your back and then flip it out real quick while pointing the other way and yelling, ‘Hey, look at that!  What is that over there?’  Do you take photos through holes cut out of your pants?

Or do you take photos while sporting a beard?  Or dark skin? Do you have to be male?  What makes a suspicious photographer?

Nothing does.

Look at this:  National Terror Alert posts about it in all seriousness.

I’ve never seen a photograph explode.  I’ve never seen a camera explode.  I suppose one could.  But most terrorists I’ve ever heard of use other things – like shoes.

Photographers actually make people safer.  Wherever you see people taking pictures you have more safety for obvious reasons.  Furthermore, U.S. intelligence agencies have made it very clear that there is no evidence that a terrorist has ever used photography as a means to prepare for an attack. I want photographers in my train stations.  At my bank too.  In the department store… wait, there are cameras in those places.  They’re hidden in the ceilings I think.  Suspicious.  Everywhere we go we are photographed for security reasons.  But as soon as one of us regular old folk take a camera out in a train station we are regarded as ‘suspicious.’

I declare the weekend of September 26 and 27 ‘Photograph a Philadelphia Train Station Weekend.’ Everyone should feel free to descend upon a SEPTA station and take some flattering photos of the helpful cashiers.

Here’s a blog written by a photographer who was arrested in Miami, Florida in 2007 for taking photos of police which is a totally legal act in all parts of the U.S.

The problem is that police across the United States are totally out of control when it comes to people utilizing their constitutional right to free speech.  After all, the taking of photographs is nothing more than the exercise of free speech which is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.  What’s really going on is that all these cameras everywhere, built into cell phones and hidden in sunglasses, are driving police crazy because they get caught doing illegal things.  Cops don’t like cameras.

When I lived in New York City I once pulled out my video camera and filmed a group of perhaps twenty cops who pulled up in front of a brownstone apartment building and ran inside.  One cop ran across the street toward me and screamed, ‘What are you filming?’

I said, ‘You!’

He said, ‘Well, anyone taking pictures when police come on a call is suspicious because sometimes people call us just to film us.’

I said, ‘Yeah, well you never know do you?’

He turned and went back to his job.  And I’ve still got that video.

Suspicious, isn’t it?

Panoramic Image of Milky Way Galaxy

by Editor

Two French photographers, Serge Brunier and Frédéric Tapissier, spent weeks in the desert highlands of Chile, and a week in the Canary Islands, taking photos of the stars. Using a Nikon D3 digital camera, they took thousands of photos of the night sky and then stitched the photos together to make a panoramic view of the Milky Way Galaxy as seen from Earth. The pictures are extremely high-resolution because the photographers took them from some of the darkest spots on Earth, giving unsurpassed clarity of view.

You can see an excellent interactive zoomable version of the image at photographer Serge Brunier’s web site.

You can also see a zoomable version of the image at Gigagalaxyzoom.

ApSci Makes Music Video from Still Photos

by Editor

Electro-hop husband and wife duo ApSci have made a music video for their upcoming album Best Crisis Ever consisting entirely of still photos with no post-production effects at all.  It’s a great idea and makes for an excellent little film.  I like the music too.  They shot the black and white photos that you see held up by a hand with an iPhone and then printed out all the shots in sequence.  Then they travelled around the world and took more still photos while holding each black and white photo up in the original sequence.  So you get the odd effect of two still photo animation tracks going on at the same time.  It’s very clever and very simple.  Of course, it makes no difference whatsoever that it was all shot with an iPhone.  It could have been any camera.