Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

I just got off the phone with Terry Carter from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. Carter contacted me regarding my run in with Securitas security guards (pictured to the left) down in Carson at the BP Refinery month before last.

The call was friendly enough. Carter assured me that his call was a courtesy call and that I was not in any sort of trouble. His main concern was asking to make sure that I harbored no ill will towards the United States Government.

I assured Carter that I harbored no ill will towards the U.S. Government that I was a proud American, etc.

We talked for about 15 minutes over the incident. Carter said that Securitas reported that they asked me and a friend not to take photographs and we ran away from them and jumped into a black SUV. I explained to Carter that this was not how the incident went down, that we spent a good 15 or 20 minutes talking to the security guard, but insisting on our rights to photograph the refinery. And only left after that.

I gave Carter my blog address which he asked for. I suspect I won’t be hearing from the FBI again over the incident.

Update: Apparently I got the agent’s name wrong. It’s Terry Carter, not Chris Carter as originally reported, my wife just called me from home and told me that he’d stopped by the house earlier today and left his business card asking me to call him.

“I think it’s very dangerous for a free society to have all the information distilled and packaged by our government and given to us. Do we know to this day who we killed in Iraq? I don’t think so. If bringing war into the living room means that we as a people will say we don’t want to do it that way anymore we want to figure out other ways to solve these conflicts, then I would say that photography and television have done us a great service.”

- Michael Deaver, former Deputy White House Chief of Staff

An interesting article in the NY Times yesterday about photographing the coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers. According to the NYT, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered a review of a military policy which prohibits the media from photographing the coffins of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen.

From the NYT:

“He said he was ordering a review of the military policy that bars photographers from taking pictures of the return of the coffins, most of which are coming from Iraq and Afghanistan and go through Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. He also set a “short deadline” for a decision. The military has said the policy is meant to protect the privacy of the families of the dead soldiers and maintain dignity. But skeptics, who include some families as well as opponents of the war in Iraq, say that the bodies in the returning coffins are not publicly identified, so privacy is not an issue, and that barring photographers is a political maneuver meant to sanitize the war.

The policy was put into place in 1991 during the first Gulf war and was renewed by the Bush administration as recently as a year ago when, Mr. Gates said, he raised the possibility of changing it. He said he was told — he did not say by whom — that allowing photographers would put undue pressure on families to go to Dover themselves and that in some cases that would be a hardship.”

My own personal opinion on this one is that you have to put the privacy of the families of these soldiers up against the broader rights to a free press and free speech. Given that there is no identifying information being photographed on these flagged draped caskets, I’d probably lean towards having this rule by the military overturned.

One thing that has been troubling to me about the war in Iraq is how restricted a free press has been. The quote above comes from former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Michael Deaver. Deaver said that in the documentary “American Photography, A Century of Images.” In that documentary Deaver talked a lot about how restrictive photography has become for war reporters.

Many cite the gut wrenching imagery coming from the Vietnam war as being a large part of what eventually ended that war. Even more than video, still images can evoke a power that is unmatched. A naked napalmed girl running down a road. A Buddhist monk lighting himself on fire, Eddie Adam’s famous image of an execution of a Viet Cong. These images leave an indelible imprint on our emotions and thinking.

Having learned how the opposition to the Vietnam War used these images, the current U.S. Military has been far more restrictive with photography in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to prohibiting photographs of things like caskets, the U.S. Military has been even more restrictive on the battle field.

In an article by Michael Kamber and Tim Arango in the NYT, they dig deeper into the pro-censorship policies of the U.S. government asking the question why are there 4,000 U.S. deaths and only a handful of images. In that article they report on the story of Zoriah Miller, a war photographer who took images of marines killed in a suicide attack and then faced tremendous professional repercussions from Maj. Gen. John Kelly who worked to have Miller barred from all U.S. military facilities throughout the world.

From the NYT:

” “It is absolutely censorship,” Mr. Miller said. “I took pictures of something they didn’t like, and they removed me. Deciding what I can and cannot document, I don’t see a clearer definition of censorship.”

The Marine Corps denied it was trying to place limits on the news media and said Mr. Miller broke embed regulations. Security is the issue, officials said.”

