Karl Baden should have known better.
I mean, what was he thinking, casually snapping a few pictures as dramatic sunlight broke through the clouds after one of last week’s late spring rainstorms? From the front seat of his car in a suburban Boston Trader Joe’s parking lot, of all places? What is he, nuts?
Boston news station WBZ-TV stirred up some controversy recently after airing a piece titled "Downtown Crossing ‘Street Photographers’ Crossing The Line?". Apparently a viewer sent in some video showing a group of six or seven older men who regularly visit a particular crosswalk to photograph pedestrians on the street, saying that they see the men "aggressively hunting down and photographing women and children nearly every day". The station then decided to air a piece and publish a story from this perspective, questioning the intentions of the photographers and quoting other pedestrians on the sidewalk disturbed by their behavior.