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Disney Thinks Photographers Are Terrorists

Posted on April 11, 2010 // 97 Comments

One of the things I’ve always admired about Walt Dis­ney World is that it always seemed to be very friendly to pho­tog­ra­phers. Dis­ney has plenty of inter­est­ing photo spots marked in its parks to help vis­i­tors know where to get a good per­spec­tive for their pho­tos. There are plenty of staff pho­tog­ra­phers around to cap­ture moments at some of those photo spots, so nobody has to get left out because they’re tak­ing the photo. If you go on some of Disney’s thrill rides, they have cam­eras that cap­ture you on the ride, often dur­ing the peak of action.

Pho­tog­ra­phy is a hobby of mine. The var­i­ous theme parks and tourist attrac­tions offer some rich visual treats that make for great photo sub­jects. I was inspired to go shoot high dynamic range (HDR) pho­tos at Down­town Dis­ney tonight by look­ing at the work of Trey Rat­cliff. He taught a photo work­shop in Tampa a cou­ple of months ago and I went to learn his tech­niques. Trey has some excel­lent images of Walt Dis­ney World and I wanted to see if I could cap­ture some of that magic. Seri­ously, click that link and check out his excel­lent work.

HDR pho­tog­ra­phy is essen­tially a prod­uct of mix­ing together mul­ti­ple pho­tographs of a sub­ject taken at dif­fer­ent expo­sures, from dark to light. As a result, you end up with a pho­to­graph that has the right level of expo­sure through-​out the scene, much like your human eye would detect. Cam­eras, unfor­tu­nately, don’t see light the same way we do. In order to make sure those pho­tographs match-​up with each other, you take the pho­tos on a tri­pod in a burst of exposures.

Unfor­tu­nately, I found myself on the unset­tling end of Dis­ney Secu­rity this evening while tak­ing pho­tographs of the House of Blues at Down­town Dis­ney. While tak­ing pho­tos, I was approached FOUR times by Dis­ney Secu­rity. Every time, they wanted to know why I was tak­ing the pho­tographs and expressed con­cern that I was with “the media.” I assured them that this was my hobby and I was tak­ing the pho­tos for per­sonal use and they would go away. The fourth time was a bit dif­fer­ent, though.

Pre­vi­ously, only one secu­rity guard would approach me and we’d have the same dis­cus­sion. On the fourth and final encounter, I was approached by sev­eral guards and their man­ager, Don. I don’t know Don’s last name, since Dis­ney only puts first names on their name tags.

I explained to Don that I’d been approached three times pre­vi­ously. He said that he knew. All of those guards worked for him and they had apprised him of their dis­cus­sions with me. I asked Don why he approached me and he said that there were com­plaints about me. He never said what com­plaints he’d received, though, and never brought up com­plaints again. I strug­gled to think what I could’ve done to cause com­plaints. My pho­tos were of build­ings, not peo­ple. I didn’t ask any­one to move or change a thing. In sit­u­a­tions like that, you just sit and wait for the best moment to take your pho­tos. After all, every­one else has just as much right to be where they want. One mid-​Eastern fam­ily asked me to take their pic­ture and I obliged. I kept my tri­pod near walls or other struc­tures that weren’t in the path of pedes­trian traf­fic. Basi­cally, I can’t fathom what com­plaint he may have received.

Don is a bit of a fast talker, but it takes him a long time to get to his point. He dances around the issue and tells me of his respon­si­bil­ity for secu­rity. He wants infor­ma­tion, such as my name, where I work, why I’m tak­ing pho­tos and seems to want assur­ances that I won’t be using the pho­tos for com­mer­cial purposes.

By this time, I’m get­ting fed up with the inter­rup­tions, but I remained calm and polite. So did Don. Hop­ing to show him that I’m not there to cause any prob­lems, I offer up some infor­ma­tion in hopes of appease­ment. I shared my first and last name. I let him know the name of my employer. I told him the city where I lived. Bear in mind that I was under absolutely no oblig­a­tion to pro­vide him with any of this infor­ma­tion, but I wanted to be cour­te­ous and thought, as with the pre­vi­ous encoun­ters, he’d be sat­is­fied and go away.

In fact, Don told me that he was sat­is­fied that I wasn’t there for com­mer­cial pur­poses. I explained HDR pho­tog­ra­phy and he said that he had a pass­ing under­stand­ing of it. I showed him exam­ples of my pho­tos, hop­ing to set his mind at ease that I was just a harm­less guy tak­ing pic­tures of the House of Blues.

That seems to be the turn­ing point. Don started prod­ding me for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion while con­grat­u­lat­ing me on being so coöper­a­tive and putting his mind at ease. At this point, I asked him why he would need my ID. He expressed con­cern about my archi­tec­tural pho­tog­ra­phy pos­si­bly being used by ter­ror­ists. He never used the word ter­ror­ist, but his impli­ca­tions were unmistakable.

