Shoot first ask questions later!!!
Up untill now I have been really good about asking to photgraph than shooting. My attitude has recently changed. This change took lots of coaxing though. It first started about 3 years ago when I was shooting an old barn off the side of the road. i was on the side of the road shooting into someone elses pasture at an old barn. I had my 8x10 out and just finished firing off two 4x10s (in this case I didn't ask due to me being on the side of the road and I had no idea who owned the barn(no houses in site)). At this point a truck came up and asked me 1.What I was doing? 2. Why am I pointing that thing at their property? 3. And My mistake, Why is my tripod leg over their fence? Well I went and explained that I was taking a photo of their lovely barn and field. 4. Why would you want to take a photo of that barn? Well, i like the asthetics of where the sun is hitting the barn, and the stubs from last years corn sticking up out of the snow. They continued to say that tey wanted the negs and I wasn't entitled to the photos due to my tresspassing. I said that was not true and just continued packing up. Long story short I have a beautifull photo of a place that One Tripod leg TRESPASSED.
Just recently, I wanted to shoot an old mill that is near where I live. Its beautifull. Most of it is redone, but there is some of the old mill barely standing. I went and talked to the building manager and politely asked if I was allowed to pass through the fenced in area as long as there where no locks or other things keeping me out. The building manager was supprisingly generous and even showed me a map of places I could go and places I could not go. I went on my merry way and took a couple of shots.
A month later I had some people interested in comming up to shoot mills with me. I went on and called the Manager of this mill and let him know I was going to be there.
We showed up and there where locks on all the gates and tape around holes that used to be in the fence. Luckily there was a maitenece man around and he let us in and we where able to shoot. That is where the first shot came from (Mill 3s).
The next mill we went to I had been to many times and just stayed on the boundries. There was plenty to shoot without going past the NO TRESPASSING. No one ever bothered me. This time I saw a hole. It was late in the day (400) and the light was burning away. I figured I would, with two other people pass through the hole. This brought us to the burned down (10ish years ago) part of the mill. I was walking along and noticed that there was a flicker of light bouncing off of somthing inside the mill. The door was open and we went in. This is where we found the last few shots of the day. (Mill 1&2) They where beautifull. Half the building was gone and let all the sunlight in from the side and lit the place up like a kalidescope. BEAUTIFULL. Well the sun started going down and we decided to get back to the cars. When we returned the security guard had just asked the shooters that stayed on this side of the fence to just make sure that they ask before shooting next time.
Everywhere people are trying harder and harder to keep you out of places 9x out of ten the awnser when I ASK is a big "NO". For some things I think it is just polite to ask (someones house, farm, etc..). But for others just "Shoot and ask questions later" .
Sorry about my ramble. It has kinda been eating at me. I would be interested to see others point of view of this matter. Also some images reguarding this matter would be nice.
Cheers Tim
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