has become some kind of a crime.
I was out on the beach yesterday, while waiting for my laundry to dry, being fascinated by the intricate shapes carved in the exposed rocks by the action of the tides.
Quite naturally, as will be the case on a populated beach, some of the other beachgoers, including some kids, who by their nature are curious about everything, took an interest in what I was doing with my camera.
Being a personable sort, I struck up conversations with such passersby.
I neither touched nor photographed any of them. That would be both rude, and unprofessional. I don’t photograph people without their consent.
There are only two exceptions I ever make to this rule:
- I’m making a wide-angle or panoramic view, impossible to get without any people in it, and they are then rendered so small in the frame, and/or from such an angle that they are completley unrecognizable.
- I’m documenting a public event.
Even then, I make every effort humanly possible to gain peoples’ permission before including them in a photograph. I’m an artist, not a papparazzo.
To those who seemed interested in my work, or in seeing the photographs I was making, I handed my card. (That, in and of itself, is apparently a crime on the beach. It’s considered “solicitation”, even though I didn’t say to anyone “I have something to sell you, come and buy it from me”.)
After about an hour making photographs on the beach, the battery in my nifty little digital camera died (it didn’t have a full charge on it, I just grabbed it on a whim for something to do while my laundry dried).
At that moment, I was engaged in a friendly conversation with a very nice gentleman who was on the beach with his son that day, collecting little crabs and snails at low tide. Being a relative newcomer to the coast, I was fascinated by his tales of having grown up here, and coming to the beach nearly every day. At the close of this conversation, I was about to leave to go fold my laundry, because it’s time in the drier would have been nearly up.
It was at this point that I was accosted by a very unfriendly young man from the Beach Patrol, who accused me of taking pictures of people’s kids on the beach, demanded to see my camera, and then demanded that I leave the beach. His demeanor and tone of voice carried the implication that I was being some kind of pervert.
I informed him that, as an agent of the state, if he wanted to search my property, he would have to show me a warrant. Even had I been inclined to show him the photographs I’d made that day (which I would have been, had he not been such a jerk from the get-go), I couldn’t have, because the battery was dead.
To the young man of the Beach Patrol (you never even gave me your name), as you grow older, and hopefully wiser, please remember that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
To whomever I offended with my presence on the beach with my camera, next time please tell me that what I’m doing is disturbing you, so that I can stop doing it in your presence. There’s very rarely any need to sic any third party gestapo bulldogs on other people, if you simply take a moment to communicate with them.
If I offended you by offering you my card, I apologize. It was not my intent to offend, I was simply trying to be friendly.
