This is great stuff – six photographers see what happens when they take their cameras round the financial district of London. Best of all, the police know and enforce the law.

Via Duckrabbit

Last year's I'm a Photographer Not a Terrorist mass gathering in Trafalgar Square, London

Photographer Not a Terrorist is organising another event on at 12:30 on Tuesday 3rd May at City Hall, London SE1 2AA:

PHNAT is concerned about the role of private security guards in the prevention of terrorism. Their role has been promoted by police, with the result that many privately employed guards are illegally preventing citizens from taking any photographs at all.

Areas designated as public realm are often privately managed spaces that are subject to rules laid down by the private management companies. Most insidious of these is the outright banning of photography in some of our most widely enjoyed public spaces, such as Canary Wharf and the Thames Walk between Tower Bridge and City Hall.

The mass gathering will highlight the restrictions on street photography in a public space. Photographers are encouraged to bring a tripod.

It coincides with International Press Freedom Day and on a weekday, which may depress numbers attending, but as my own perfectly-legal and harmless photography has been interrupted by security guards at City Hall (read more here and here), it’s an event I’m keen to attend.

Uniformed officials seem to have an unnatural fear of tripods. I’ve observed this before, at City Hall, the Swiss Re, and more pleasantly at the Tower of London. But my recent enthusiasm for digital infrared has meant I’ve needed to use the tripod as the infrared filter is opaque and you have to compose the picture and then place it over the lens. Exposure times are over a second with the lens wide open, and I like to stop down and use times of up to 30 seconds which blur clouds and trees.

So I’m introducing a new “Tripodophobia” category to highlight jobsworths and to encourage other London photographers to visit the locations and lay down their tripods.

On a couple of occasions, at Nunhead Cemetery and at the Thames Barrier, the officials were pleasant and only asked if I was photographing commercially. Of course I say no and that it’s a hobby, and of course this is being economical with the truth – if someone wants to buy the shots, I’ll sell them, and I’ll use them in future books. On the other hand, the cemetery receives state/lottery funding and the Barrier is publicly-owned. So who the hell are they to impose arbitrary rules that cause their guards to hassle someone using a camera on a tripod?

Amusingly, there is now a guard at the entrance to the Thames Barrier and I don’t think they’ve recruited the brightest diamond to have come out of Africa. 4 or 5 years ago, they put a guard in a van parked across the road and he moved out of the way as soon as he saw you weren’t a gypsy convoy. But now the guard looks inside your car and asks what you have in your bag. When I said it was a camera, he asked if it was for taking photographs. Doesn’t that make you feel so secure?

The worst tripodophobes are the London Eye where on Sunday two guards told me I couldn’t use a tripod – they quoted health and safety and one then referred to the recent terrorism. Maybe I should have given him credit for not assuming that a potential terrorist would fit the ethnic profile? Anyway, he backtracked when I asked if he was calling me a terrorist and told him I wasn’t exactly being covert with a tripod and a big camera. When they walked away, I went back holding the camera on the tripod, set it down and got my shots. I was also stopped by the duty manager who was more polite – her main interest was if I was from the press. By then I’d taken enough shots but humoured her by asking if I could just take one more from that position.

So make sure you visit these places with your tripod and educate any jobsworths who get in your way.

Or maybe I should just get a bean bag?

After my recent brush with authority at City Hall, thanks to Charles for drawing my attention to this letter in the Independent about a guy arrested for sketching near a railway station in London. What seems especially suspicious and worthy of police involvement was that he had a book on Iranian philisophy and a foreign newspaper.

A few weeks ago I posted that I had written to London’s Mayor about a guard trying to stop me using a tripod to photograph London City Hall. I got an answer, and here it is in full:

Dear Mr Beardsworth
Thank you for your correspondence. The site is run by our landlord More London who operates the external security. The landlord who privately owns City Hall and its area also funded the development.
We assume the More London security guard incorrectly believed you to be a member of the press. We actively encourage the public to visit and enjoy City Hall and its surroundings and are confident that More London will address this issue.
Yours sincerely
(name and position)

So, I’d encourage anyone to photograph this interesting building, use a tripod, and if a little man in a uniform tries to stop you, just ask him how he is actively encouraging the public to enjoy the building and its surroundings.

London’s new City Hall is one of the city’s more photogenic recent developments. If you don’t know it, the Norman Foster-designed building stands alone on the riverside and is surrounded by an open paved space laid out in swirls echoing the building’s strange shape. The area is completely open to the public.

Early Sunday morning – so early no-one else was about – I was at City Hall with my camera and tripod. As I had already got the pictures I wanted, and the sun was now causing flare with the 14mm Sigma wide-angle, so I was going to move on, but first I just wanted to try some alternative compositions and had the camera in my hand and the tripod over to one side. A security guard passed me and stopped about 25 metres away, and as I had the feeling he was watching me I decided to put the camera on the tripod.

Within seconds he came over and asked (politely) if I had a permit to photograph with a tripod. I told him very firmly but politely that I had not, and saw absolutely no reason why he should expect me to. After being told I supposedly needed such a permit to use a tripod, I tanked him for the information and let him know this restriction was ridiculous and I would ignore him and continue taking pictures.

We discussed it for over 10 minutes during which time he agreed there was no security issue and that no-one was liable to trip over my tripod. I continued taking pictures and, to reinforce my point, moved position two or three times. He tagged along, and radioed his supervisor, repeating my assurance that I was photographing as a hobby and that my council and income taxes helped pay for the building (maybe I should have added that I also voted for the current mayor). Eventually he was told I could continue using the tripod to photograph City Hall, but not the office blocks on the same development.

Frankly, if I want to photograph those buildings with a tripod, I will do so. If I don’t require a permit to walk right up to them or photograph there, then I won’t accept being told what type of camera equipment I can use, tripod or not, film or digital!

So go there if you’re in London and freely take your tripod. We’ve 1000 years of fighting for liberties great and small. Frankly, I also like a good argument – my next stop this morning was Speakers Corner.