After a lot of digging, I think I’ve finally sorted through the confusion surrounding the city’s policy on photos taken in Millennium Park. Even the people running the park had a hard time separating the issues, so it’s no surprise the security guards I wrote about on January 28 were getting them mixed up.
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The second source of confusion is the requirement that professional photographers get a permit. Ed Uhlir, the city official who oversaw the park’s construction, says amateur photographers, especially tourists, are free to take pictures of the Bean, the band shell, the garden, the bridge–anything they want. But professionals have been asked to buy a permit–$325 a day for commercial photographers, $50 an hour for wedding photographers. I wrote on September 17 that the city insisted permits were necessary to prevent photographers from thronging the park, impeding the walkways, and blocking the public’s view with all their equipment.
As I noted in my January 28 column, the security guards have been prowling the park ever since it opened, telling professional photographers they can’t shoot without a permit. How do they distinguish pros from amateurs? “I think they have a general view of what a professional photographer looks like–it’s anyone with a tripod,” says Ron Gould, a photographer who had a run-in with a guard last summer. He and other photographers wonder why one professional photographer with a tripod is more of an intrusion than, say, a gaggle of tourists with disposable cameras. Why is a wedding photographer any more of an impediment than, say, the bride’s uncle, who’s shooting for free? Why is a wedding party subject to fees but not a high school graduation party or a bar mitzvah party? And if the point is to keep photographers from blocking the public’s view, why are security guards hassling photographers when the park’s almost empty?
So whose interests are being protected? As it turns out, the city’s–in a backdoor fashion.
It may seem strange that a public body is claiming a monopoly on selling images of publicly owned art in a publicly owned park. But that’s probably one for the courts.
