Protect Your Content - Stream It Live!
July 8, 2008
After the UK Home Secretary’s recent statement green-lighting the harassment of photographers in public places, could it already be too late for us to reverse the attitudes of certain members of the law enforcement agencies and the general public?
At the bottom of this post are a few links to tales of photographic woe and more cases of people’s civil liberties being ignored as more often we are told “No Photos!”.
Should we continue to raise awareness with blogging, protesting and flash mobs?
Maybe we can do what this guy is doing..
Personally I think all of the above but also.. Prepare yourself for the worst. If the situation does start getting more and more difficult for photographers and video makers in public places, then at the very least I want to protect my media.
It used to be that I carried a crappy 16 meg memory card in my back pocket, just in case some over jealous policeman in a far off land tried to confiscate my data.
Now with some of the new technologies at our disposal we can safely stream our content either back to our laptops or straight to the web as we continue shooting.
I am not talking about the Pro range of Wifi kit available to sports photographers using top of the range Nikon and Canon cameras. I am talking about off the shelf consumer software and hardware like Qik.com for mobile streaming and the Eye-Fi card for rapid transmission of stills from almost any compact camera.
If these two methods of shifting data from your camera to the web are just the beginning, we are in for some exciting times.
I for one will continue to put both systems through their paces and do so while actively shooting footage and taking stills in any public place i find myself in.
If we don’t exercise our civil liberties, they will atrophy.
http://photorights.org/blog/42-days-and-hand-over-your-flash-card
http://maximumsorrow.com/writing/whyineverprintmyphotos.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/nyregion/29camera.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://trinyprada.wordpress.com
Big thanks to Photo Mart for lending me the Eye Fi to test.
..and something a little different.. Strictly no photography.
A moment with Tony Benn
June 26, 2008
Today whilst passing through London and before descending into the tube, I just happened to pop outside Euston train station and spotted Tony Benn sat on a bench lighting his pipe.
I was on the way down to Southampton to pick up a car and although I have no idea what made me pop outside the station after getting off the train, I am glad i did.
I was not going pass up the opportunity to chat with a lifelong hero of mine so I wondered over and introduced myself.
We had a brief discussion about the National Union of Journalists before I suddenly remembered I had in my bag a pro stills camera, a web enabled mobile phone and a mini video camera.
Although Tony Benn only had about five minutes to catch his train to Preston he was kind enough to humour me as I conducted a short interview on video.. I then took a few stills and showed him how easy it was using Qik to stream from a mobile phone.
Tony is no stranger to being interviewed or filmed as he spends much of his life on the lecture circuit in the public eye. It was the quick demo of the technology around live streaming from a mobile device straight to the web that seemed to interest him the most.
In about three minutes we were done and a slightly amazed Tony Benn took my card and invited me to get in touch so I could introduce him to more of this technology.
It was a really great start to the day for me. Totally unexpected and I was glad I had my ‘geek’ bag at the ready.
I have been a fan of Tony Benn and his work for a while now and am so glad to have finally met him. Not only that, but as a great bonus I now have his home number and hope to do a more in depth interview in the future.
Here is the same video on YouTube
..and my thoughts on Qik straight afterwards.
Do I look like a terrorist?
June 4, 2008
On more than one occasion, while out and about taking photographs, (mainly in London) I’ve been stopped for having a camera round my neck and looking like I might be about to take a picture.
Yup, that’s all it seems to take now-a-days to raise the suspicions of some underpaid private security guard. Just be out and about minding your own photographic business, perhaps dangerously close to the threshold of some crappy shopping centre and as quick as it takes for a CCTV camera to rotate.. There they are, trying to enforce some imaginary law.
Normally I flash my press pass and tell them I know my rights. Sometimes I am feeling a little more confrontational and ask exactly what law it is they think they are enforcing? On one occasion a confused security guard told me it was one of the prevention of terrorism laws. The conversation then swung round to me asking.. “Do I look like a terrorist??
(Don’t answer that.)
I am not sure when all this started.. Perhaps it was just after 9/11 when everyones hightened level of paranoia needed to be justified by inventing some extra imaginary threats.
Most of the time, the least that happens is I’m looked at in a “I am watching you” kind of way. This is with a Mediterranean complexion, who knows what would happen if i wanted to go out with a camera and I was slightly darker skinned!
You may well have seen them yourselves, but once in a while I pass by a shop window and catch sight of those scarily Orwellian anti-terrorism posters asking YOU to be vigilant and to keep an eye out for people who use more than one mobile phone, or people who travel alot.. or who take photographs in a public place.
This kind of fear-mongering really pisses me off and in the past I have gone into the shop and asked if I could have the poster. Part of me could not believe the ridiculousness of it all and seemed to be wanting to gather these posters as evidence of crimes against common sense. Are the general public really so small minded as to report one another for doing normal everyday things?
Probably.
Anyway it seems like I needn’t have bothered collecting these posters as most seem to be available
I was slightly comforted today to read this article in the Guardian Newspaper. Bruce Schneier states that the Police’s ‘War On Photography’ is daft as.. in his words.. “..real terrorists, and even wannabe terrorists, don’t seem to photograph anything.”
