Author: Nicolai Grossman

NYCLU threatens to sue city over new photo policy

Nicolai Grossman 4 Comments

"A public Troy New York ice skating rink has decided that photography should not be allowed unless approved by their Executive Director. At least one parent says she’s being arbitrarily discriminated against and not being allowed to film her own kid at the public rink."

James V. Franco writes in the Troy Record:

Jean Hetman, who has a 13-year-old daughter who practices figure skating at the arena, said she has been video taping and photographing her daughter’s routines for about six years, but now she is being told she cannot, and even had the police called on her twice.

"I am more than willing to show my ID and go through whatever mechanism they want to use to determine who is a pedophile and who is not," she said "When it gets right down to it, I can take a photo of whoever I feel like taking a picture of. When you are in a public place you have no right of privacy."

The city maintains the new policy is to protect children from pedophiles.
Melanie Trimble, NYCLU [New York Civil Liberties Union] executive director, said the rink is a public place and Hetman is within her rights to photograph children skating. Furthermore, she said the policy, although unnecessary and probably illegal, is not being applied fairly because Recreation Director George Rogers twice denied Hetman permission while granting other parents permission to do the same thing…

Again: WTF??!? I’m no lawyer, but in the US, public place = right to photograph. As Ms. Hetman said, "When it gets right down to it, I can take a photo of whoever I feel like taking a picture of. When you are in a public place you have no right of privacy." End of story. Hetman is bending over backwards to meet on middle ground as it is: she’s willing to show identification to exercise a legal right! This bogus policy needs to end and Rogers needs to be fired immediately.

This is outrageous, whether you care about photography or not. You don’t get to go around just making up laws because you feel like it. As far as I’m concerned, this is actually worse than somebody arbitrarily declaring wearing-jeans-is-a-felony-Mondays because the courts have explicitly and repeatedly upheld the right to photograph in public places, whereas they haven’t, as far as I know, the right to wear jeans.

I’m curious about what happend when the police were called. Some random clown trying to legislate from the rink is bad enough, but it’s far worse if the police are actually enforcing it.

If you take photos in the US—yes, even you with the camera phone—have a look at attorney Bert P. Krages‘ downloadable flyer, The Photographer’s Right – Your Rights When You Are Stopped or Confronted for Photography. And don’t believe the hype: there’s nothing at all about photography in the original (HR3162, 2001) or reauthorized (HR3199, 2005) versions of the Patriot Act.

For the UK, get the downloadable UK Photographers Rights Guide; for Oz, grab NSW Photographer’s Rights. (If anyone knows of similar sheets for other countries, please let me know!)

Coverage:
Read article at troyrecord.com
Video of local WNYT news coverage (WMV)
Thomas Hawk’s commentary
Bill Pytlovany’s commentary

Via Digg

Photographer Jay Parkinson interviewed by Jörg Colberg

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Jörg Colberg interviews photographer Jay Parskinson about his Aspiring Models project:

But the project is also interesting from the purely photographic perspective. Doing photographic portraits is very tough – if you don’t believe it try it; and I somehow thought that shooting portraits of people who want to earn money from getting their portrait taken but who have not much actual experience adds another complication to the whole project, since both the photographer and the model have to worry about the photo.

I talked with Jay about these and other aspects of his work…

Read interview at Conscientious

Paul Butzi on silver vs inkjet BW printing

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Paul Butzi writes in The Online Photographer:

Different isn’t synonymous with bad. Instead of viewing every difference between silver-based photography and digital photography as weaknesses in the new technology, it’s far more productive as artists to pick up the new technology and ask ourselves, “Where can I go with this that I couldn’t go before?” The best path forward isn’t to refuse to pick up digital cameras until the results are exactly like those we get with film, and it isn’t to mindlessly adopt the new technology and forget the lessons of the past, either. The best path forward is to pick up the new technology, embrace its different strengths and weaknesses, and extend our hard won knowledge rather than discard it…

Someone talking sanely about silver vs. digital? Am I dreaming?

