Posted by: Dale Franks on Sunday, June 18, 2006 For the first time in several years, The Lovely Christine and I were able to go to the San Diego County Fair. We'll pay for it tomorrow, in terms of the work backlog we'll have to clear, and the pictures we have to process, but we were glad to be able to go today. The fair opened late last week at the Del Mar Race track, which doubles as the county fairgrounds.
It tastes wonderful. Also wonderful is the deep-fried garlic-battered artichoke hearts, the deep-fried Dutch funnel cakes, the deep-fried twinkies and snickers bars, and the fried chicken (with skin, of course). Are you beginning to see a common thread in the food preparation procedures at the fair?
I'm not perfectly satisfied with this photo, for reasons I'll explain in a bit.
Like the bungee jump, most of the rides on the midway seem to consist of different ways of spinning people around along three axes. It seems that the point of the fair is to bloat yourself with masses of fried foods, then get on rides to see how your meal looks coming back the other way.
This also highlights why I'm not, at the end of the day, really happy with the bungee-jumping picture. when you shoot the bungee jump, not only is the jumper moving, but you're also moving the camera to track the jumper. As a result, if you don't use a high shutter speed, it's impossible to get a usable picture, because everything is blurry. Stationary things are blurred because the camera is moving, and the jumper is blurred because he's moving. In order to get a picture, you have to freeze the action. But, that means that the jumper is frozen, too, so you don't get the dynamism, or sense of motion. It's unavoidable, but the resulting picture is more boring. But this does point to one of the mistakes that beginning photographers make, which is, when shooting a moving object, like, say a helicopter, they are afraid of motion blurring, so they shoot at a shutter speed so fast that it freezes everything. You can make the picture more interesting by slowing the shutter speed down some, so that you get motion blur in the rotor blades, while keeping the rest of the picture sharp.
The Lovely Christine was off on her own taking pictures at one of the booths, which sold jewelry. When she did so, the owner, a very large woman, came out of the booth and began yelling at Chris. The owner demanded that Chris erase the picture of her "copyrighted jewelry designs". Keep in mind that this woman is displaying her jewelry in public, and on public property. Chris told the woman "no", and began to move away. the woman grabbed Chris' arm, and yelled at her, "Taking pictures of my jewelry is a copyright violation, and you will erase that picture!" Chris got kind of freaked, broke away, and came over to me, where I was just out of earshot. The first I knew anything was amiss was Chris coming up to me and grabbing my arm, immediately follwed by with this woman shrieking, "I'm gonna call security and have you thrown out if you don't erase that picture!" The woman then began yelling at me that Chris took a picture of her copyrighted jewelry. Being a people person, I said, "So what?" "That's a copyright violation!" she yelled. "Uh, no, it isn't. You're displaying it on public property. You can't prevent people from taking pictures!" "Oh yes I can! You can't violate my copyright!" She then moved off, yelling, "Security!" Since were standing by a side door, Chris just went out the door. I followed her, and asked why she left. Chris said that she was afraid of being thrown out of the fairgrounds, and she wanted to take more night pictures. I went along, but after a little bit, I convinced her that she had done nothing wrong, and that no one was going to kick us out of the fairgrounds for taking pictures. Since there was more stuff to take pictures of in the pavilion, one of which was the lamp picture above, we went back to finish taking pictures in the display hall. We worked our way through the stuff we hadn't seen in the hall, and ended up back to where we were when the woman first went ballistic. As soon as the woman saw us, she yelled, "Yes!" She immediately grabbed two sheriff's deputies who happened to be strolling by at the time. As we approached, she was gabbling at the deputies that she wanted us thrown out of the fair and pointed at us. One of the deputies motioned us over and I walked over. The deputy asked what the problem seemed to be. The woman yelled, "They took a picture of my jewelry!" To quote Douglas Adams, both deputies began looking at her as if she'd just asked them for a weasel. One of the deputies said, "Uh...so?" "And they refused to erase the picture! I demand that they erase the picture of my copyrighted jewelry!" Both deputies looked at the woman as if she'd just asked for a lightly grilled weasel, with fries. "Ma'am, you're displaying your jewelry in public. Are you saying that nobody can take pictures of your jewelry?" "Yes!" "Well, ma'am, people can take pictures of anything they want. You can't prevent people from taking pictures." The woman, looked at the deputy in stunned silence for a second, then said to the two sheriff's deputies, "I still want security here right now!" Because, you know, if sworn law enforcement officers aren't doing what you want them to do, it's time to pull out the big guns: unarmed security guards. The deputies looked at each other for a second, then one of them told her, "OK. Then go get 'em." "Aren't you going to make them erase the picture?" she asked stunned. "Ma'am, people can take pictures of anything they want." Then one of the deputies asked me to step aside, and explain what was going on, while the other one stayed to talk with the woman. I told him what happened, and added that it doesn't matter if her jewelry is copyrighted. As long as we don't use the picture for commercial purposes, her copyright hasn't been violated. And in that event, her cause of action would be a civil claim in federal court. It wouldn't be a criminal or state matter in any case. I then added that, if the lady really wanted to call security and cause a problem, then we would press charges for assault, since she physically grabbed Chris. I said it was the end of the day, and we were about to leave anyway, but if we were gonna be escorted out by security, then we would press charges, and she would be escorted out in handcuffs. If she wanted to play games, we were more than willing to play games. At about that time, the other deputy came over, and said, "She's upset because they took a picture. And she's a bitch!" He looked over at Chris and I and said, "Sorry, I shouldn't've said that." The deputy I was talking with said, "Look, just go on with what you're doing. We'll talk to her and tell her that she can't stop people from taking pictures, and that she certainly can't physically assault people, or she'll to jail. Sorry about this, folks." So, we went our separate ways, and the deputies went back to talk to the woman, a conversation that it didn't appear she was enjoying. It was just a wierd end to an otherwise good day. For that very odd and aggressive woman, I'm sure it was a deeply disappointing end, too. She was so sure she was going to have the deputies confiscate our cameras, or force us to erase the pictures, and throw us out of the fair, only to be told that, not only would be keeping our pictures, but unless she calmed down, she might be going to jail. I can only imagine—and savor—her deep disappointment. Some people are frickin' strange. |
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