How do you deal with these nutters?

Energize

Energize

Energize

Caporegime
Joined
12 Mar 2004
Posts
29,952
Location
England
Today I was taking some landscape and architecture shots in the county to get used to a 35mm, and when I saw a nice house I naturally started taking pictures of it, when all of a sudden some nutter was shouting out of a window not to take photos of the house, I personally just ignored him and then biked on to the next site.

My question is, how do you deal with these confrontational nutters (who apparently are not aware of Google street view), the law is clearly on the photographers side?
 
Just tell them you're in a public place and are free to take pictures of whatever you wish, and if they have an issue they can contact the police.
 
Aedus said:
Just tell them you're in a public place and are free to take pictures of whatever you wish, and if they have an issue they can contact the police.
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This pretty much. Just be calm and civil, tell them that you are photographing in a public and that it is completely legal. They tend to go mad and threaten to call the police, just tell them to right ahead because you would like the police to be there.
 
Or alternatively, you could just stop taking pictures of their home? Seems a reasonable request to me.
 
Rroff said:
Why does it have to be about grounds? its upsetting someone, even if it is a bit unreasonable of them and doesn't hurt you just to move on and do something else :S
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This. I wouldn't be happy to see anyone taking photographs of my home. It is plain rude to continue doing something after you have been asked stop. You don't need a legal basis for manners.
 
Its a strange one, personally I couldn't care less if someone photographed my house but my mum wasn't overly happy finding out that if you zoom in on street view you can just about see her blurry shape closing the door to the house.
 
Dyson said:
Or alternatively, you could just stop taking pictures of their home? Seems a reasonable request to me.
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I don't think it is a reasonable request, it's a building clearly visible to the public and is on google street view, there is no privacy being violated. Just because someone owns a property doesn't give them reasonable grounds for blocking photography of it.
 
Energize said:
I don't think it is a reasonable request, it's a building clearly visible to the public and is on google street view, there is no privacy being violated. Just because someone owns a property doesn't give them reasonable grounds for blocking photography of it.
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Who cares about "reasonable grounds"!?! It's someone's home, and if they don't want you taking pictures of it, then surely that's that. I know I wouldn't be too happy if I looked out of my window and saw some random stranger taking photos of my home.

Maybe they weren't very polite in asking you not to, but I believe it's a perfectly reasonable request.
 
You keep saying who cares about "reasonable grounds", but then keep saying it's a "reasonable request" please make your mind up.

It is neurotic, paranoid behavior to be so bothered about someone taking pictures of your house, and it is unreasonable to ask people to cater to such behavior. The problem is the mindset of the home owner, not the photographer.
 
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There's no reasonable grounds. You can request they stop but they're under no legal obligation to do so.

You can take pictures of whatever you want in public.
 
Just ask him when you can come back to take the interior shots and where he'd like the for sale board, then all of a sudden he's no longer concerned about the photos but why someone is trying to sell his house :)
 
Someone has asked you to stop taking photos of their house as it's upsetting them. Why wouldn't you comply with their request? Is your photography really that important?
 
Energize said:
It is neurotic, paranoid behavior to be so bothered about someone taking pictures of your house, and it is unreasonable to ask people to cater to such behavior. The problem is the mindset of the home owner, not the photographer.
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Maybe the guy is involved in something illicit and doesn't want people poking around :p

In my experience, there are some people out there who get inexplicably riled up by the mere presence of a person with a camera, I bet you could have been playing cannibal-corpse on a ghetto blaster, shooting a BB gun at his windows or whatever, and he wouldn't have been as bothered!

Some people just hate photographers, I remember when myself and a friend were photographing the swans at Clumber park lake, and some lunatic with a dog started having a go at us saying "YOU KILLED HER" (reference to princess Diane)
 
I'm firmly in the common courtesy camp. While you're under no obligation to stop it is the decent thing to do if someone is uncomfortable with you photographing their home.

The argument "Street View can see it though" is a bit weak, as he's hardly going to chase the car down the road while brandishing a pitchfork, even if he knew what it was.
 
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