Seeing coffin draped caskets may make us all feel uncomfortable. But sometimes that’s what good photography is supposed to do. It’s supposed to make you feel uncomfortable. What do you think? Should the U.S. Military begin allowing photographers the ability to photograph flagged draped caskets of U.S. soldiers?

Helpless from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

A fantastic time lapse tilt shift beach video done by Keith Loutit.

Last week I reported on the continuing controversy regarding Shepherd Fairey’s iconic image of President Barack Obama. The Associated Press had declared copyright over the image that Fairey used to make his HOPE image and now in a pre-emptive strike, Fairey has filed a lawsuit seeking to legally have his art declared as fair use.

From the NY Times:

“Mr. Fairey’s lawyers, including Anthony T. Falzone, the executive director of the Fair Use Project and a law lecturer at Stanford University, contend in the suit that Mr. Fairey used the photograph only as a reference and transformed it into a “stunning, abstracted and idealized visual image that created powerful new meaning and conveys a radically different message” from that of the shot Mr. Garcia took.

“Fairey did not do anything wrong,” said Julie A. Ahrens, associate director of the Fair Use Project and another of Mr. Fairey’s lawyers, in a statement on Monday. “He should not have to put up with misguided threats from The A.P.” Paul Colford, a spokesman for The A.P., said on Monday that the agency was “disappointed by the surprise filing by Shepard Fairey and his company and by Mr. Fairey’s failure to recognize the rights of photographers in their works.” “

It will be interesting to watch how the courts rule on this one. Still in question as well is whether or not the A.P. even actually own copyright on the original image given that photographer Mannie Garcia took the image without any contract with A.P. and is not an employee or even a freelancer for A.P.

See update below for a response from Summertown Sun Publishing.

Flickr user Dazzlecat (the account is closed now) wrote a blog post yesterday complaining about censorship of her photostream and images by Flickr. Apparently, according to Dazzlecat, she had posted some public domain photographs to her Flickrstream. Now this would seem a perfectly acceptable thing to do to me, but apparently some publishing outfit called Summertown Sun (publishers of Luna Girl Images) sent flickr a take down notice and so Flickr permanently deleted Dazzlecat’s photos.

Dazzlecat, upset at being censored on Flickr, made another new protest piece with the phrase “Summertown Sun Publishing Sucks,” in it and complaining about them reporting a public domain photograph to Flickr. Dazzlecat said this protest piece was then also removed by Flickr and that she got a flickrmail from Omar saying:

“Hello, dazzlecat!

 Hi dazzlecat, 

In joining Flickr, you agreed to abide by the Terms of
 Service and Community Guidelines. Specifically, you must 
not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate 
other Flickr members:

 http://flickr.com/guidelines.gne 
. We’ve removed the content, “SummertownSun Publishing
Sucks!”, from your photostream. Please note that similar
 activity may result in the termination of your account
 without warning.

 Regards,

 Omar

”"

Now, maybe it’s just me, but somehow I don’t think that there is anything wrong with exercising your free speech rights and saying something sucks. In fact saying something sucks is about as American as Baseball, Apple Pie and Thomas Jefferson or something like that. I don’t think something sucks is harassment, I think it’s freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

I also think that sometimes when you try to censor people that you only make their voice louder. By putting Summertown in the headline of my blog which has reasonable Google pagerank this story will likely be on the first page of their Google search results for their company name for a long time.

As far as Summertown Sun’s imagery, it seems that much of their imagery is of stuff that really is in the public domain. They have a painting by Vincent Van Gogh on their home page right now for example. But they mostly seem to specialize in Victorian and other imagery which clearly would be beyond any copyright period. Just because they’ve gone through the work of collecting public domain art and have a site selling it on the internet, doesn’t mean that they ought to be able to prevent other people from using the same images. At present, anything published before 1923 is in the public domain in the U.S. As many of the images sold on Summertown Sun’s site are marketed as from the Victorian Period (from June 1837 to January 1901 per wikipedia), probably just about everything in their Victorian collection is part of the public domain.