The sanity continues at The Online Photographer

Horseman LD bellows/movement system for DSLRs

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Horseman have just introduced their LD bellows system for Canon and Nikon digital SLRs.

"Whether you are using a Canon® or Nikon® digital single lens reflex, Horseman now gives you an opportunity to add full bellows functions—like in a medium or large format view camera. The Horseman LD comes in two models that accept Nikon or Canon DSLR bodies, maintaining all their normal functions. Up front, you can attach any standard medium or large format camera lens…"

This isn’t my ultimate fantasy ideal, which is movements controlled by a thumb pad on the back of the camera with one-touch zeroing of any plane, but still: HELL YEAH!

Coming soon are a conversion kit that will allow you to shoot 4×5 film and a slide adapter for pro digital backs.

It’s available now for about US $2,500.

Check it out at the Horseman product page or read the press release.

Via PhotographyBLOG

Unseen America worker self-documentary photo book

Nicolai Grossman 1 Comment

David Usborne writes in The Independent:

A group of low-paid people in the US—many of them illegal immigrants—were given cameras and photography classes and asked to capture their lives.

…

Due out in shops across the United States this week, Unseen America offers highly unusual and often poignant glimpses of the ordinary lives of low-salaried workers in the US, the majority of whom are immigrants and often without legal papers.

…

It began when Esther Cohen, the executive director, organised free photography classes for blue-collar workers across the country, many of whom had never taken a picture in their lives. Cameras, donated by supporters, were given to them and they were encouraged to capture images that represented their lives in America…

Read the article at The Independent

Order from Amazon.com or from Amazon UK.

Sitzer Records’ pinhole competition

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Wow, I’ve been set back to my childhood days…ever built a pinhole camera? Check out www.sitzer-records.de > lazy comet> video pinhole camera. This homemade low budget clip is great fun. I love it! there’s a competition going on, so dump your digital camera and get analogue again! plus pinhole camera is one of my favourite tracks right now. Makes springtime mornings (afternoons and nights) the best time of year!

Build your own camera and send us the pictures until 31st July (contact address on the homepage). The first 3 places will be winning a fantastic Lazy Comet package.

Read more at Sitzer Records (Deutsch)

Via Pinhole Visions

Combi-Plan 4×5 daylight tank still sucks donkeys

Nicolai Grossman 4 Comments

It turns out that when I reviewed the HP Combi-Plan T 4×5 daylight sheet film developing tank and called it a "dodgy, leaky piece of shit", I may have vastly under-stated my case.

It was nice today: the trees in a local apple orchard were flowering, it was warm but not hot, and the light was good. I loaded up some Velvia and FP4, grabbed my field camera, and spent half an hour waiting for a cloud to move out of the way of the sun.

It’s been a while since I shot B&W 4×5 and I forgot that I never actually ordered the rotary tube I was looking at to replace the Combi-Plan. Oh well. You know how sometimes you have a bad experience with something, time passes, and you start to think that it couldn’t really be as bad as you remember? The Combi-Plan can’t be that bad, can it?

It can. Now that I’ve given the tank another go, I think it’s still dodgy, it’s still leaky, and still a piece of shit, but that doesn’t really begin to cover it. This time, most of the sheets escaped their carrier channels and were floating around loose inside. One sheet had a few chunks of emulsion scratched out, which could be my sometimes questionable film holder loading skills, but my money’s on it floating around and scraping against sharp film carrier parts.

I’m frankly amazed that this thing is actually sold. If I hacked something this bad together, I wouldn’t even lend it to a friend, let alone attempt to charge money for it. Either the company who make this have never used it or they’ve got balls the size of the moon. This product needs to be melted, dunked in piss, and stabbed in the face with a fucking schoolbus.

UPDATE: The scratches are my fault. I forgot to affix the thing that holds the film in place to the top of the film carrier.