With that reassurance in mind, read the article to learn that perhaps ‘movie plot‘ threats are being concocted to have some kind of psychological grip on our already fear laden minds. We really must make a point of fighting for our photographic rights..
If you are out and about with your camera, be it video or stills, stick a printout of your rights in your bag and make a stand, just in case.
This topic and others relating to our rights and what denotes a public space in todays day and age will be discussed at the social media picnic on the 25th of June.
Episode 42 - Life In The Shadows
April 7, 2008
Sorry for the delay in getting this into my podcast feed. I had some strange issues with the way i had encoded it and it took a little bit of time to get the file just right so as it would show up in my feed.
I am guessing many of you have already seen this. To you guys I say once again, thank you for your support and also for passing this on to others..
To those that haven’t, and I know there are many who download the podcast that never visit any of my sites, here is a brief outline..
The fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War has just passed, and there is speculation that the engagement may continue yet another five years, if not more. To date, approximately 4,000 American soldiers have been killed in combat.
While the loss of combat troops is certainly tragic, even more stunning is a recent World Health Organization report based on Iraqi Health Ministry figures which estimates that 151,000 Iraqi civilians were killed between March 2003, the start of the invasion, and June 2006.
Many of the reports of civilian deaths are disputed. What cannot be argued, however, is another grave consequence of the Iraq War: the displacement crisis as a mass exodus of Iraqis flee the instabilities and ever-increasing sectarian violence at home, tearing their families apart.
In mid-January 2008, with the support of the United Nations High Commission For Refugees (UNHCR), I traveled to Amman, Jordan to photograph and record a few of these families trapped in a no-man’s land; asylum seekers looking for refuge, too afraid to return to their blood-soaked country.
Here are a few of their stories:
The film can also be viewed as a .wmv file here.. http://www.unhcr.org/video/iraqi-refugees-in-jordan.wmv
…and downloaded as a real media file here.. http://www.unhcr.org/video/iraqi-refugees-in-jordan.rm
For more information please check out.. The UNHCR Multimedia pages
To download this film to your ipod or mobile device please subscribe to the podcast at The Documentally Podcast Feed
Money for nothing or your pix for free.
April 3, 2008
I love music photography. It’s just not that easy to make a living from it unless you work for an agency or a glossy mag.
I have two rates normally, one for mates and unsigned bands (unless i am doing a trade for trade kind of deal) and then a more corporate rate for the big guns.
This may sound weird but musicians are always skint.. and i love the work, so it seems only right that if i can be flexible and it helps a band out on their way up.. then so be it.
You never know, they may just remember me for it too.
It’s only recently i have started to put my photos up on Flickr. This has been a help and a hinderance as i am inundated with people asking for copies of my photos for one reason or another. This would not be so bad if they were paying clients. But they are not. Everyone seems to think if you have pix on flickr you are a hobby snapper and that you would be more than happy with a little flattery and perhaps a link on some site as payment.
They don’t see the week spent in the mud, or the top spec camera broken through some fan throwing a beer, or the temporary loss of hearing, or he cost of a ticket (even with a photo pass at places like Glastonbury).
Yes music photography is fun and i really enjoy the adventure leading up to grabbing a selection of shots of a band that i either like or maybe even love. But it would still be nice to get some kind of financial payback without churning out one of the thousands of yearly books or calenders that flood our bargain book shops.
Right that said. I am just about to upload a few pix of Lisa Hannigan (of Damien Rice fame) as some guy on a island somwhere has a music agency and would really really like to have one of my pictures on my wall.
Take a peek at my flickr music section by clicking HERE
I think i will ask for a donation.. 
Iraqi Refugees: Life in the Shadows
March 17, 2008
The fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War is upon us, and there is speculation that the engagement may continue yet another five years, if not more. To date, approximately 4,000 American soldiers have been killed in combat.
While the loss of combat troops is certainly tragic, even more stunning is a recent World Health Organization report based on Iraqi Health Ministry figures which estimates that 151,000 Iraqi civilians were killed between March 2003, the start of the invasion, and June 2006.
Many of the reports of civilian deaths are disputed. What cannot be argued, however, is another grave consequence of the Iraq War: the displacement crisis as a mass exodus of Iraqis flee the instabilities and ever-increasing sectarian violence at home, tearing their families apart.
In mid-January 2008, with the support of the United Nations High Commission For Refugees (UNHCR), I traveled to Amman, Jordan to photograph and record a few of these families trapped in a no-man’s land; asylum seekers looking for refuge, too afraid to return to their blood-soaked country.
Here are a few of their stories:
The film can also be viewed as a .wmv file here.. http://www.unhcr.org/video/iraqi-refugees-in-jordan.wmv
…and downloaded as a real media file here.. http://www.unhcr.org/video/iraqi-refugees-in-jordan.rm
For more information please check out.. The UNHCR Multimedia pages
To download this film to your ipod or mobile device please subscribe to the podcast at www.Documentally.com
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
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