Which raises the question here is Dazzlecat really harassing Summertown Sun Publishing? Or are Summertown Sun Publishing and Flickr harassing Dazzlecat?

I’ve posted the same image that Dazzlecat posted (and had removed from her Flickrstream) to my Flickrstream and we’ll see if Flickr decides to censor me or not in this case.

Update: Summerstown Sun Publishing responds:

Mr. Hawk: You have our permission to post this letter on the condition that you include it in its entirety with no editing.”

Normally I’m not really big on extended warranties. Most of the time I find them to be too expensive and something that I never use. Oftentimes when you buy a technology based product, by the time it breaks, technology has advanced quite a bit and you’re in the market for a new product anyways. But there is one place that I make an exception for me personally and that is for a camera warranty.

On both my new Canon 5D Mark 2 as well as my previously purchased Canon 5D I bought a three year extended warranty from Mack Camera. There are a number of reasons why I bought these warranties. First and foremost I use my camera very heavily. I’m sure much more than the average consumer. To the extent that warranty prices are made of averages, in general, I’d say if you plan on using something much more than average you might want to consider a warranty beyond what the manufacturer provides.

I use/used both my old 5D as well as my new 5D Mark 2 every single day. I put far more wear and tear on them than average.

Another reason why I bought warranties on both of my cameras is that both cameras were pretty expensive when I bought them — between $2,000 and $3,000 at purchase. If I’m buying a $100 tech toy, a warranty is probably not necessary. But if I’m buying a camera this expensive, I like having the insurance, so to speak, in case something does go wrong. Digital cameras have *a lot* of moving parts. There is a lot of room for things to go wrong.

I will say that when I bought my original Mack Camera warranty on my old 5D, in the back of my mind I wondered how well it would be handled if I ever had to use it. Certainly I took far more frames on my old 5D than the 100,000 rated frame life. By the time I sent it back to Mack Camera for repair it really was on its last legs. It wouldn’t power up. I couldn’t shoot any photos faster than 1/250th of a second. The internal battery was dead. I was missing most of the screws in the bottom of the camera. It was pretty much toast.

I’m happy to say that despite my heavy, heavy use (some might even argue abuse), Mack Camera did a fantastic job handling my camera and honoring their original warranty. Other than a $10 charge to pay for shipping, I did not have to pay any money associated with my repair order. Mack Camera consistently kept me in the loop regarding my camera. They could not repair the camera there at their shop due to corrosion that had taken place inside the camera, so they sent it back to Canon for repair.

And then last week I received my repair back from them. It wasn’t my old 5D, it was in fact what looked like a brand 5D or a maybe a refurbished one — but whatever the case it was in *great* and near perfect condition. I’m assuming that as broken as my old camera was that it was simply cheaper to send me a new or refurbished unit than to actually repair it.

I was very pleased with the service and communication received from Mack as well as the end result from my experience with a warranty with them. I’m glad that I got another Mack Warranty on my new 5D M2, and I’d highly recommend Mack to anyone else considering an extended warranty on their digital camera.

It’s not every day that we get to say “good job” and thanks for the great service to a company. Most of the time we’re (or at least I am) happy to bitch about things when they go wrong, but sometimes things don’t always get the same attention when they go right.

I wanted to write this blog post up on Mack Camera today because I think it is an example of a company doing things right and I was pleased with how they handled my repair order.

I’m also going to take a few minutes later today to repost this positive experience over at reseller ratings, where people can rate their experience with Mack.

If you want to find a dealer to purchase a Mack Warranty on your own camera, you can do so here. I know that Mack Warranties are available on most, if not all, cameras from both Adorama and B&H Photo at the time of purchase. Also, as a reminder, if you order a warranty from Mack, make sure that you register your warranty on their web site within the first 30 days of purchase.

On another note, I’ve gotten lots of inquiries regarding my old Canon 5D and whether or not I’d want to sell it. I think that I’m going to keep it though. As much as I *love* my new 5D M2, I think having a good back up body is important and my old 5D is an excellent backup body. Also my wife likes to go out shooting with me a lot and it will be nice for her to use the 5D instead of my old 10D that she was using before.