Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.