police

Recently I've been trying to get better at bracketing, where you take overexposed and underexposed photos and then merge them together. It can create a very neat effect when done correctly. It can also be abused, as many photographers tend to do, which results in unrealistic looking photography.

A few days ago, I was out playing with this feature in my hometown of Cheswick, Pennsylvania, to better understand it when I was stopped by police.

Here's a curious case of someone who wasn't happy with a portrait taken of himself. A fugitive recently sent a selfie to police because he hated the "terrible" mugshot the department published.

Tokyo's police force has come up with a clever solution for dealing with rogue drones: they're going to catch them using larger drones and giant nets.

Police in body armor showed up at an office building in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, yesterday after someone called 911 to report a gunman holding a machine gun. Turns out it was a photographer holding a tripod.

The problem of photographers being seen as "pedophiles with cameras" is widespread and is a subject we've reported on and written about many times over the years. One of the latest victims is David Updike, a Harvard-educated photographer and writer.

While sitting in Cambridge's Dana Park on September 23rd, Updike found himself suddenly surrounded by police officers and questioned about what he was taking pictures of. It turns out a woman had reported him for "taking pictures of children," and now Updike has responded to the incident by writing an open letter to that woman.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, pricey camera equipment is becoming one of the favorite targets of robbers. In 2013, the New York Times reported that photojournalists in Oakland were becoming the victims of camera robberies. Last month, photographers were robbed in broad daylight by assailants wielding pepper spray.

The San Francisco Police Department is now asking for the public's help in solving yet another DSLR robbery that occurred in the city last month.

Photographer Trey Ratcliff is currently on a photo walk tour of the United States. On Wednesday, he visited Atlanta, Georgia, and led a large crowd of photographers on a route through the city. While strolling through Centennial Olympic Park, however, the group was confronted by police officers and told that their photography wasn't allowed in the public park.

The Dallas Police Department has officially released a new general order that's meant to inform officers on photographers' rights. The document, titled "Public Recording of Official Acts," warns officers that they cannot interfere with a person photographing or filming their activities as long as the recording is being done in an appropriate way.

In today’s society, it seems that no knowledge is more prudent for photographers to learn than the rights of themselves and their photographs. Here at PetaPixel, we wanted to create a comprehensive one-stop guide to your constitutional rights to capture the world around you and what you are permitted to do with those photos.

For more than a decade, Brooklyn-based professional photographer Shawn Thomas has been an outspoken activist for photographers' rights to photograph and record in public on the streets of New York City. In the process, he has been arrested and jailed at least six times but never convicted of any crime.

This week, Thomas is making headlines again after posting a video showing how he put an end to an "unlawful search" in just 7 seconds while pointing a camera at officers.

Here’s a video that’s causing an uproar among those who care about photographers’ rights. It’s a 53-second clip recorded …

A police officer in Albury, Australia, did some online photo sharing that drew quite a few chuckles last week. After someone turned in a lost iPhone at his police station, the officer found that the phone didn't have any type of passcode protection. So, to get in touch with the woman who lost it, he started posting humorous photos to her Facebook account.

Need a laugh? Check out the official Instagram account of the Reykjavík metropolitan police (Reykjavík is the largest and capital city of Iceland). It's a strangely humorous account that's filled with silly snapshots showing that the officers know how to have a good time while busting criminals and keeping their city streets safe.

A Texas lawmaker recently attracted death threats after proposing a law that would make it illegal for photographers to take pictures of police officers from within 25 feet of them. Colorado is moving in the opposite direction.

The state is considering several bills that would increase police oversight, and one of the bills outlines punishments for police officers who interfere with people who are lawfully using their cameras.

Texas House of Representatives lawmaker Jason Villalba sparked quite a controversy earlier this month after proposing a bill that would make it illegal to photograph a police officer from within 25 feet. People were so angered by the idea that Villalba has received death threats from angry members of the public.

A week after Los Angeles agreed to train its law enforcement that public photography is not a crime, a bill has been proposed in Texas that would make it a crime for citizens to photograph or film police from within 25 feet of where the are.

A federal judge has decided that it's okay for police officers to befriend Instagram users with fake accounts in order to gain access to photos shared through the service.

Los Angeles will be the first major city in the United States to equip every one of its officers on the street with a body camera. The city will be purchasing 7,000 cameras in order to document the activities of its officers and to promote transparency.

While covering the "re-occupation” protest in Mong Kok on Thursday night, an Apple Daily cameraman was arrested by police after he allegedly assaulted a police officer with his camera and then resisted arrest.

There's just one problem with this story, told to the press by police: it's not true. The video above captured by a South China Morning Post reporter paints a very different picture.

Identifying wanted criminals is about to get a whole lot easier for Dubai police thanks to the camera built into Google Glass and some custom-built facial recognition software.

Getty Images photographer arrested #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/ScOaHO8bjY— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 18, 2014

The photograph above, tweeted out by Huffington Post justice reporter Ryan J. Reilly, shows Getty photographer Scott Olson being taken into custody by Ferguson police while covering the ongoing protests and riots sparked by the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed African American man who was shot and killed by police on August 9th.

