bikes and things

So I finally had my first encounter with the law, or rather a Police Community Service Officer, whilst taking photos in a public place. I spent a fair bit of time last Tuesday in Hammersmith taking pictures of a building for some CGI renders. I was there during the afternoon with a tripod, dSLR and a fairly large shift lens as well as remote shutter release. About 30 mins after I had set up I was approached by a PCSO. Uh oh! I was told that I had been “seen” on CCTV and he would like to know what I was doing. Now, I’ve been through this scenario in my mind a number of times in anticipation of this situation. Most of them revolved around a smart arse reply such as, “…there’s a reason you haven’t made CID yet isn’t there?”. However all I could muster was an apologetic explanation of what I was doing. I was on work time so didn’t really want to cause a fuss. I needed to get these shots for the next morning and being arrested wasn’t on my list of things to do that day. I was asked for my details, name, date of birth, contact number etc. He was polite enough about it all. I did make the quip that I couldn’t have made it any more obvious what I was doing, it’s not exactly a discrete set up.

So I got my shots delivered for the next morning but I still felt as though he had no right to inquire about what I was doing. It was fairly obvious and it is a public place. He also had no right to have my details. Annoying but next time I think I’ll try and stand up for my rights a bit more.

Anyway, here’s the shot I came away with later in the day.

The shot is a horizontal stitch of three images taken with the amazing Nikkor 24mm PC-E lens. Each shot has the lens shifted up higher each time then assembled in Photoshop.