Security Person: "Why are you taking pictures?"

[kartiq]

I had just a similar experience in NYC, in Times Square in front of the NBC building. I was clicking snaps with my DSLR at around 9 in the night, as were a few hundred tourists at that time, a security chap approaches me and tells me that I should immediately stop clicking the NBC building due to security reasons. I pointed out the endless tourists standing all over and doing the same, he just shrugged and said he' doing what the manager has told him and he wants no trouble.

I guess it did'nt help having brown skin and a big Mtha*&%$* camera, but I stopped . Didnt have any such issues anywhere else in NYC so I consider it as an abberation, most people were fantastically nice.

[lautermilch]

If you want a real encounter, visit an airport.
http://www.pbase.com/lautermilch/spotters

Know the law. I get encounters all the time with people wanting me to stop and telling me I do not have permission to take their image. If it is in public and you are drawing attention to yourself on purpose, you are news worthy.

I'm a street photographer and know my rights and have pepper gas in the front pocket of my Lowepro bag. If someone makes a grab for me, I will post a new collection on Pbase of the effects of pepper spray.
http://www.pbase.com/lautermilch/root

[andersostberg]

Has happened to me a few times, but other than twice it has been OK to continue photographing after I've talked to the person and explain what I was doing. It helps to be polite and smile, no matter how silly the questions may be. I can take some stupidity as long as I get my pictures.

The two times I was asked to leave was inside shopping centers. I knew they have a ban on photography, and it is private property, but there was public art exhibitions inside the shopping center that I wanted to photograph. You'd think they would allow cameras on such a day but the rent-a-cop wouldn't have it. Scores of people around me were using P&S or mobile phone cameras, among them a big group of Japanese tourists (yeah, I know, confirming the stereotype ) and the rent-a-cop had no problems with them, only me and my big camera apparently. I had taken my pictures already so I didn't feel up to pressing the point, so I walked away and continued shooting the exhibition items in another part of the mall.

[clickaway]

Whilst there is sometimes a valid reason to enforce a 'no photography' rule, I think that those that create these rules are absolutely paranoid.

Let's put thing into context. In the late seventies, when the Cold War was on, I took many avaiation photographs, both airliners and military jets.

At one particular fighter jet base here in the UK, you could take photos of the fighters taxi-ing out to the runway from the adjacent road and the military just tolerated it, although it was technically forbidden to take photos.

At another base, a special car park has been built to enable photographers to shoot the planes as they land. This has continued to be in operation post 9/11.

So it seems that its OK to photograph our armed military jets, but not the chocolate shop in the shopping mall....