.S.P.I.C.E.

Yesterday I was caught photographing my OWN campus from accross the Lake by a policeman. Now there was an inconspicous sign there in marathi saying that Lake photography is not allowed. The damn fellow wanted my camera for custody or 300 cash without reciept. I guess you all know what option I went for.
Also the day I took the Marine Plaza snap, I was planning to take a snap of Queen’s Necklace, and this BrihannaMumbahi Nagar Palika( Mumbai City Administration) van catches up and says that I am not allowed to take snaps there either and at one end of that 7.5km drive there is a sign which says that. I got off that one saying that you should put those sign at prominent places and not at one end of that 7.5 km stretch, but still that fellow was yelling that I should pay more attention to signs.

Now the main problem is that how are we the Photo-enthusiasts supposed to know about such obscure rules ? In India, I’ve been to a lot of museums who dont have a proper information brochure of collectible standards ready for purchase, but they do have a NO PHOTOGRAPHY rule in application. The same rule applies in Malls and other hangout places.

I dont see whats the problem anyway? I am giving a free advertisement to those who visit my blog, I am only enticing more people to go there and visit the DAMN place. A photograph can replace a 10000 words. What are these guys afraid of ? That the pic will look so yucky that no one will come at all ?? Some places you get to take pictures after paying the local authority, but the question is that that pic is still illegal !!!

I see Tom @ ZoomVienna covering the City of Vienna beautifully. I wish I could do that to Mumbai.

If you want daily life check Zee’s blog. He missed the photobloggies, but he’s good at daily life.

-Thakkar
PS: As a corollary I also suffer from the fear that many of us may be violating many trespassing and such laws unknowingly… So I am just taking it one day at a time and pleading ignorance whenever I can..

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 3rd, 2005 at 1:09 am and is filed under Junk Thought. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.