Ban On Photographing Near Gulf Oil Booms 435
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."
huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
65 feet does not bar photography (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
FTFY (Score:1, Insightful)
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
Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Seems like a non-issue, RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
oh lord (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? This is a /. worthy story?
Starting to be ashamed to be a member. What happened to tech stories and stuff?
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:take a look around fark's politics section (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
secondly why the hell should workers be being interviewed, they are supposed to be cleaning up the mess not standing around yapping to the press.
20m, not 65 feet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:65 feet does not bar photography (Score:5, Insightful)
Bumping against, hell I think they're mostly worried about photographers who have never been out in a boat before, piloting a zodiac [wikipedia.org] and parking it right in front of a moving fishing boat who is deploying said booms, unaware that fishingboats aren't particularly fast, nor do they have breaks. Q.E.D.:
Idiot photographer parks zodiac in front of fishing boat
Fishing boat runs over zodiac
Coastguard has to send out a ship to take care of idiot photographer, further stressing the thinly spread coastguard
BP profits (somehow)
Re:20m, not 65 feet (Score:3, Insightful)
The US military has been doing things in metric for decades; it's taking the press a while to catch up. My favorite was when I read a story in which a soldier was talking about something being "about ten clicks [sic] down the road" and the reporter helpfully explained that "a 'click' is military slang for about three-fifths of a mile." No, klick is military slang for a kilometer, which is a unit of measurement well understood by anyone with more than half a brain, and which does happen to be about three-fifths of a mile, but certainly isn't defined that way! The thing is, I suspect the reporter knew perfectly well what a kilometer was (and if he didn't understand "klick," he could have, you know, asked) but felt that it was necessary to dumb it down for the presumed audience.
Re:take a look around fark's politics section (Score:4, Insightful)
There's something below Fox News in integrity? That's very difficult to imagine - even Cthulhu has some principles.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
again, you're focusing on the distance being a factor for safety - that has nothing to do with it. Really, it doesn't. Take that part of the concept out of your brain for a moment.
Now look at what's left - a felony for being too close to something?
Have you never seen news reporting on a crime near where it's occurring? You know, like interviews during military deployments? This has nothing to do with safety.
Re:huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:20m, not 65 feet (Score:3, Insightful)
Terrible summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:20m, not 65 feet (Score:4, Insightful)
The point is that the actual original policy, DESPITE being US policy and regarding a US event, was given in metres.
I only understand metric, but I'm no unit Nazi - I'm happy to whip out google and type "x feet in metres" so I can visualise in my head how far that is (not very!). But the point is that things should always be reported in the units of their source. If the original source said 20 metres, it should be reported as 20 metres. Otherwise what you have is only an approximation and not accurate.
The whole issue could be avoided though if /. submitters simply used both. E.g:
"20 metres (~65 feet)" (if the source was in metric); or
"2 miles (~3.2 km) (if the source was in US units)
That way it's clear what the actual source said, but also saves people doing conversions. Win win.
Re:20m, not 65 feet (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that precision gets lost in the conversion. I'm sick of seeing news reports that claim something like "The accident may cost over £658,891" when what they're actually doing is reporting too many sig figs on an ass-sourced "$1 million". Or "PRECISELY 91 CENTIMETERS" when the source was "feh, about 3 feet" and a meter would suffice.
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
I rather doubt that the Coast Guard considers athestics as part of the rule making process.
Your wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Boats? Fine. Why are they banning photographers from taking photos from the shorelines?
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
This rises some questions about the wisdom of the whole concept of a felon, specifically the "no voting" part. It seems a very convenient way of ensuring that only people who think and act like those in power are allowed to have political influence.
Re:So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well as CNN explained in the video, the boom is laying everywhere so the 65 foot distance effectively blocks cameramen from capturing images of the oil-soaked islands/reefs along the cost, or the oil-soaked birds struggling to survive. In other words, it prevents the people of the US, from seeing the damage that has been caused.
And we deserve to know because it's OUR country, not BP's country or the government's country. That's the whole purpose for freedom of the press - so the people will stay informed rather than remain in the dark. "The liberties of a people never were nor ever will be secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." - Patrick Henry, Virginian
Re:huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, maybe, be a pro and do what you should have from the beginning - ASK THE COAST GUARD FOR PERMISSION BEFORE POTENTIALLY INTERFERING WITH A CRITICAL OPERATION.
Now if the CG consistently denies permission to everyone, including seasoned pros with lots of credentials (think Joe McNally, Dave Hobby, or people of that caliber), then it's a story. If they deny requests from 95% of "photographers", half of whom are from the "mom picked up an SLR and now she's starting a photography business with it despite no knowledge of shutter speed and aperture", I'm still all for it.
This is a story? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:take a look around fark's politics section (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Limiting access of (specificially) photographers (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:So? (Score:2, Insightful)
40-weight whitewash (Score:2, Insightful)