I've heard that there is such a thing as a "tripod permit" in NYC, but my search of the nyc.gov pages hasn't turned up anything. Does anyone know who/where to contact to get one of these? I'm not a pro or anything, but I do alot of shooting in New York and I think it's at least worth looking in to. Thanks.
Send $75 to my office for Upstate New York. I think David Goldfarb is handling the city these days. But if you can't reach David, Mr. Bloomberg can still hook you up:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/html/pe...download.shtml
http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/html/index/index.shtml
Of course you still have to pay the usual street gangs and thugs. Be careful...
I think if you use common sense and avoid trying to set up on a busy sidewalk at rush hour you get away with it for the typical 5-10 minute outdoor shoot. But it all depends...
Last edited by Frank Petronio; 11-Nov-2006 at 05:22.
Wow! I guess I am a country bumpkin! A permit to set up a tripod?!
Once I saw a young man trying to set up a tripod to take the very original picture of the tall narrow skyscraper down on the Broadway... He didn't even open the tripod and already had a policeman visiting him. "Do you have a permit...?" It was a no no from both sides after.
On the other hand, once I went in Bronx with my tripod in a tripod case, getting plenty of admiring attention from those guys on street, some meaningful smiles too. They thought I had a gun in it and was brave enough to go public. I never took the pictures from that park when I noticed it was the local drug shop... Speak about bravery.
If you want to shoot in midtown or downtown or on a busy sidewalk, you should get a permit. If you're in the Battery Park area or in the downtown parks along the river, you'll likely get some attention from the park police, who will usually let you go once you've established that you're not doing commercial work, but it doesn't hurt to have a permit. In Central Park you're okay without a permit--lots of commercial and non-commercial shooters there all the time, as well as bird photographers. In Grand Central Terminal, ask the Station Master for a tripod permit, which will let you shoot between rush hours. Above about 96th St. in Manhattan or in the other boroughs, you usually can get away without a permit, if it's just a camera and a tripod and no other lighting equipment (and even then, I've seen lots of small scale fashion shoots and low budget film shoots going on, probably without permits).
David's comments are right on. I just want to add that the permits are location and day specific. There isn't a permit that lets you shoot anywhere anytime forever; they don't work that way. You'll need to specify where you're planning to shoot, the day you'll be shooting and the approximate time--though you can put multiple locations/days on one request. Though it's easy enough to get one, if it isn't a commercial shoot or a busy location I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Just thank your lucky stars you don't want to do a shoot in Jersey City or Hoboken.
Land of the free........my arse. We don't need permits in public places in the U.K. Who trained your city authorities, the Russians?
Pete.
I think you don't need it in Moscow either...
If you trip on the sidewalk in London, can you sue the city?
In New York the permit thing is all about liability. You used to have to show proof of insurance for a permit, but they've loosened up that requirement in the last few years. Now you just have to release the city from liability.
They're also making it harder to sue the city for accidents. Now property owners are responsible for the sidewalks in front of their property. Just a few years ago and for many years before that, the city was responsible, so long as someone reported a flaw in the sidewalk before the accident. As it happened, personal injury lawyers grouped together and sent people out to inspect every sidewalk in the city of New York and compiled a thick book annually listing all the flaws and cracks in city sidewalks, and gave the city a copy of the report as a "public service." There was no way for the city to keep up with all that sidewalk repair. If you were injured on one of those cracks, you had a case, and such cases cost the city millions of dollars a year.
A sign of the true freedom?!Originally Posted by David A. Goldfarb
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