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I was a threat to National Security yesterday: I took a photo in a public place.

This time I managed to avoid detection, slipping the pocket camera back into my bag before the SWAT team swooped into action. Others haven’t been so fortunate, as The Independent reported on Thursday:

November BBC photographer Jeff Overs stopped and searched while he takes sunset photographs of St Paul’s Cathedral.

November Andrew White, 33, is stopped after taking photographs of Christmas lights on his way to work in Brighton. He is asked to give his name and address.

August Police order trainspotter Stephen White to delete images of train carriages taken during a holiday in Wales. CCTV near an oil refinery monitored him taking the pictures and alerted local police. Mr White refused.

July Alex Turner, an amateur photographer, arrested under anti-terrorism laws for taking pictures of two officers as they question him for photographing a fish and chip shop in Kent. Later released without charge.

April Two Austrian tourists told to delete pictures of Walthamstow bus station. Unaware that police have no right to enforce deletion of images without a warrant, they comply.

I have been stopped twice; once outside a  shopping mall (where the CCTV boys had ‘caught’ me and sent an enforcer, even though I was standing on a public highway) and once along the Embankment. In one case, I was trying to make art, in the other,  wanting to celebrate my culture. Fortunately, unlike Mr Overs, I wasn’t trying to earn my living.

As Henry Porter in his Guardian blog today so eloquently puts it, this is an outrageous infringement of a civil liberty, and  – whether you’re a happy-snapper or a committed shutterbug – an issue that should concern everyone.

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Morning Run, originally uploaded by paulrutherford.

Been almost a year since I picked up a camera with a vengence (been discovering the delights of blogging, Facebook, Twitter, mobile computing – discovering my inner geek).

Out with Amber this morning, I slipped a Canon IXUS in my pocket, and started clicking as I ran along side her, with the gait of Groucho Marx.

She had a health scare recently, which makes me appreciate her all the more. Bizarre, given that when she first arrived I was the one person in the house that was ambivalent about the very idea of ‘dog’.

Now, I can’t imagine a home without her.

This is the shot of the set (most of the rest were of sky, back legs or grass). I’m sure purists will be a bit sniffy, but for a point-and-click, it’s OK.

(Oh; if you’re looking at this in the Flickr ‘National Trust’ picture group, the land does belong to the NT, so strictly speaking.. )

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You press the button; we do the rest.

Keep it with Kodak.

From the earliest days of mass photography (when George Eastman launched his $1 box camera), recording images has become a mass activity. The world has been ’snapped’ for almost 100 years, and we think little about the millions of images we see during a lifetime.

Perhaps once in a while a photo stops us short in the press – usually for its subject matter, very rarely for its technicals or its message.

Photography is everywhere, about as noticeable as air.

The Permanent Now

Its ubiquity has grown even further with the advent of the mobile phone. Go to any event, any place, and you’ll see people with an arm stretched out parallel to the floor, head slightly bowed,recording their presence to show their friends, possibly to post to a website instantaneously.

We’ve moved from the “I was there” to “I am here”. We no longer keep it with Kodak; we see it with Sony. Now.

The latest market statistic I can find is a global phone population of 2.7 billion; 950 million were sold last year. Being very, very conservative, let’s assume 50% of those has a camera.

The world has become one vast photo-journalistic pool, as shown by the instant images of the shootings in Mumbai.

My mobile phone has a 3.1 megapixel camera. When I compare its output to some of the family photos I have been scanning recently, the image resolution available today is far superior to the Instamatics and Polaroids of 30 years ago.

Good quality output is now in the reach of nearly everyone for just a few pounds.

Given that it’s so easy to record an event with a device that you carry at all times, why buy a camera at all? Indeed, if online media threatens the future of the newspaper, does universal ownership of mobile phones mark the end of the photographic era?

Not at all. Because the action of pointing a mobile phone (or, for that matter, a CoolPix or a IXUS or a CyberShot) is to photography as a painting-by-numbers kit is to the Sistine Chapel.

A Way of Seeing

Photography leads to a different outcome, a different quality of image. Much more importantly, it’s a different process. And it’s the process – not the lenses or the flashes or the pixel densities – that’s the real heart of the art.

Photography isn’t about taking pictures; it’s about making images:

Taking is passive. Making is active.

Taking is easy. Making is hard.

Taking is reactive. Making is proactive.

Taking is blind. Making is seeing.

There’s a myth, perpetuated by the camera companies, which pervades the subject of photography: Buying the latest model will result in better photos. Which is like saying a new release of ‘Word’ will make you a better writer, or a new pair of ‘Nike’ boots will make you a better footballer.

Once a format has become established (and one cannot underestimate the impact of 35mm – but that’s for another time) the choice of photo kit is 10% of the difference between a good image and rubbish. The rest is about looking and making choices.

The Eye of the Master

Consider Henri Cartier-Bresson, the man regarded as the father of modern photography. Even if you’re not that interested in the form, you will know of his work. They are some of the iconic images of the C20th – created in the following way:

- he used a Leica 35mm film camera body
- he usually used a 50mm ‘normal’ lens (no zooms for Henri)
- he never used flash (thought it was rude)
- he spent as little time as possible in the darkroom

In short, HC-B actively looked for pictures and made them with his camera. His art was waiting, anticipating what he called ‘the decisive moment’:

“The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression.”

The Zen of Photography

Dare I say, the act of making a photo is almost meditative. While ‘in the zone’ of actively looking, all else falls away. The baggage we carry is silenced. Attention focuses on the here and the now.

The camera lens is no more than a passive recorder of the world. It sees everything in front of it and makes no choices. Point and click, and you get it all: the tree growing out of a head, the shadow falling across the face, the distracting piece of litter in the foreground. And the fact that the subject always seems much further away than you remember…

I make no claims to be anywhere near Bresson’s standards. If he is Ronaldo, I am a man in a velour tracksuit on a Sunday morning kick-about.

But there is nothing more pleasurable than looking for a picture; choosing a viewpoint (higher, lower, to the side, turn around), composing the elements of the shot (the shapes, the forms, the textures, the colours), picking the moment to press the button – and knowing, in that 1/125th of a second, that you’ve got it.

For just that instant, you made the world just how you wanted it to be.

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Reading the paper this morning, I’m left with the feeling that the world is falling apart.

But if I’m honest, it’s a very self-centric view, one where I see the problems we face in the context of how it effects me and the people I know and love. And that’s not good: others have much greater issues to face than we do.

As the woes of the economic system take their toll, so there’ll be a great temptation to push some of the ‘other stuff’ to one side; the environment, child poverty, human rights – they’ll all slip down the agenda, being viewed as ‘luxury’ concerns while we worry about things closer to home – our home.

And as that happens, I have to remind myself that it’s not healthy; it becomes all-consuming in the worst sense of the term. These worries eat away at us, we become myopic, and lose all sense of perspective.

At which point, it pays to see the world through another’s eyes.

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