Quizzed by police when taking photos of the fair
SO ANOTHER year welcomes and bids farewell to Loughborough’s street Fair, our annual extravaganza of light, sound, candy floss, thrills and spills and going by social media, a chance for budding photographers to put their creative skills to the test.
But I do feel the need to air my frustration regarding attitudes to people who, in the quest of making artistic images, carry around a proper SLR camera and not just an Iphone or a compact affair.
I visited the fair on Saturday night with a fellow photographer in order to create some long exposure images of the rides, the usual kind of shots you see of a fair at night.
We did have a one or two members of the public ask if they could see our photographs, purely out of interest, for them to then compliment us on how clever they were. Even one of the young wardens employed to patrol the fair and maintain a level of security who obviously had a genuine interest in photography, asked us about the settings on our cameras and admired the pictures we had taken.
But then, we were approached by…yes… a police officer. When she asked directly what it was we were taking photographs of, I almost responded with sarcasm. The fair is in town. Hazard a guess!
As pleasant as she was, I told her what we were doing and that there was nothing untoward going on. She then said she wasn’t being funny but she had been made aware of us and had been asked to question us. Was this her get out, just in case we became slightly irate, I wonder?
My question is this. As a photographer for 30+ years, since when has carrying a DSLR camera in a public been cause to arouse suspicion? I’m not going to hark on about photographers having rights, but in a public place, within reason, we are legal- ly allowed to photograph whatever we choose. And just because there is an event happening in town, the laws do not change.
I could have even taken a photograph of the police officer, and technically there would not have been anything she could do about it. The officer then pointed out that our tripods could cause injury to others as we walked through the town. We both pointed out that they were folded shut and held close to us, so as to avoid injury whilst walking around. And also, as we were in town at around 6pm, that we were causing a lot less of an issue than parents with children in buggies and double buggies, trying to navigate a busy fair.
Countless people were taking photographs or selfies with their phone cameras and I guarantee nothing is ever said to them. Let’s have a bit of fairness and above all, common sense please.
Just because we have a keen interest, in real photography, and carry real cameras, stop making us feel like criminals!
Now I see that fellow photographers from my camera club have posted similar style images to mine on social media, and when I asked if they had been approached by the authorities, they said no. It just happens that the friend I was with on Saturday at the fair is a very athletically built dark skinned fellow. I seriously wonder if the colour of his skin had any bearing on us being stopped and questioned.
The authorities really do need to do some homework regarding photographer’s rights before reading us the riot act and telling us we can or cannot take photographs of.
End of rant. Ian Barsby Loughborough. WRITE TO: Letters, Loughborough Echo, Ark Business Centre, Office 7, Gordon Road, Loughborough, LE11 1JP. E-MAIL: andy.rush@trinitymirror.com