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Ban On Photographing Near Gulf Oil Booms
boombaard writes "The day before yesterday CNN's Anderson Cooper reported that, from now on, there is a new rule in effect, which de facto bars photographers from coming within 65 feet of any deployed boom or response vessel around Deepwater Horizon (official announcement). The rule, announced by the US Coast Guard, forbids 'photographers and reporters and anyone else from coming within 65 feet of any response vessel or booms out on the water or on beaches. In order to get closer, you have to get direct permission from the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans,' while 'violators could face a fine of $40,000 and Class D felony charges. What's even more extraordinary is that the Coast Guard tried to make the exclusion zone 300 feet, before scaling it back to 65 feet.'" Read below for the Coast Guard's statement on the new rule.
"The Coast Guard Captain of the Port of New Orleans has delegated authority to the Coast Guard Incident Commander in Houma to allow access to the safety zones placed around all Deepwater Horizon booming operations in Southeast Louisiana. The Coast Guard Incident Commander will ensure the safety of the members and equipment of the response before access is granted. The safety zone has been put in place to prevent vandalism to boom and to protect the members and equipment of the response effort by limiting access to, and through, deployed protective boom."
how exactly is this a ban? 65 feet seems a more than reasonable safety barrier and what photographer is going to say "shit, 65 feet, better leave as can't take photos at that range".
What a crappy title. 65 feet ( 20m ) doesn't bar photography "near" a boom, it keeps idiots from bumping up against it. Unless photographers are using 1970 Instamatics, this should provide no obstacle to any serious photographer.
which de facto bars photographers from coming within 65 feet of any deployed boom
Which bars ANYONE from coming within 65 feet of any deployed boom so that they dont break the boom.
FTFY
That's odd, none of the official documents say anything about photographers. The poster even fits in a quote mentioning photographers explicitly, and words it so that if you're not paying attention it implies that it's an official quote. This is sensationalist journalism at its best. Why are photographers trying to get that close anyway? With my consumer-grade camera I can take a close-up portrait of someone from rather further away than that.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
I'm a hobbyist photographer and videographer, and I've been hassled for ID before when shooting in a public place. I read plenty of stories about photographers being harassed improperly, and reading the article I don't think this is one of them. They started at 300ft, which was silly, and scaled it back to 65ft when called on it. Leaving aside the who and why, 65 feet doesn't make this stuff hard to photograph. Even with a 200mm lens on a digital SLR (especially crop sensor) you can get very serviceable shots of "what's going on" at 65ft. Professional press photographers on assignment usually have a healthier complement of lenses than that, before considering telconverters, cropping in on the subject and so on.
If the story is something highly specific to do with equipment and handling of it then perhaps you need an even bigger lens or to be closer to the subject. But if you're taking shots of how they're laying out booms, who's involved and so on, 65ft isn't a big deal at all. Seems like a not unreasonable tradeoff to keep people from getting under the workers' feet. The subjective standard I'm applying here is does the restriction make it likely we'll not find out something that the public interest demands should be disclosed? No, it really doesn't.
Really? This is a /. worthy story?
Starting to be ashamed to be a member. What happened to tech stories and stuff?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
This is being used to hassle anyone coming near the site, 65 ft or not.
Perhaps you could give reputable examples so we could decide for ourselves. For the record, I consider Fox news a remarkably poor news site even by US standards and I consider Daily Kos below Fox News in terms of integrity and reliability.
No, that doesn't solve the problem. With distance comes additional wave peaks; any one of them can occlude the view. All you'd get would be a sharp photo of the intervening wavefront. Not the boom. It more depends on the height above the water of the camera when the photo was taken. Which in turn shouldn't be a huge problem -- it isn't like the photographers will be out there in canoes.
I suspect there's something going on here - some damage that occurred, or an injury - that they're trying to prevent from recurring. It's vaguely possible they're covering something up... perhaps the state of wildlife at the booms, or collection of heavier crude around the booms... but since you can take perfectly horrific shots on the beaches, I just don't see what the benefit to them would be to try and cover up those kinds of things, so I tend to doubt it.
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A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
The official announcement was that the exclusion area was 20 metres, not 65 feet. I would have thought that most people reading Slashdot would be able to do the conversion -- if not, go ask a six year old how to do it. Good too see that the US forces are starting to think metric.
There's something below Fox News in integrity? That's very difficult to imagine - even Cthulhu has some principles.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It also means a lower angle on the ocean, which may well mean that it's harder to see the oil.
I totally agree with the points you made. The obvious thing of course is to simply get a higher angle, by either getting onto an object on the beach, or by getting onto the roof/upper deck of a boat you are in. Sixty five feet really isn't that far.
