In England, a man recently got hassled about having a “camera license” when he tried to take photos of a woman turning on her Christmas lights:

After explaining he[Phil Smith] didn’t need one, he was taken down a side-street for a formal “stop and search”, then asked to delete the photos and ordered not take any more. So he slunk home with his camera.

“People were still taking photos with mobile phones and pocket cameras, so maybe it was because mine looked like a professional camera with a flash on top,” he says.

“I wasn’t very pleased because I was taken through the crowd and through the barriers at the front and people were probably thinking ‘I wonder what he was doing.’

“To be pulled out of a crowd is very daunting and I wasn’t aware of my rights. It’s a sad state of affairs today if an amateur photographer can’t stand in the street taking photographs.” [BBC]

Eeeek! If you read the entire article it seems this isn’t an isolated incident and is more of a trend.

I personally take my camera everywhere and worry about a time and place when cops can control what we are aloud to document. Reminds me of the world of the recently released film Chicago 10.

Speaking of movies, the motives of photographers and the power of pictures is something discussed in Errol Morris’ latest documentary Standard Operating Procedure. to explore how photography tells us the truth””or not.