News
Wednesday,February,09,2005
Attack of the SF Muni Fare Inspectors
SF (San Francisco) Muni Fare Inspectors attempt to enforce nonexistent ban on photography
Last Saturday, Sheila and I were out and about. We did some shopping downtown and then entered Montgomery Station. We were gonna hop on Muni and head out to Marcellos in the Castro for a slice of pizza.
While we were on the platform waiting for our train I figured I’d grab a few photos of the crowds. There has been talk of a fare increase and you never know when some current Muni photos might sell. Check out one of the images that I took, and tell me if you think this presents a security threat. And they weren’t even good photos!
As soon as I snapped the first shot, a SF Muni Fare Inspector admonished me to stop taking photos. I won’t go into detail here as you can read my ROUGH DRAFT letters of protest to San Francisco Municipal Railway and San Francisco Police Department (both in PDF format). These letters are a good account of what happened. However, the short version is that The Fare Inspectors tried to prevent me from taking photos under threat of citation. When I refused to stop, they tried to cite me but couldn’t find any relevant code, regulation or law to cite me. Enlisting the aid of the SFPD and BART Police officers also yielded now results. No citation was issued.
I’m grateful to be a member of the National Press Photographers Assocation and subscribe to their email list. Because this topic and others experience with it had been discussed on the list I knew what my rights were, and how to handle myself, I was able to challenge this abuse of authority and not succumb to the intimidation of these well intentioned by absolutely WRONG civil servants.
Sheila, my lovely bride and dream girl, was a real trooper and a pillar of support. She understands the issues at work, and what is at stake in this situation. She stood by me physically and morally throughout the entire episode. Without her support I couldn’t have taken the stand that I did. Also, she’s helped out a lot with getting the letters ready to send. Thank you Sheila; I love you very much!
The anger that I felt regarding this incident has morphed into sadness. I’m sad that the Fare Inspectors are so inept and misguided as to try to enforce nonexistent laws. Also it’s sad that they think that preventing a photographer from shooting in the Muni Station will have ANY impact at all on security. On a deeper level it causes me great concern that these Fare Inspectors (and the SFPD Officers) balanced my rights and freedom as a US Citizen and a photojournalist against the negligible security gains afforded by preventing my photography, and my rights lost. Come on people if you’re going to take my rights away, at least get some benefit from abrogating my rights!
It saddens me that a professional Police Officer, sworn to uphold the law and protect the citizens of his city, was willing to twist and pervert the law in order the threaten me with arrest for exercising my rights. I can’t begin to tell you how shocked I was when Officer Ryan threatened me with arrest for Trespassing if I continued to take photographs! This is America, He is a law enforcement officer, what the hell was he thinking?!?!
I can’t help but feel that the terrorists have won. Have we again reached a point in our history where fear is so strong that it overrides justice and common sense? Have we arrived at a place where the phrase “for security reasons” trumps logic? Where it trumps justice, fairness and liberty? Are we so paranoid that we’re willing to give up our basic freedoms in pursuit of elusive security? I’m all for doing what we can to make our country safer. I live in San Francisco, a place that is likely on the terrorist todo list. Of course I want security. But if we sacrifice our freedoms that were gained by the blood of patriots, we will cease to be beacon of freedom that we should be. Bottom line, as long as we are a free and open society, we can not plug every security hole—but, even if we gave up our freedom and liberty, we still wouldn’t achieve security!
Ben Franklin said it best, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
NOTE: I’ll be editing this blog entry as well as the draft letters to the SF Muni and SFPD to correct grammar, typos, etc… The basic content will remain the same.
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Monday,July,12,2004
Same-sex wedding photos published in a national magazine!
My photographs of the Same-sex weddings grace the cover of a national magazine
Same-sex wedding photographs have been published in Christian Networks Journal.
Here’s a link to the cover of the magazine.
I was contacted at the beginning of June by Reverand Gordon McClellan, the Editor in Chief of Christian Networks Journal regarding the use of some of my photographs from the Same-sex weddings that were performed in San Francisco during the Valentines weekend.
In spite of the the friendly and polite tone of the initial email from Reverand McClellan, I was skeptical about allowing a Christian magazine to use my photos. I feel that the people I photographed demonstrated trust by allowing me to capture those images. I would never want to violate that trust by allowing someone to use my photographs in a way that denigrated the people getting married. After speaking with Gordon on the telephone and reading several issues of the magazine, I was confident in my decision to allow CNJ to publish my photos.