Is it as good as getting a shot from 1 foot of the object? Not at all. I totally agree, but I can sort of understand why they don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry to go bungling around booms and things meant to STOP the oil.
Great for Journalism? No.
Great for folks wanting to brush this under the carpet. Yes.
Great for the cleanup/relief effort? Hopefully.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Where the hell is the editorial review? The title and summary of the slashdot article have nothing to do with the linked article. Do you people not read the linked articles? What a waste of time.
Oh stop. This is photojournalism, not Ansel Adams. I routinely take pictures of little bitty sea birds and dog sized otters standing on my boat with a 400 mm telephoto. A fucking big oil containment boom isn't going to present much of a photographic problem. If you really want to go artistic with your 16 mm wide angle and get your nose next to the thing, go find some place where the cops aren't and get your creative juices going.
I rather doubt that the Coast Guard considers athestics as part of the rule making process.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Boats? Fine. Why are they banning photographers from taking photos from the shorelines?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Don't bother with that tripod at sea, unless it's gimbaled and stabilized. Youtube has some videos where the camera was tripod mounted. You get better results with handheld equipment. Gyros and such cost more money than even professionals are likely to spend, unless the photographer is specialized in open water shooting.
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I agree. 65 feet is nothing. Only 21+ yards, and being out at sea, you can have a pretty big boat rolling in the waves right next to some journalist's 15' POS. That could get dangerous. Also remember this is coming on the heels of the hurricane that just blew through the Gulf where the seas were pretty rough. My guess is that they had quite a few close calls this last week with the bad weather.
There is no reason vessels should be so dangerously close to equipment. 300 feet makes much more sense.
As for picture quality, a good camera can capture very high levels of detail at 300 feet.
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Three words:
Safety
Zoom Lens
This isn't surprising at all. All it takes is some idiot to get his prop tangled in one of those, or an angry idiot to vandalize it, to make it even more useless. There are a ton of zoom lenses capable of spanning 65 feet to get a picture.
Climb up high on the boat, put a zoom and polarized filter on (to get through surface reflections on the water) and take the picture.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
While that's true, they used to be a lot more objective, not to mention more literate, than they are now. Newspaper journalism was the last to slide but it's followed TV and internet into the wholly partisan, shiny-bytes toilet.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
65 feet is only a couple of boat-lengths. That's pretty close. If I was working those booms, I'd be worried about any boat that close running over or afoul of the boom.
So photographers are limited to 65ft. How close can other people get? Is that still 300ft? My guess is that reporters are belly-aching because they can't get close enough to dip a gloved hand into the oil and show it to the camera.
I'd have to agree, 65 feet with a decent lens should not be an issue. They make temporary rules like this to keep people out of somewhat dangerous conditions and out from under toe when the clean up crew needs to make quick changes. It's not like these reporters are standing around the sidewalks beside a couple of collapsed buildings while the rubble is being removed. They are on a boat which is constantly fighting the currents of the open ocean while trying to get close for the best shots; this situation has potential to lead to reporters getting in the way and possibly causing a mid-ocean collision or worse, personal injury or death. They have the right to request further access too so I don't really see an issue with the Coast Guard's decision.
OK. Pre June 28, team of photographers went to gulf. They presented their trip at TEDx Oil Spill conference in DC, along with other speakers. Afterwards chatted with Darron Collins (WWF, one of that team). He definitely confirmed that at beaches, anyway, BP asserted legal jurisdiction, had "blackwater" looking security guys hanging around - AND KEPT THEM 100 FEET AWAY FROM WATERS'S EDGE. Also, fishing boat captains who took up BP's offer to sweep oil, manage booms, etc. had to sign a gag order agreement on talking about anything and could not take non-BP-approved journalists along. All clearly intended to control information that would make BP look bad or not be "on message", to adopt a bushism. They managed to find one guy with a skiff who had no love for BP to run them around some. Also a seaplane was hired for aerial photos. I imagine that BP wants more restrictions imposed after an early flurry of "unauthorized" media coverage - but a FELONY? Anyway video of conference here http://tedxoilspill.com/live/#Session1 - look at about 32 minutes in and go on from there. Also from that conference was impressed by slide of Blue Crab Larvae with accumulations of oil/dispersant? (orange blobs in words of researcher at Tulane who sent slide to Darron just before conf. Screen captures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fly_geyser/sets/72157624410128020/) Potential economic impact, not to mention crimps on "shrimp on the barbie" events of basic food chain life forms, is significant for American food supply. We are talking the biggest food marketing system on the planet here - VERY good reason to control the flow of info if you can't control the flow of your crude blowout. Sir, we/ve established motive.
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