Please don't look at--oh, go ahead

Noticing a pattern...

Last Monday I went to an undisclosed shopping center in downtown L.A. for lunch. As I do some of the time I slung my camera bag over my shoulder on the journey. After eating, on my walk back, I paused and noticed what I thought might be a shot (of the shadow of the circular lattice over the top of the center cast by the sun reflected off the tall building next to the center), so I pull out the camera and start to set it up. I put my eve to the viewfinder and got off one picture and then a voice said, "Excuse me, sir…"

The voice belonged to a youngish man in a white button-up shirt and a clip-on tie. Apologetically he explained that taking pictures was not allowed. He elaborated a bit, noting that it would be different if I was taking a photo of someone (i.e., were the focus of the shot a person in the foreground that just happened to have the center and the buildings in the background), but just taking pictures of the center was not allowed. He apologized again, and I believed it sincere. I put the camera back in the bag and said, "Eh, you're just doing your job." I even explained how I wasn't really getting the building but just the shadow, and he looked where I pointed and nodded. Then I turned and headed back to the office.

I'm not suggesting it's admirable that there are such restrictions, but to complain to the messenger would be like complaining to the cashier at McDonalds about the rules of the Monopoly game. The rules may be risible but they're not the fault of that individual whose livelihood depends on enforcing them.

I did not bother to bring up in that moment that in the past I had taken pictures of the center with my old little camera. And reflecting on it later, in light of the note about photos of people one was with—tourist-type photos—I realized that it wasn't a matter of security. They weren't concerned about terrorists getting valuable data from taking pictures of the outside of skyscrapers. It must be more along the lines of: They didn't want a professional photographer to make money selling pictures of their buildings (at least not taken from the grounds themselves, which are probably—technically—private property).

That was why I never got anything mentioned to me over the years I took pictures with my little Canon D400. The point-and-shoot cameras, where one holds them away from the face to see through the screen (rather than looking putting one's eye up to a viewfinder), scream out that the person taking the picture is not a professional.

The issue is not so much that I am doing something wrong but that with the new S3, I look like I could be doing something right. I have no way of proving that, despite the appearance of my camera, that I have little idea of what I'm doing, and that I absolutely will not profit from the picture. All the "security" personnel know is that I appear to be a photographer, rather than just some tourist snapping some pictures. And despite the appearance of public ground, it is private property, so any fuss I might raise would not find me on any winning end. (If I pointed the camera at the building across the street, they probably wouldn't care.)

(I did find, after conferring with some other photographically inclined guys at the office, that they too have been asked not to shoot there.)

The sad thing: The shot I did get off didn't turn out well at all. Even as good-natured as the admonishment (for lack of a better word) was, there was some extent to which it would have seemed less onerous had I been likely to get a picture that could have been used for commercial purposes, rather than merely another paltry attempt to capture an effect that clearly doesn't transfer well to photographs. Or at least if I really had the skill to get such a shot, rather than merely the appearance of having the equipment for it.