PhotoDude.com

Fri. Jun 04, 2004

PhotoTerrorists Strike Back

On May 22, I wrote, “Imagine what will happen if they try to tell New Yorkers they can’t take pictures on the subway. There will be a web site created devoted to nothing but pictures taken on the subway. It will become a big joke.”

Well. That didn’t take long.

“How can they ban photographing unusual sights aboard trains and in stations?” wonders [Mike] Epstein, who operates Satan’s Laundromat, a website dedicated to “urban decay, strange signage, and general weirdness.” “What about when someone boards the 1 train with bags full of fully inflated orange and red balloons that almost exactly match the colors of the seats: Do they really expect me to keep my camera in my pocket?”

You bet. The MTA’s move to stop the shooting of unauthorized pictures or video has pissed-off everyone from photobloggers to subway advocates and free-speech activists. To show their opposition to the ban, a group of photographers plan to gather at the main information kiosk in Grand Central station this Sunday, June 6, at 1 p.m. They’ll fan out across several train lines, shooting photos throughout the system in a peaceful demonstration.

Village Voice: “Forbidden Photos, Anyone?”

It turns into a really good article about “street”/subway photography (“In street photography, and I consider the subways to be part of the street photography framework, it is always a given that at some point someone is going to bitch at you”), and NY photobloggers (“The largest impact will probably be on amateur photographers like us. It’s sad, because it would be hard to find a group of people who love New York or the New York City subway system more than us”).

And the closing cincher?

Enter the villagevoice.com Forbidden Photos Contest

Submit your own digital photos of the New York City subway for a chance to win a $100 gift certificate to the New York Transit Museum Store Online or five $20 Metrocards.

Email digital photos in jpeg format, no wider than 620 pixels and no larger than 100k to subwayphotos@villagevoice.com by July 9, 2004 for a chance to win.

It isn’t a law … yet. But I think you can see the kind of respect it would get.