I am troubled by what I have seen.

In recent weeks, we have witnessed terrible, on-going episodes within our borders through photos and video that speak volumes about the tragedy of race. Racism is as old as human history, and there is a long, rich history of capturing race conflicts in the US by photographers like Charles Moore, Bruce Davidson, Gordon Parks and others.

But in this post 9/11 world, the balance of power has shifted towards authority -- militarized officers outfitted with high-powered machine guns and body armor straight out of central casting for a Michael Bay film who seemingly police differently depending on the color of your skin.

The NYPD has sent out an internal memo that tells officers they aren’t allowed to take action to stop someone from photographing or filming them. This comes a whopping two years after Washington DC’s police chief sent out an almost identical memo.

A New Jersey police officer is making headlines for how he responded Monday to a resident taking pictures in a public building. When the resident, one Steve Wronko, explained that it was his constitutional right, the officer told Wronko that "Obama has decimated the friggin' constitution, so ... if he doesn't follow the constitution, we don't have to."

As a SWAT officer, Hou Weilin needs to be constantly prepared for any situation that may arise. Thus, when his fiancée, Li Jinyang, wanted to get engagement photographs, he was unable to do so in a studio setting, where he’d be too far distanced from his equipment and gear, should a situation arise.

As a compromise, Weilin and his fiancée used his workplace to their advantage to create some crazy, cinematic engagement photos.

Update on 12/16/21: This video has been removed by its creator.

Portland-based aerial photography company Skyris Imaging found themselves in an awkward situation earlier this week when a not-fully-clothed woman was startled by a camera drone hovering outside of her 26th-floor apartment in Seattle and, naturally, called the police.

Shot back in April, the above video shows “Ex-Cop Law Student" Andrew Wake attempting to record a seemingly routine traffic stop when a Gray County Sherriff’s Deputy eventually shows up by his side.

After handing out his name and date of birth, the Deputy asks a few more questions to which Wake kindly refuses to answer per his rights. Confrontation over, good to go right? Not so much. Things get interesting after the traffic stop is over and Wake starts heading away from the scene.

Three years ago, in late July of 2011, freelance news photographer Philip Datz was arrested by the Suffolk County Police Department in New York for “obstruction of governmental administration” because he was recording the conclusion of a police chase from a safe distance away.

Last we told you about the case, the police were dropping the charges and officers were going to have to go through "media relations training," but the case has gone much further than that in the intervening three years.

The dangers of urban exploration photography are well-known. However, despite this danger, it’s not often we hear of any big names in Urbex photography having major accidents or run-ins with the law. That changed a bit this week when a photographer who goes by the pseudonym The Other Side shared the story of how he was threatened with serious legal consequences for photographing a partially abandoned French factory.

With cameras as ubiquitous as they are, citizen-provided evidence is becoming more and more substantial when it comes to acquitting or incriminating victims in court. However, no matter how much information is captured, it’s rare for it all to be seen by those in charge of making the critical decisions, as there isn’t an effective way to submit or sort through the media.

To change that, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has launched a new online app, built around Amazon’s Web Services, to allow anyone to submit photo and video evidence of incidences.

Update: Brandon has uploaded the EMS photo below to the Saving Eliza SmugMug sale! Very appropriate that a photo of people who save lives be sold to help raise money to save a life! Click here to purchase a print of Brandon's photo and help raise money for Eliza.

Photographer Brandon Cawood's images of first responders look like they belong on movie posters, but the people in them are the actual heroes that we have to thank for taking care of us when we get hurt or are in trouble. The series is called "Not All Wear Capes," and if you have a friend or relative who is a first responder you should definitely send them a link.

Four years after the “unlawful seizure and destruction” of video from a citizen's phone took place, and thanks to some pressure from the US Department of Justice, The City of Baltimore has agreed to pay a fine to the tune of $250,000 to set things right.

In a yet another tragic loss for the photojournalistic community, acclaimed German AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus lost her life Friday in eastern Afghanistan when an Afghan policeman opened fire on the car she was sitting in.

Following up on a story we shared a couple of months ago, it seems we now have TWO examples of police officers facing consequences for dealing with photographers unprofessionally.

Effective today, a new civil code in Hungary makes it illegal to take a photograph without obtaining permission from everybody in the photo, making street photographers' and photojournalists' jobs infinitely more complicated and opening the door for a landslide of litigation.

In the most recent installment of police officer vs. photographer, a UK man who began taking pictures near the scene of a car accident was approached by an irate officer who yelled and cursed at him, confiscated his camera and threatened to arrest him and make his life a "living hell."

Turns out you may not have to be stupid enough to post incriminating evidence on Instagram to get busted via photo in the near future. A pair of British researchers are working on a way to collect identifiable images from the reflections of people captured on a photo subject's eyeball.

A couple of days ago we ran across this strange article online. Very short on details, what we know is that a man was seen taking photos of children in a suburb of Toronto a few days ago, and is now being sought after by police.