[aurele]

Have the cop go back to the women and tell them not to flatter themselves so much. They aren't worth the effort.

AH AH AH ! nicely said !

[Brenda Lee]

What blows my mind is that anyone can carry a camera around and take a photo using their phone these days. And the photos coming out of phones these days are pretty darn good! No one even looks at that as odd or unusual behavior......people taking photos with their phone cams.
However get out the DSLR with the big lens and people are hassling/questioning your motives sometimes instantly.

Really if I was up to suspicious or indecent behavior would I use the obvious black shiny camera with the big lens or the concealable one that is in my phone or pocket?????

I thought this exact thing at the mall yesterday. You could whip out your cell phone and take a picture of some cute shoes, but whip out a big camera, and you're bound to be made aware of the "no photography" rule.

[RioRico]

I thought this exact thing at the mall yesterday. You could whip out your cell phone and take a picture of some cute shoes, but whip out a big camera, and you're bound to be made aware of the "no photography" rule.

That's because security 'tards are like vegetarians, who only object to eating animals that they notice. Never mind the myriads of creatures not obvious to the naked eye that they devour daily. Similarly, NO PHOTOGRAPHY really is suffixed with something that looks like a camera. Back in the day, I loved my weird little Canon Dial 35, a half-frame (135/HF) camera with a wind-up spring-driven motor drive and a truly odd form. I'd carry an old SLR over my shoulder and shoot with the Dial 35 -- it looks sorta like a gonzo light meter. If anyone bitched, I'd just say that I was checking the light.

Pioneering photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt said that one secret of his success was that he was "a little guy with a little camera" and generally escaped notice. Modern media maven Xeni Jardin, not exactly inconspicuous, shot at least one extensive still-and-video news series on Guatemala with a tiny P&S a few years back. Just another tourist, eh?

At an outdoors factory-outlet-store mall near Sacramento a couple years ago, a security 'tard stopped me from shooting with my Sony DSC-V1, which DOES look like a little camera. Same place, same day, no rent-a-cops stopped me from using my equally-shiny, tiny flat Olympus 770-SW. One had a protruding lens and the other didn't. So their rule is actually NO PHOTOGRAPHY with anything that sticks out.

The moral of this story is: When in doubt, don't stick out.