Don’t Shoot off in Bellevue Park
12
There is this wonderful little park in Kensington Market called Bellevue Park. They have a decent playground, a wading pool and a crazy statue of the King of Kensington, Al Waxman. This was the location of my third session of “Portraits in the Park”. The session started off okay, despite the impending thunderstorm (which never did happen). Andrea was the first to show up, followed by Allan, Sean and his friend Heather, Carrie and Nadia. So I pretty much shot everyone without and hitch and a few of us stayed and hang out while we waited to see if anyone else would show up. In the meantime Carrie pulled out her camera, popped on her 300mm lens and started shooting things around the park. Needless to say the camera got the attention of some of the locals in the park and they started screaming across the park to not take pictures of her. After stating that she wasn’t taking pictures of them, they proceeded to close in on us, streaming at us and making a huge scene, saying it was illegal for us to be taking pictures in the park and they they would have the legal right to take our film or smash our cameras. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and eventually they left us alone unscathed after Nadia deleted two images on her camera, that showed “their crowd” in the blurry background.
I did get a little worried as they start accusing all of us, stating that they saw me taking pictures earlier. If they were really paying attention, they would have noticed that I was taking pictures of certain people, who I knew, who also signed model releases and not random riff raff like them.
Sean provided me with a link to this interesting article. Basically, we have a legal right to be able to shoot pictures of people in public, doing public things without getting their consent. But publishing this photos, consent may be required. In any case, we were infact doing nothing illegal. And if the woman decided to smash anyone of our cameras, she would be in the wrong.
Shortly after the incident, it started to spit, so we took that as a cue to leave. Carrie and Nadia joined me for drinks at the Emmbassy down the street, followed shortly by Stefan, who couldn’t find us in the park. But this isn’t where the story ends. Afterwards, there was still a bit of light, so I told Stefan that we should head back to the park to do his shots and finish off my roll. By this point the locals that verbally attacked us were gone. In any case we decided to go over to the far end of the park, by the Al Waxman statue. This is where we found this character [I totally understand Matt's title now]. So I quickly shot off my roll on Stefan and his Bike, and then we were gonna head down to a exhibit opening at Pikto, but before we left Carrie wanted to try and get pictures of the guy by the statue. Needless to say, Carrie’s 300mm didn’t go unnoticed and the guy came over screaming at her. It didn’t last as long as the first encounter, as we packed up and started to leave, but the guy still had time to put a death curse on Carrie.
So never again will I be shooting any pictures in that park and this is the reason why I don’t like shooting strangers in public.
The next session of Portraits in the Park is going to be at Ashbridges Bay Park tomorrow (Sunday. August 7th) I will be out there most of the afternoon for a Birthday party. Drop me a comment or an email if you wanna make it out to this one and I can give you my cellphone number so you can track me down. Otherwise, I’ll also be at Clarke Beach (aka Cherry Beach) on Thursday August 11th anytime after 6:30pm. There’s gonna be a Flickr meetup there, so you may wanna check that out.
PS: Nadia has a better account of the first encounter on her blog
UPDATE : I will near the sheltered picnic area by the children’s playground this afternoon in Ashbridges Bay Park. Probably between 2 and 6ish
YIKES !
Sorry to hear about the ‘rowdies’ tainting one of your visits to the park. Its good you folks kept a calm outlook, as yeah, you did nuthin’ wrong.
Hopefully your portraits will make you smile about it all.
Hi Rannie, thanks for linking! And thanks for the link to that article on public photography. While it’s a no-brainer that nobody has the “right” to take your camera and smash it, Canadian law is much less clear on the issue of public photography than US or UK law. There are handy PDFs online that summarize your legal rights in the US and the UK, but none for Canada (I’ve searched!). It’s good to know that the law pertains to publishing images, not taking them. I’ve always been happy to take down images of people if the subjects ask me to (so far this has never happened).
[...] ted on
Saturday 6 August 2005
Look! It’s my picture from Portraits in the Park. Rannie’s a GOOD photographer, because I felt [...]
Last weekend at the car-free day, I had a similar encounter with that man who, likewise, ranted death threats… apparently, in “his world” cameras are evil, as are shorts and earrings. He has been seen at the park on Queen/Jarvis where men play chess, and threatens people there as well… so beware!
As laid-back as it’s supposed to be, I’ve never felt comfortable shooting people in Kensington. There’s an attitude of hostile, bourgeoisie superiority that can pervade that whole place..suspicious of outsiders. I still love it there, but man…what you guys experienced is rough. That’s never happened to me before.
Since you mentioned the Meetup on the 11th, I’d thought I might do another plug here.
The ‘fo: http://www.flickr.com/groups/topic/59108/
All are welcome. The more the merrier.
Yikes! I’ve taken pictures in that park and never had a problem before… But I can see how it could be possible. I’ll be in the neighbourhood of Ashbridges Bay today, so I wouldn’t mind getting my picture taken!
Man they are territorial. Unfortunately, crazies don’t take well to having the finer points of law explained to them.
I agree with sinnick – the market has alot of volatile types who feel they own the cultural landscape. Look at the issue market-centric folks have/had with the arrival of the excellent “Freshmart” – a store that has enabled me and my family to shop locally without needing to use the car to get to the nearest megastore. I’ve lived in the market for over 8 years, and sometimes just shake my head at the outrageousness of peoples’ arguments.
I’ve had my 300mm lens out in parks when I go birding. Nothing but compliments for me.
The trick to “street” photography is to get them to smile at you and acknowledge that you’re taking their picture. This is concent.
If you haven’t gotten this concent then I can understand why they’d freak out. The extent to which these people took it is about overboard. It sounds like a lynch mob to me.
To settle the dispute you should have offered to call the police on behalf of the woman who wanted to smash your cameras.
Wow, I’m going down there This Week to shoot – You’ve just made the place magnetic for me.
[...] * Don’t Shoot off in Bellvue Park [a similar article from earlier this year] * The Photographer’s Right * You Can’t take Pictures Here! [a flickr group] * Photo Taking and the Law [a discussion on flickr central] * Assult on Photography Going from Bad to Worse [thread on the photoblogs.org] [...]