Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Photographers, railways and consistency of policy

As I mentioned a few months ago, the current security paranoia prevailing in the UK is making life very difficult for people whose hobbies happen to include photography. While the rights photographers have in law when taking photographs in and around public places are fairly clear and laid out in this excellent summary which everyone should read, people like me who like taking pictures of railways and, in particular, the London Underground have a rather more confusing time. Railway stations are private property, so the owners can impose more or less any conditions they want within reason. Historically, the main rule concerning photography on and around the Underground and the main line railways has been one of common sense. Personal photography - no problem, but don't get in the way of other people, no tripods without the express permission of the station manager, and absolutely no flash because it blinds drivers. If anyone asks you to stop with a good reason or asks what you're doing, be polite. Professional photography, photo shoots, filming and anything else were a completely different area and obviously required advance permission.

Then came the last few years. Notwithstanding the fact that these common-sense rules had generally served people just fine for a very long time, including through a lengthy and unpleasant campaign of terrorist violence lasting from the 1960s to the 1990s, all kinds of bizarre clampdowns and rule changes started happening as a collective mood of paranoia gripped the nation, characterised by weaselly excuses such as "Well, you can't be too careful" and "Of course, terrorists could make use of those photos for planning an operation". After a number of unpleasant incidents involving railway enthusiasts minding their own business being turfed out of stations, threatened with the police and generally made to feel like criminals, it became clear that this decades-old understanding was now At An End. The growth in the use of private security firms rather than railway staff didn't help this, as undertrained security guards with little understanding of railway culture started throwing their weight around.

Still, I thought. London Underground have a sensible policy, which is more or less exactly the one described above. You can see it here on their website. Personal photography is fine, no flash, no tripods, anything else requires a permit. The usual rules. Ambling around there with a camera shouldn't be a problem, right? Well, no. The LU Film Office's FAQ states that "anybody wanting to film or take pictures must seek prior permission from the London Underground Film Office". I found myself shouted at at great length (rather incoherently - I could hardly understand a word of it) over the PA at an LU station a few days ago for taking a photo of a platform sign with my D200, so emailed the Film Office to ask what the actual policy in force is. They were apologetic and helpful, and offered to issue me with a free photography permit for use in future. However - (a) permits only last for a month, and renewing them is going to be a lot of hassle for me and extra work for the Film Office who probably have better things to do, and (b) all a permit entitles you to do is to ask the Station Supervisor with slightly less chance than usual of them saying "no".

I suspect that what caused the tirade was the fact that I was using my digital SLR. Now, point and shoot cameras don't generally work well in the Underground where flash isn't allowed, as their low-light performance just isn't up to that kind of work. If you want bad, fuzzy photos then that's fine - go ahead and use a digital compact (I find them a lot more convenient a lot of the time), but if you want to be able to reliably take sharp photos at handheld shutter speeds it's hard to beat a DSLR and a fast prime lens. However, merely being in possession of such an artifact doesn't make me a professional photographer who needs the permission of the Press Office to be there.

This is becoming a real problem for railway enthusiasts across the board, and I've decided that I'm going to attempt to collect incidents of railway photographers and other enthusiasts being hassled while doing things which were always perfectly ordinary and harmless in the past. By doing this, I hope to to be able to develop a coherent picture of the situation to encourage the relevant authorities to to work with, rather than against enthusiasts and ensure that their staff are also made aware of what is and is not permitted.

If anything like this has ever happened to you, then please do drop me a line with the details (when, where, who was involved, what rules were cited, what the outcome was, etc) and I'll add it to the files.

Posted by mpk at February 5, 2006 10:20 PM