well, as a present witness to blint’s behavior, let me reiterate TH’s original post title. blint was an ASSHOLE. end of story. he embarrassed EVERYONE with his behavior. he humiliated the “woman” in question. he humiliated himself. he harassed me, he hostilely verbally assaulted TH and was an idiot.

the reason he kept asking TH to stop taking pictures was because TH kept asking him why he was being asked not to take pictures when the museum policy had just been changed and ALLOWED photos to be taken.

blint acted like an idiot. end of story. no one was harmed, threatened, violated, endangered, or any other BS that has been claimed.

when blint tried to throw me out, i just looked at him and said, “why exactly are you throwing me out and what is your name?” he thought about it and couldn’t come up with a reason to have me “forcibly ejected” from the museum. he also sneered at us and said, “why, are you going to blog about this.” well, TH said he would, and he did and the rest is just internet hysteria

imo, the museum still owes me an apology for having their idiotic employee shout out through the foyer that we were perverts. so, as to whether blint is a jerk? he certainly acted like a first class idiot in the brief exposure i had of him. a power tripping weeney

You can’t see any boob because of the cut of her shirt? I’d say you can’t see any boob because she looks like an ant through that 14mm lens.

But I agree with some of your points - he whinges about people taking away his freedom to shoot public buildings and then talks about “renegade photography” - shooting where he’s specifically not allowed to. This does indeed make him something of an asshat.

I am totally behind him shooting where permitted, whether some rent-a-cop disagrees or not. But shooting in places it’s not allowed is not renegade photography, it’s disrespectful.

And any private space open to the public falls under the same laws regarding photography as a public space.

No, it does not. Sorry, but don’t say things that are simply untrue, because it makes you look like an idiot.

You’re free to take photos while standing on private property until the owner or representative of that property tells you not to. After that, if you take a photo, then you are trespassing and can be prosecuted for it. And you will be found guilty, pay a fine, and possibly go to jail.

When you are on private property, even property open to the public, then you have two choices: abide by the stated wishes of the owner of that property, or leave the property. Period. Failure to stick to one of those choices is the very definition of “trespass”.

Taking photos from public space is legal. Do that all you want. But don’t be a complete ass and stand on your rights when you don’t actually have nay rights. It makes us all look like assholes.

Regarding this incident, there’s also shots, hell, even one ON HIS BLOG, where he was in fact taking shots straight down at the receptionist. Like here: http://thomashawk.com/2008/08/more-on-whole-simon-blint-fiasco.html You can’t see any boob because of the cut of her shirt, but I can see why they’d ask him to stop. I’m sure given his general attitude, he refused to even change the angle he was using with the camera.

You know, if he wants to go that extra step, he should start taking some shots in the bathroom, maybe lean right under the stall doors, and see how that goes for him. After all, photography is permitted in the building *rolls eyes*.

Damn - even here every board has at lease one f**king troll

1 – He knows the law and how it pertains to photographers
2 – He’s not ‘sheeple’
3 – He doesn’t take any crap and stands up for his rights when they’re clearly being violated

In other words, when a person of low self-esteem, low intelligence and in a position of authority tries to push TH around on a whim (i.e. ‘I don’t like him taking pictures just because I don’t like it’) and TH knows he’s in the right, he stands firm. Granted, despite written policy Blint has every right in his position to ask people not to take pictures but as it was stated he didn’t even want to look at the pictures when TH OFFERED to show him (backed up by multiple witnesses) and instead Blint kept ranting and wanted to throw him out based only on his extremely limited knowledge (or how about ‘lack of’) of camera equipment and his miss-guided perception that TH was taking ‘cleavage shots’ of one of MOMA’s employees (which was disproven with the pictures posted). That’s piss poor customer relations at its best.

@ Steph Mineart – I’m pretty sure that if Blint approached TH in a professional and rational manner, things would have turned out completely different.

@ lane hartwell – If you look, TH has plenty of pictures of himself and his wife

@ Shanus – Amigo, you hit the nail square on the head

i’ve been in a very similar situation, accused of stalking women at a train station when i was photographing _everyone_ on the platform, and my self-righteous accuser turning away with disgust when i tried to show him the camera’s LCD screen - his mind was made up about me, and he just wanted to publically expose me for what he _thought_ i was.

it feels horrible, to be unjustly accused of what is, essentially, a sex crime. when accusations like this are made publically, ignorant of any evidence to the contrary, they become slander. SFMOMA and mr blint are lucky they’re not being sued for large amounts of money. because of his self-rightously ignorant handling of the situation, i’d say mr blint deserves everything he gets. SFMOMA, too, for parroting his accusation of illegally perverted behaviour in their official response ( http://www.sfmoma.org/press/pressroom.asp?id=371&do=recent ).

that’s not to say hawk isn’t a cocky, arrogant man … but that’s not illegal, and is even desirable in many situations.

That poor guy has his name and photo everywhere and Thomas hides behind a pen name and a camera.

My wife and I are photographers in Fort Myers Florida and you would think that taking pictures of vacationers on the beach or an engagement photo shoot would be as benign as possible. Here are some recent examples http://leapyearphoto.com/index.php/Galleries.html However, we too have had people say similar things, on a public beach!

I am not as confrontational as Mr. Hawk, so I don’t get into these situations to the degree that he does. However, I really appreciate that he is willing to stand up for his legal rights, and I use his experiences as a framework when I have my own security difficulties.

However, the thing that has struck me most about the hundreds of comments left here-and-there is that so many non-photographers just don’t understand what is involved in serious photography. And this misunderstanding comes across as fear.

People are afraid of a fancy camera being pointed in their direction. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, it doesn’t matter that the photographer is likely taking a picture of something completely unrelated. People get scared. And they respond by accusing the photographer of some sort of misbehavior.

In my experience, if someone comes up to me and asks what I am doing, I will gladly explain to them. I will tell them what I am shooting at, offer to let them see. If they listen, I’ll even start going into serious detail about things and have to shut myself up. Most people don’t care about long exposures and kelvin white balance.

However, when someone comes up and tells me “You can’t shoot here” or “you need to stop shooting this’ or “don’t take pictures of me”. When I know that I can, or I don’t have to, or I am not shooting pictures of you… well, that’s not a very nice approach, is it?

Unfortunately, it seems to be very common. And a lot of commenters think that the photographer is at fault, not the uneducated public.