Christian Networks Journal is an intellectual magazine that tries to present all perspectives on contemporary issues of importance to Christians. I’m very impressed with the breadth and depth of the opinions offered; from Rick Santorum to Barney Frank on the same-sex marriage topic. I am very proud to be involved with such a quality publication and want to congratulate Reverand McClellan for his oustanding magazine, but more importantly, I want to thank him for helping me to chip away at my stereotypical views of Christians.
After taking the photographs back in February, I spent considerable time reviewing them. I was deeply moved by the depth of emotion, joy and love, evident in the images on my computer screen. I also took note that many of the people in the images were not extreme, scary, or intimidating. These were ordinary, perhaps even boring, everyday people living their lives, many with children.
As I looked at the photos I thought to myself that if those that are opposed to same-sex marriage could see my photos and get a feel for the reality of what a gay relationship looks like they would see that there is nothing to fear. They would see the how ordinary the people are. They would see the love and devotion, including the love of same-sex couples for their children… I think many people opposed to same-sex marriage have a “frightened fantasy” of what it would be. I hope my publication of the reality refutes this “frightened fantasy” that is fed by those opposed. Fear is all too often used as a means to shape opinion, and with a big unknowns like homosexuality and gay marriage it is easy to respond to fear mongering.
All too often people outside of places like San Francisco or New York City only have images from gay pride parades or other extreme examples of the gay community upon which to base their view of what homosexuality is. I’m here to tell you it’s not nearly that exciting most of the time! To think that Folsom Street Fair, or Pride Parades accurately portray gay people is akin to thinking that Mardis Gras is a good example of mainstream American culture. Yet it is precisely those extreme examples that are presented to many as the norm. I’d bet that many people who think they don’t know any gay people are wrong; they know plenty of gay people. They just don’t realize it because the guys aren’t wearing feather boas and high heels, and the women don’t look like outlow motorcyclists.
I would love it if someone that is not sure of how they feel about the issue sees my photographs and then asks, “What’s the big deal? Where is the threat to my family or society?” If that happens I have succeeded. I think that my photos being published in CNJ allows me to reach precisely the sort of person that I want to reach, the thoughtful, open minded Christian that has only seen the strident extremes of viewpoints and heard nightmare scenarios of what gay marriage would look like. I strive to present the human face and reality of the situation.
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Posted by stevem on 07/12 at 09:20,AM
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Wednesday,May,05,2004
Wedding photos to be displayed at San Francisco City Hall Gallery!
I’ve been invited to display some of my wedding photos in an exhibit at San Francisco City Hall
I’ve wanted to do a “gallery show” for quite some time, but never managed to get it together and make it happen. The San Francisco Arts Commission has a gallery at the beautiful San Francisco City Hall. Starting on May26th, there will be an exhibition of photos taken at the same-sex weddings that took place in February.
I’m thrilled and honored to have had several of my images selected for inclusion in this exhibit. I’ve got a gallery of my select same-sex wedding photos posted online, but they are not necessarily the photos that will be in the show.
The show is a good excuse to invest in a better printer (Epson Photo 2200) that does prints as big as 13 inches wide, and uses archival pigments so that the prints should last around 100 years. I’ve been asked to provide 16 (11x14) prints, so I’ll be busy getting them together. Also, the SFAC has selected one of my images to grace the cover of their quarterly announcement flyer:
Yes indeed, it’s an exciting time for me as a photographer!
Sunday,April,04,2004
Added Search Box
Upgraded to PB2 of Expression Engine and setup the new search feature
Upgraded and added new search feature for shooter.net
Thursday,March,25,2004
Drop Down Gallery Menu Added
So it took all damn night, but I finally got the css/javascript drop down menu for gallery selection working. I’m hoping that this will make it easier for visitors to find the galleries. Leave a comment, let me know if you think this will work…
Friday,March,19,2004
Spiffy new header
I’ve update the header template to load up four images that are links to popup windows containing the galleries… So far so good. Need to fix the galleries so they all have navigation buttons. Currently if you load up the two galleries on the right side of the header, and then click on one of the thumbnails, you are stranded in the full zie image… Oh well, just another task for my list.
It’s ALIVE!!
Shooter.net - the interactive site - is Live
The site is shaping up enough that I’m not too embarassed to have folks see it, so I’ve decided to hit the little checkbox that says “open for business”. I still have much to do:
- Finish removing all the visual clutter from the slideshow and other parts of gallery.
- Rework the menu stuff on the right side of the page.
- Add a privacy policy page since I’m allowing people to sign up for email list.
- Setup a Links page.
- Add a list of Galleries to the right hand navigation area.
- Add a filmstrip banner and make the shooter.net header work better on IE.
- I don’t even want to think about how much work it’s going to be to convert the existing site/galleries to the new EE site…