Audii-Dudii Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · My digital view camera lives again! (crosspost from Sony forum) | |
Gunzorro wrote:
Okay, let's have the story of "The Neighbor and the Police"!
Remember, you asked!
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Most of the photography I do these days is actually done late at night. Three years ago, I quit my paralegal job in order to take care of my elderly father after he fell and first broke one hip, then the other, as well as my disabled sister, who survived a ruptured brain aneurysm just over a decade ago.
He had been her caretaker, but after his hip fractures, he was no longer able to take care of himself, let alone her, so I had step in and take over. Because I am their sole caretaker, the only time I can leave the house is after they go to bed, and even then, I can't wander very far, because I might need to return home quickly if something should happen to either of them. (And because living on savings for the past three years means I'm on a very tight budget, this is why I built my own digital view camera instead of simply buying a Cambo Actus or Arca-Swiss Universalis. Plus I sometimes have time to kill during the day, so this was a good excuse for a project.)
So I walk around my neighborhood at night on foot, with my dog and camera, and photograph whatever scenes catch my eye. (The curious can see some sample photos at my photo-blog: https://audiidudii.aminus3.com/)
After I spent the last few weeks finishing up work on this phase of my project, I finally took my FrankenKamera IV out to do some real, honest-to-god photography, not just to take more test shots. But at the very first scene where I setup to take a photo, I quickly realized that I forgot to bring a memory card with me ... doh!
As I'm standing there, deciding whether to skip the photography and turn the outing into a dog walk instead, or go home, get a memory card, and carry on with it, a homeowner storms out of their house, gets all confrontational with me, threatens to the call the police, and when that doesn't cause me to budge, actually does call the police.
So now I have to wait around until the police arrive -- in two cars, of course! -- because I never want to give people the impression that I have anything to hide or was doing anything illegal by leaving a scene I was photographing after they've threatened to call the police, and it took nearly 30 minutes for the cops to arrive, because they didn't consider this a very high-priority call.
Then I had to wait another 20+ minutes while they talked with the homeowners, because now the man's wife is also involved, and explain to them that not only was I not doing anything illegal per any known federal, state, county, or city law, I'm also not a homeowner, so am not bound by their HOA's alleged rule that "prohibits the photography of houses in their subdivision without the homeowner's permission." <rolls eyes>
(And Yes, even the cops laughed politely at that assertion.)
According to the police officer who spoke with them at length, their primary concern was that their three young children were asleep inside their house and they were concerned about their safety. As such, it was absolutely unacceptable to them that someone could stand outside their house at night with a camera and photograph it without either their knowledge or permission.
Mind you, I wasn't setting up to photograph their house, but the house across the street. And as for their three young kids, they were inside their house and I wasn't, so I'm not exactly certain how they came to think that either me or my camera were potentially going to cause them any harm. He was also not amused when I pointed out the hypocrisy of his complaining about my photographing the house across the street when he had three security cameras mounted on the front his house and they were all pointed at it, too. Why, I asked him, is it okay for you to photograph that house 24 hours per day, seven days per week, but not okay for me to photograph it once with my one camera? Needless to say, he didn't have an answer for me, let alone a good one.
Fortunately, these cops were pretty cool, all in all, so at least they weren't hassling me too, which, unfortunately, has happened in the past with other cops.
On the positive side, at least based upon my composing and focusing an image and getting the camera setup to take a photo, even though I couldn't without a memory card, it appears the FrankenKamera IV was going to work very well indeed for me, so there is that. 8^)
On the other hand, I can't help but wonder if this situation would have blown up to the extent that it did, if I had been using the small, inconspicuous camera (Sony RX1) that I've used for most of the past two years, instead of this new, large, imposing one, with all its knobs and appendages, external 7" HDMI monitor, etc. This is one of the reasons why I decided to make my camera both smaller and lighter, and also less menacing-looking, too.
Lastly, I also wonder how he might have reacted had I been armed, as I sometimes am, because both open and concealed carry without a permit are legal in Arizona. Hmm...
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