I drove by a fire this morning at a local business near my house. It certainly was a scene, and it got me thinking...is it against the law for a person to take pictures of such an event? Of course, there are sensibilities of offending the person who is affected by the fire, and of course I would never interfere with fire/police's ability to do their job, but in a general sense, is this frowned upon and/or illegal at worst?
Generally, no, as long as you don't interfere. But local laws may vary. For example, here in Massachusetts, it's legal to take still or video images of anyone in public, but NOT legal to record audio of a person speaking without their consent. So if I shoot pics with my T1i, no problem, but if I use the movie mode I may be breaking the law, should anyone complain. I know this because of some recent news coverage of a person (a bystander) who was arrested for recording a video of police arresting someone else.
Originally Posted by Sean Setters
I carry a copy in each camera bag. It's great. []
Whenever and wherever possible, go for it. Fire scene shooting, IMHO, is fantastic "motor memory" training to force you to know how to use your camera intuitively and quickly. See if your local fire department has a website, and contact them to see if they'd like to enlist your services for their website and/or for training purposes. Being their photographer may help you cross boundaries that others must stay behind. (But be ready to show some of your work, so they aren't too afraid that you're an arsonist. I beat San Antonio FD to three of their runs, and I bet that raised some eyebrows.)
Do realize that you may be asked to move off private property, though in most cases you can continue to shoot private property while standing on public property. The only tighter restriction I ran into was at a government installation (Kelly Field aka Lackland AFB): the security contractor informed me that since it was government property, I could not photograph anything that was on the grounds of the complex, no matter where I was. I was hoping to catch a shot of the Space Shuttle being ferried from Edwards to Cape Canaveral; a quick scramble (while on the phone with someone who had Google maps handy) got me to a random quick-mart parking lot, and about 30 seconds to pull the camera out before the shot came and went.
I would normally use Photoshop to blur faces and license plates before submitting my pictures to the website I helped. I've also tried to be somewhat considerate of the firefighters - one time at a fairly juicy car wreck, the first-in truck couldn't get their hydraulic rescue tool hooked up, and the boys on the rescue unit had to show them how it's done. Within reason, my photo submissions didn't show the problematic HRT unit, so folks wouldn't ask too many questions. The patient's outcome wasn't affected (he/she was reasonably OK, but they'd crashed into one side of a gas station's main price sign, putting the driver door against the other side of it. they just had to open up the roof to get them out) so I don't feel like I made a material impact on "telling the story".
We're a Canon/Profoto family: five cameras, sixteen lenses, fifteen Profoto lights, too many modifiers.
I never even thought of the possibility of being a suspected arsonist. Great point. I also live near a set of heavily used railroad tracks and unfortunately from time to time, there are nasty train-car collisions there. Also makes for compelling photography.
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