thechrisproject photography

New York and Philly Contact sheets are now up.  These are the last two of my five trips in the past few months.  I’m ready to stay home for a while.  

Previous three contact sheets 

A photo of mine is up at the @600 page. The concept was simple: have photographers from around the world take a picture at the same time.  That time was synchronized using internet time.  For me, @600 was in the morning, and the morning of November 4th was a morning of anxiety and hope.  Mostly anxiety.  Rather than conceive something grand I just decided to do my best to treat it like any other day and just take a picture of my morning routine.  

Check out the page, there is a lot of nice work by photographers that are much better than I am.   

stuck 02 is out with a new website, shipping options, and a bunch of photos. 

I take my camera pretty much everywhere. I would venture that most people that know me expect to see a camera around somewhere. I can’t remember the last time someone asked me not to shoot something.

 The officials at my polling place were VERY VIGILANT AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY. As soon as I walked in I was told that I couldn’t take pictures. I kept my camera out but didn’t shoot. Then I was told again. The third person I asked why. He said that only accredited media could shoot in the polling place. I asked why. He said that I’d have to get permission from every person to shoot them. I said, “But the media wouldn’t ask permission.” He replied that the media wouldn’t show people’s faces. I said that they probably would and told him that I understood I was not to take pictures. I did leave my camera out. Before I left the woman in charge came by to make sure again that I was not taking pictures. She made it abundantly clear that she was in charge of that place and that she wouldn’t take any sass from anyone.I asked the one person who had conversed with me like a human, Mr David Cobb, where I could find the rules and such regarding this mandate, since I actually did look for them beforehand. He gave me the number for the Government Accountability Board. It is (608) 266-8005.Also, I cannot deny that my camera may have gone off whilst being handled.

I guess I’d like to add something: I’m not a righteous crusader for photographers rights.  I believe in them, but taking pictures is way more important to me than civil disobedience.  If you follow my stream, you’ll know that I take thousands and thousands of pictures of people without asking (my stream is about 1/100th of what I shoot).  I do not make it a point to exercise my right to photograph by being loud about it, or even obvious at all.  I’m not intrusive.  I’m not like, “Here I am, exercising my rights in your face so maybe you can try and stop me and I can make a fuss about it.”  I respect people who do that, but that’s not me.  So to be told not to shoot was a little shocking.I suppose it comes down to privacy. I did see someone remarking that it’s a right to publicity issue, but I really don’t think so. (I’m not a lawyer) I do think that someone has a right to privacy while voting, and that there is a reasonable expectation to privacy while voting. But not while standing in line, or talking to officials, or while standing in the taped off “election observer area,” which was, by the way, kind of surreal and I wish I had a picture of it to show you.

Hin Chua was interviewed for pause| tobegin. See the video here: pausetobegin.com/blog/2008/10/30/pause-to-begin-multimedia-hin-chua/

I think I found it via Bryan Formhals, but he broadcasts on so many channels that I can’t be arsed to check them all right now to verify that.