The Big, Black Camera

[mbarrick]

I honestly don't understand the [lack of] thought process that exists for most people. Last night was soured for me by one of the red-shirted security monkeys with an utterly bizarre interpretation of the "no unauthorized cameras" rule at Sin City. I had my long lens on the DSLR for the sake of shooting the performers on the stage from the balcony. With that lens I need to be a minimum of three metres away from a person to photograph a portrait, and more like six metres if I want to get more than just their face in the photo - not going to happen in a crowded club - so for the sake of doing portraits I brought along my new compact digital (the underwater camera). I had just finished shooting the last burlesque performance of the evening and was about to make a portrait shot of Sisi and her beau and I am pounced on by the red-shirt. I showed him my staff card and told him I was the photographer. He responded with the most amazingly retarded reasoning. Pointing to the big, black camera he said it was OK for me to take pictures with it, but not the compact digital because "no personal cameras". He said I would have to "talk to the promoter" if I wanted to use my "personal camera" and I can't even imagine who he thought gave me the staff card if it wasn't the promoters. "They're both my cameras. I've been photographing this event since it started. That's my picture in the Sun today - I'm the fucking photographer!

Another red-shirt joined in the fun. Fortunately he had a couple of brain-cells to rub together and eventually produced a spark.

I didn't stay much after that. I had the pictures I wanted. The heat was getting to me (and Elaine), and with that much stupid flung at me like monkey-poo, I needed to cool off in more than one way so it was time to walk home.

All said and done, though, it does make a point about the perception of the camera in the mind of the average idiot layman.

Comments

[cheekydevil.livejournal.com]

Oh my GOd. That's a lot of stupidness to deal with in a short period of time. OK, next time, we're going to have all our staff and people that work with us come in early if they can and have a little meet and greet with all the Richards staff. OK everyone, these are our staff. THEY can do whatever they want when it comes to cameras and such. They are the only ones who can and those rules are to be enforced for everyone ELSE in the general attending crowd.

Yahoos!

Un-fucking-believable

[lakenereid.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's true.
The big black camera is a "professional" camera.
The little one is "personal".
You're a professional photographer; you should know this by now.
Plus, you only need ONE camera; you didn't know that, either?

Idiocy!

I think we SHOULD talk to the boss: can we get these guys a new job, where they won't have to do anything so challenging as identifying the official photographer as being the guy allowed to have a camera?

[kitsune-13.livejournal.com]

I got flack for my camera..they refused to believe Nicholas & I were "staff" regardless of our passes that said so...until I blew up at one guy.
I mean really, come on. The only reason I would bring a camera is to take pictures. And the only ones who "could" bring a camera in there for Fetish night would be "staff".

I'm glad they were doing their job, but a tad overzealous methinks. Then again, it was the first tiem in there- they don;t know us, and we don't know them,.

[lilitha.livejournal.com]

My head hurts from reading this!

This is just a little suggestion to help out the securities identify and recognise who are the staff at SinCity.

They did this at one of my old jobs I had before.

They took "mug shots" of everyone that was a staff and labled what their duties were and posted them all on this wall, so that everyone will know who was who and who does what and who can do what.

I'm thinking you should do this and strap down all the security guys, have their eyelids taped open and make them stare at those photos and job descriptions for 6 hours. After that, they will have to be able to correctly identify all of you in a crowd and not hassle you. Fail to do so means that the other staff has the rights to hassle them for not being real "staff" simply because they're wearing a "red shirt".

[valerian.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's not a bad idea. Or how about make the staff laminates look more official by adding their full name or at least some kind of "job description"? Titles like... "event security" (not to be confused with bar staff security), "photographer", "admission/coat check", "music services" (DJs), "vendor", etc.

??

[lilitha.livejournal.com]

I think adding the descriptions you mentioned will help a lot. Another thing is, is to have the securities know what the passes look like perhaps? When I skimmed over the comments, it appears that Michael isn't the only one that had this issue at SinCity. I'm still baffled by the security's comment about what is and isn't a personal camera/professional camera.