I just saw on Fox News that the Los Angeles police dept. was classifying taking pictures of bridges a terrorist act and you will be detained and reported to homeland (Motherland) security. LAPD is introducing some new dept. that is tied directly to the Motherland security department.

I would love to grab all my gear and a news crew and go take a picture of a bridge. I just don't want to be on the news all week. I don't know about you but I'm not feeling any safer after hearing this.

Five years ago I was taking pictures of the full moon rising through some bridge suspension cables and I was stopped and detained for over 4 hours while the police harassed the hell out of me.

I know what you mean. I went to the Federal Bldg. in March to pick up some tax forms. Had to put everything through the x-ray machine. The young guard asked me whether my purse had a knife in it. (Now, I am a 68-year-old caucasian great-grandma!) I told her "I think there might be a little pin-knife in there. She promptly emptied everything out on a table and scratched through every single thing while glaring at me. Then she said, "There's no knife in here! Where's the knife!??"
I picked up the little 2" pin knife and showed it to her, all folded up. Mostly it's one of the tiny Swiss jobs I keep because it has some scissors and a nail file.
She threatened me and said I could go to jail for lieing like that and making threats. Interestingly, all the time I was waiting for her to harrass me, many other more "profile-fitting" people walked right through without her even looking their way!
Yep! I feel a whole lot more safe after that episode!

They make that sort of news public so as to contribute to the illusionary veil that is security. Without such announcements, these "efforts" would go unnoticed and therefore be for naught.

can you give us a link or something. i can't find anything about it.

i live in LA and this is the last thing i'm concerned with..."bridge photography".

what i am concerned about are the local politicians: antonio villa-bendejo, rock-hard delgadildo, all of city council. them and the illegals, too.

so when is it going to be illegal to take pictures of the Golden Gate bridge or the bay bridge...seriously other than that San Pedro bridge...is there a picture worthy bridge in LA?

Sunny Sra wrote:
so when is it going to be illegal to take pictures of the Golden Gate bridge or the bay bridge...seriously other than that San Pedro bridge...is there a picture worthy bridge in LA?

So far, this is an unconfirmed rumor. Searching Fox News national and Fox 11 in LA yields no report to substantiate this allegation.

Not obvious on the L.A.P.D. site either - although they do have a discussion of surveillance charateristcs form the feds.

The L.A area is full of bridges. They've just (well, January) designated a number of bridges as Cultural-Historic Landmarks, had a tour day, etc. Pasadena - Colorado St, and other Arroyo Seco bridges, other L.A.-Long Beach harbor bridges (going to be available for close up visiting and pictures during the free harbor boat tours later this month (check the L.A harbor dept. site)

http://www.portoflosangeles.org/

And the freeways and the mountain roads have quite a few as well. Many of them older concrete arch bridges, several have been prominent in movies and TV productions.

Sunny Sra wrote:
so when is it going to be illegal to take pictures of the Golden Gate bridge or the bay bridge...seriously other than that San Pedro bridge...is there a picture worthy bridge in LA?
My thoughts exactly.

I honestly cannot think of any bridges around me that I have any desire to photograph. All generic concrete monsters. Yawn.

Call the P.D. before and give them the heads up you are going out. They may hassle you over the phone but is sure beats 4 hours in the field.

Madmax:
You should have consulted an attorney do to unlawful arrest. There are no laws against photographing bridgers, buildings or anything. None have been passed post 9-11-01.
As long as law enfrorecemen think we don;t know the law they will continue to make illegal arrests and unlawful detainmnents.
As photographers we need to be knowledgeable about laws pertaining to photography. An outstanding palce to do this is a WWW.photoattorney.com. Carolyn Wright is both a profeesional photographer and an attorney who specializes in photography law. Everyone should visit her site often to help stay informed on current and changing law. She covers all aspects of photography law and lectures on the subject as well

Perhaps not as comprehensive and probably old news to the pros but some info that I found useful for UK photographers:

http://www.sirimo.co.uk/ukpr.php