The LAW

I’ve been meaning to tell you guys about a strange dinner date I had with some college girlfriends awhile ago.  Believe it or not, it was not my friends that made it strange.

We arrived at a restaurant, had great food, better conversation.  We only get together a couple of times a year, so it’s always lively conversation with a lot to catch up on each time.

The cafe we went to is an internet cafe of sorts, some patrons were working on laptops, most others were having dinner with friends or relatives, much like we were.  At the time we arrived, the place was bustling.  About two hours later as we were still talking, the crowd had thinned out considerably.  In fact, there were very few people still there.

This is Angie, she was sitting across the table from me.

This is Anya.  She was sitting across the table from me and next to Angie.

And this is Gina.  She was sitting next to me.

Am I setting the stage?

Unfortunately, one of the patrons who was still at the restaurant was sitting alone at a table right behind me.  I was relatively unaware of him because my back was to him.  But when this guy would get up from his table, the girls sitting across from me would say, “Geez, guy, wanna pull up a chair?!” and those type of comments because it seemed to them like he was listening to every word we were saying.  They felt his proximity to us was a bit on the awkward side.  In retrospect, maybe we should have just moved tables to any number of vacant spaces in the place.

So, imagine my surprise when I turned to snap the photo above of Gina when the guy said, “Excuse me”.  It took me a minute to realize he was talking to me.  This was the first time I saw him.  The gentleman went on to tell me that I was violating the privacy of everyone in the restaurant by taking pictures.

I was a little bit shocked.  He went on to say that it was a type of law, he thought.  According to him, it was ok to take pictures anywhere outdoors, but it was a violation of some type of law to take pictures indoors?

I told him I wasn’t aware of any kind of policy or law against taking pictures in restaurants, for example.  I didn’t argue with him, I was just asking him about this “law”.  And then, not having any details, he ended by saying, “Well, I guess I would just request that you not take my picture.  Thank you very much.”  And I told him of course I wouldn’t take a picture of him.  I had not even seen him the entire time we were there, so I wasn’t about to turn around and take his picture.

Well, that really left no where to go in our conversation with the girls.  We just wanted to laugh and talk about how weird the previous moments had been.  So we just got up and left.  A pretty anti-climactic end to an otherwise good time.

And then when I got home, you know I googled information about indoor/outdoor photography laws!  And what I found was this: any place you are free to enter you are basically free to shoot.  Exclusions apply to places where someone would have a reasonable right to privacy such as a doctor’s office.  There were no indoor/outdoor distinctions that I could find.  For example, if one was to camp outside of someone else’s private bedroom and take pictures, that would be a violation of someone’s right to privacy.  And it would be criminal.

Ah well, now I’m semi-educated.

You know when you replay a conversation in your head, wishing you would have said something else, something different?  I never wanted to get into a heated argument with this guy, but I did feel like I had the right to capture moments with my friends in pictures.  And afterwards felt a little bit cheated.

Maybe he was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing or he was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.  Maybe he was a wanted man with arrest warrants outstanding afraid he’d be caught when my photos surfaced on national television!

Or maybe he was just a grump.  An outspoken grump.