Which just goes to show that there are too many people in
councils/companies/public institutions with time on their hands :-)

More seriously I have found that many places I want to shoot require permits
of one sort or another. The problem is the time and overhead of getting such
permits. It adds substantially to the lead time and cost of a project.

Examples

- Canary Wharf is in fact private property. Security will stop you.
- London Underground requires application for a permit and will then charge
?250.00 per hour for the right to a professional to take photographs. The
permit explicitly forbids the photographing of buskers, down and outs,
attacks on staff etc.
- Business parks are often private property. I was given permission in one
case because I was a student, then asked to provide photography for free for
PR/Annual report usage.

I usually find that the security folks take about 30 minutes to find you. As
I use a view camera  and spend a lot of time "pre-visualising" I find that
they arrive just a few seconds before I am ready to press the release. Its
most frustrating.

There seem to be several things going on here. Partly its a concern about
security. Partly is a concern about safety and liability. But its also about
image control as organisations like the tube and the business park operators
become overly concerned about presenting a super squeaky clean image. A
security guard at Canary Wharf told me that a photographer had shot a nude
model against 1 Canada Square, and that was why PR want to control
photographers. Shock horror. Why anyone should think that it reflects badly
on Canary Wharf rather than the photographer/publisher I havent the
foggiest.

This creeping busybodyism, and, I think, a certain greed to extract a profit
from each and every activity, is present in many organisations these days.

Paul Freeman
www.architecturalimages.co.uk






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