Post the Times/Places you have been asked to put your camera away!

I was in the playground at one of the major parks in the city with my wife, daughter and friends who also have young kids. There is a huge climbable castle with with rope-ladders, slides, ramps, hanging-bridges, etc. - brilliant place for shooting candid snaps of the kids with a medium telephoto. I notice a woman giving me a funny look, and look back at her as if to say, "Yes, it is indeed a camera." Then I turn away and continue shooting as my daughter is at the top of the slide. Minutes later she comes running over and reaches for my camera and starts yelling I had damn well better stop taking pictures of her son. I am like - "What son? Where? Thats my daughter I'm photographing, see?" She doesn't believe a word of it, and it takes intervention from my wife and her friend to convince her I'm actually not a pervert or something after her son. Like everyone else has been saying, its got to be the white lens that does it. I think the tendency to view photography with increasing suspicion is really sad.

Dermit wrote in post #4740156
When out of seemingly nowhere a park ranger comes driving up, quite fast, and parks between us and the car. He gets out and starts firing off questions like, why are we there?, who are we shooting for? Does the car belong to one of us? Is the girl in the car a professional model? and on and on.

Some scenic places have instituted restrictions because they were getting overwhelmed with photo shoots. Wedding parties, in particular, are always in search of nice locations and can spend 30-60 minutes on pictures. It doesn't take many weddings to spoil a weekend for the people who just wanted to get out in the park.

But there's also a greed component. I work for a consortium of small colleges. One of the other colleges has a very beautiful campus, and they've figured out that they can make money by charging photographers an arm and a leg to shoot. I'm told that if you walk onto their campus with a camera, security will quickly show up and try to stop you. I haven't tested it personally (I wish I were on their faculty; it would be fun to have security try to tell me I wasn't authorized to be there!).

My own "he must be a pervert" story didn't result in me being asked to stop. I was at my daughter's "family fun night" for grade schoolers, and there was some wonderful light. I shot all sorts of kids partly as practice and partly because they were photogenic. Some were my daughter and her friends, others were strangers.

I noticed a woman looking at me a bit oddly, but I ignored her. After a while, the principal came up to me and told me that a parent had complained, saying "I don't want my kid's pictures posted on the Internet." But the principal told her to back off because I was a parent myself (I suppose it didn't hurt that my wife teaches at the school.)

I thought of several things I would have liked to say to her, starting with "Don't worry, lady, your kid isn't cute enough to be worth photographing." But actually, if she'd confronted me instead of trying to bring in the authorities, I probably would have asked her which kid was hers and then deleted those shots.

I was approached by DC metro guards just before rush-hour on a Wednesday in the DC Metro L'Enfant Plaza stop. They told me that I was being watched because I was taking pictures of the station and the trains and if I took anymore pictures that they would have to take my camera and give me a fine.

Just behind the guard there were 2 people with a PS and one with a camera phone taking pictures, but were not asked to stop!

1988, I'm visiting the Cambridge University campus when a guard starts yelling at me. I had set up my AE-1 with 28mm lens on a cheap $30 tripod so that I can make a record of my visit. He takes me to the administrative office, and explains that before I took any more pictures, I had to register my personal information, and sign a statement that the photos would not be for commercial use. Apparently, the tripod was the tip-off that I must somehow be a "pro".

A few years ago, I'm taking photos of my children during a concert at the local music conservatory. As usual, no flash, and I have my 5D and 70-200 f/2.8IS. Notwithstanding the warning at the start of the concert that flash photography would not be permitted, a parent sitting nearby snaps off a flash photo with her p&s. At intermission, a guard approaches, and tells me I shouldn't be taking photos. This year, the music director asked me to be the official photog for the concert. Before the concert, I approached the head of security, and graciously asked her for help in letting her staff know that I would be walking about taking photos for the school. They went out of their way to be accommodating. It pays to be nice.

Today, I'm at a public dog park with my two Samoyeds. I'm shooting images of my dogs in action with my 40D and 100-400IS lens. A half-hour into my shooting, a woman approaches me and asks whether I have obtained permission to take pictures of people. My response: "I am not taking images of people, but images of my two dogs at play. The people are only getting in the way, which is why I use this big lens to crop them out." She left with an embarrassed smile.

I'm more and more convinced that I need to get the 70-300IS DO lens for my future travels, particularly overseas. Either that, or my DSLR kit stays home in favor of my G7 p&s.

Somewhat off topic, but I recently came across this humorous and heartening video on Youtube of a guy who traveled the globe taking videotape clips along the way of himself and the locals dancing (there's even one of him dancing in front of a border guard on the Korean DMV zone). It reminds me that not everyone in this world is camera-shy or obsessively uptight about having their images taken: http://www.wherethehel​lismatt.com/videos.sht​ml