North Korea Drops the Banhammer on Instagram
North Korea has reportedly blocked access to Instagram, a service that has been widely used by journalists and tourists to share glimpses of life inside the secretive hermit kingdom.
North Korea has reportedly blocked access to Instagram, a service that has been widely used by journalists and tourists to share glimpses of life inside the secretive hermit kingdom.
If you're ever asked by an airline to stop taking pictures on their private property -- on their plane, for example -- you might want to obey their instructions and put your camera away. They're legally allowed to ban photography.
A couple of top European soccer clubs are taking a stand against selfie sticks by banning them entirely from their soccer stadiums. It's not the idea of selfies that the teams take issue with, but rather the fact that the sticks could be used by fans as weapons against each other.
Any travel photographer, or traveller in general, will tell you how important it is that you respect the locations you are exploring. This applies as much for natural environments as it does for sacred manmade spaces, and it's the latter of these that are having to ban photography because of rude tourist photographers who are ignoring this fundamental rule.
A portrait session that results in the death of the subject should be called a failure.
As reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, a group of photographers and onlookers experienced precisely that level of catastrophic botchery last week in Grand Teton National Park when crowding too close to a moose (not a good idea).
The moose, already agitated by the presence of a nearby bull moose, was scared by the approaching park-visitors and bolted before stumbling over a picnic table and landing on a fire grate. With its hoof caught in the grate, the half-ton animal collapsed and broke its leg so badly that park rangers were forced to put it down.
In the wake of the pro-democracy Occupy Central protests rocking Hong Kong, the Chinese government has tightened its already short censorship leash, adding photo sharing site Instagram to the list of sites now unusable in mainland China.
Photography drones are facing a perilous atmosphere of distrust and legal chaos. In these circumstances, even small mistakes can have big consequences. A shift in public sentiment against private drone usage could easily result in the application of restrictive regulations, or perhaps even conditional bans.
The inevitable has arrived. After a number of individual national parks placed a ban on drones, The National Park Services is telling the Associated Press that it will soon ban the use of drones in all 401 parks across the United States.
Facebook doesn’t have it easy when it comes to moderating content; with approximately 1.3 billion active users, it’s inevitable there will be a few mess-ups over time. But one issue Facebook has continually struggled with sorting out is the social network's wishy-washy policy on breastfeeding photographs.
Would you like to photograph the Upper Yosemite Falls by drone? Attach a GoPro to your newly-acquired DJI Phantom 2 and just have at it, capturing views that Ansel Adams would envy? Well, you can't, because it turns out "use of unmanned aircraft systems (drones)" is prohibited in Yosemite National Park.
In an ongoing effort to control the squirming beast that is social media, Instagram recently updated its service to ban even more hashtags.
A French court has banned distribution of a photo book and fined the photographer, essentially for including a portrait the subject didn't like.
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros are due on stage in 15 minutes and I walk up to the doorstaff ticket in hand. They tear the ticket and ask to look in the camera bag for deodorants and liquids. I'm not too sure why. This is the Trinity Centre in Bristol with a capacity of 650 and normally holds community events.
The doorman tuts and says “Interchangeable lens.” I'm a bit confused. “Tour manager has said no interchangeable lens cameras, sorry.” I returned to my car, out the equipment in the boot and went back to the gig.
We're getting more and more accustomed to authorities telling us if and how we can photograph something, so the camera ban enacted for the recent Reno Rodeo isn't all that surprising.
What's different with this one is the intended target of the ban, which animal-rights activists claim is intended to prevent them from exposing abuses.
If you're planning to attend the Kentucky Derby early next month, you might want to make sure you'll be content with capturing your memories with a smartphone or point-and-shoot. Churchill Downs, the racetrack that hosts the famous horse race, has unveiled new security measures that will prevent attendees from bringing certain items onto the grounds. Among them: all interchangeable lens cameras.
How do you solve the problem of professional concert photographers snapping unflattering photos of you during your live shows? One way is to ban them completely, and that's exactly what Beyonce is doing with her latest concert tour. Policies like hers may be growing in popularity among artists who want to control their image, but the policy is still causing quite a hoopla.
The Internet often has a mind of its own when it comes to viral photos, the spread of which is virtually impossible to stop. Safeway, the second largest supermarket chain in North America, found this truth out recently after photos of badly designed cakes made their way online. The company is doing its best to quell the mockery, though: apparently at least one local Safeway bakery has gone so far as to ban photos entirely.
Mobile apps with retro filters such as Instagram and Hisptamatic have been very polarizing in the photo industry, but the latest member of the anti-Instagram camp has many people scratching their heads. The NCAA has banned college coaches from using Instagram filters while recruiting prospective athletes.
While a number of countries are taking steps to ban the unrealistic Photoshopping of models, Israel has …
The US is following the UK’s lead in banning advertisements for having too much digital manipulation. The …
Advertising Standards Authority, the ad industry watchdog in the UK, has banned an advertisement by Lancome featuring Julia Roberts for being misleading, stating that the flawless skin seen in the photo was too good to be true.
Last week one of the big stories in the world of photography was that Kuwait had banned the use of DSLR cameras in public places. The story originated with an article in the Kuwait Times, and was then widely reported by publications ranging from The Guardian to Amateur Photographer. People were in disbelief that a country would take such an unreasonable stance against a particular camera technology while leaving others legal (e.g. mobile phones, compact cameras, etc...). Turns out the whole thing was a big hoax.
Update: Turns out this story wasn't true.
If you think photographers' rights in the US or UK are bad, get a load of this: Kuwait is now banning the use of DSLR cameras in public places for everyone except accredited journalists. Three ministries (information, social affairs, and finance) issued the joint ban last week, but strangely ignored the use of other cameras and forms of photography, meaning that citizens can still shoot publicly with compact cameras and camera-equipped phones.
It looks like tap tap tap's Camera+ added one too many features for Apple's liking. When the app developers tweeted a secret workaround that enabled the volume button to double up to control the shutter, Apple pulled Camera+ from the App Store.
Just this week, developer John Casasanta wrote in a blog post that an upgraded version of the app originally intended to launch the feature, VolumeSnap. VolumeSnap would have also allowed users to use the volume control on iPhone headphones as a remote shutter control. Pretty nifty.
But Apple rejected tap tap tap's new version, citing this as a reason:
Your application cannot be added to the App Store because it uses iPhone volume buttons in a non-standard way, potentially resulting in user confusion. Changing the behavior of iPhone external hardware buttons is a violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement. Applications must adhere to the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines as outlined in the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement section 3.3.7
So tap tap tap left out the feature -- at first. The app retained the feature, which was now hidden, but could be enabled by pointing the phone's browser to a specific site provided by the developers.