Anyway, had a lady think I was taking shots of her while smoking. I was shooting the building. She walks over asks who I work for and why I'm taking pictures of her. (I was across the street on a public sidewalk)
That reminds me of something a little unusual that happened to me once, although it's slightly off topic. I was sent out to get video of several buildings in DC. We needed looooooong shots, at least three minutes each, so I basically just ended up standing there with the camera rolling. I had a bunch of them to do, so I basically was trying to get one good long shot of each and jump in the car to head to the next one.
I set up across the street from one of these buildings, on a sidewalk where there were no restrictions whatsoever on shooting. About two minutes into my shot, a woman came out of the building, walked into the street where she would be in my shot, walked right up to the camera, stood there with her arms crossed to block my shot with her body and started giving me the third degree.
Say, here's a picture of that woman:
Now you can more easily picture the exchange along with me.
Now I was going to have to start over, and I was already running behind, but she wouldn't get out of the way to let me get my ONE LONG SHOT and leave. I told her who I was and whom I represented, and she started asking me who had given me
permission to shoot the building and why I hadn't checked in with their security before shooting from that public sidewalk. Then she threatened to call my company to make sure I was who I said I was (even though I showed her my company and Senate credentials). She was one of the rudest people I ever encountered in DC, and that's saying a lot.
Now, you're thinking,
that's not unusual. Everybody has stories of people who don't know any better trying to tell you where they can and can't shoot.
Except that the building was the CBS News bureau in DC, and that woman was Janet Leissner, the bureau chief there. Of all people, she should have known better.
After she was gone, the guy with me said, "How would she react if we blocked one of
her photogs' cameras on a public street?"