I couldn’t believe it. I kept my calm demeanor, but I told him that his con­cerns were non­sense. Dis­ney is one of the most pho­tographed places on Earth. You can view the place in great detail from satel­lite on Google Earth. There are thou­sands, if not mil­lions, of pic­tures of Walt Dis­ney World on the Inter­net and pub­lished in books — many by Dis­ney itself. It is absolutely ludi­crous to think that my pho­tos are going to be the ones that sup­ports terrorism.

Don said he under­stood all of that, but should the worst hap­pen, they wanted to know who was tak­ing photos.

Sud­denly, I’m not a vis­i­tor or a guest at Walt Dis­ney World any­more. I’m sus­pected of ter­ror­ism. He wants to know who to accuse of a hor­ri­ble crime because of some pho­tographs. That’s not the Dis­ney expe­ri­ence you see in the commercials.

At this point, I let Don know that I’m not com­fort­able pro­vid­ing him with more detailed infor­ma­tion about me. He’s never told me where that infor­ma­tion will be recorded. He’s all but directly accused me of being a ter­ror­ist and, quite frankly, I don’t see how hand­ing him my driver’s license is going to thwart the ter­ror­ist attack he’s gen­er­ated in his mind. I told Don, twice dur­ing our con­ver­sa­tion, that I’ll be happy to leave the prop­erty if he feels I’m some sort of threat. Don tells me that if I don’t pro­vide him with more iden­ti­fi­ca­tion that he’s going to call the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

It’s frus­trat­ing to deal with this kind of men­tal­ity. Pho­tog­ra­phy is not a crime, even on pri­vate prop­erty. At best, all a secu­rity guard can do is ask you to leave the prop­erty. They have no right to tell you that you can’t take pho­tographs, con­fis­cate your cam­era or other prop­erty, or even lay a hand on you. For­tu­nately, Don didn’t try any­thing phys­i­cal at all. How­ever, his demeanor def­i­nitely changed once I declined to give him my license. His approach changed from the friendly, but con­cerned secu­rity man­ager into one of threats and intim­i­da­tion. While he repeat­edly told me that he was going to call for a deputy if I didn’t pro­vide my ID, I couldn’t help but won­der exactly what crime he was going to report to the deputies.

My plan for the evening was to shoot my pho­tos and have din­ner at House of Blues, but Don had def­i­nitely turned me away from want­ing to give any busi­ness to Dis­ney that night. I had also planned to renew my Annual Pass to take more HDR shots in the parks, but I can only imag­ine more intim­i­da­tion and humil­i­a­tion from Dis­ney Secu­rity as a result. After roughly twenty min­utes of deal­ing with Don, I told him that I was just going to leave. He was wel­come to walk with me if he was concerned.

Don fol­lowed me, as did another uni­formed guard, Eugene. Dur­ing the walk out to my car, Don was on the phone call­ing in more guards and, I pre­sume, the Sheriff’s office. By the time I arrived at my car, at least two more guards swiftly arrived on bicy­cles, a cou­ple more had walked up, and there was a Dis­ney Secu­rity car.

I took my time walk­ing out. I took my time putting my gear away in the back of my car so he had plenty of time to let the deputy arrive, but I never saw one. While I packed up my gear, I asked Eugene if this hap­pened often. He didn’t respond and seemed some­what uncom­fort­able. I men­tioned that he prob­a­bly wasn’t allowed to say any­thing and he told me that he just pre­ferred not to speak. That’s under­stand­able, since his boss was right there. Eugene moved from Mary­land to Orlando and started work­ing at Dis­ney eleven years ago. We talked a lit­tle about the weather and he men­tioned that he liked the cold, but Dis­ney was here. I can appre­cate that Eugene wanted to work there. Maybe it’s still “mag­i­cal” for him.

While I was pack­ing up, I over­heard Eugene on the phone. Although I don’t know who was on the other end of the call, I pre­sume he was speak­ing to some­one at the Sheriff’s office. Don said that he asked for my name and I was unre­spon­sive. Well, that was a bla­tant lie and I told him it was untrue. I reminded him that I’d given him my full name, where I lived and even where I worked. Don seemed annoyed. It was bad enough that he lied about that (I under­stand that lying to the police is a crime), but then a few min­utes later he told the same lie again. Clearly, this guy was work­ing the phone to make me look like as bad as he pos­si­bly could. A few lies here or there were prob­a­bly OK if it helps catch a ter­ror­ist; per­haps that’s how he ratio­nal­ized it.

Once I closed the car I told them I was ready to leave, unless they planned to detain me against my will. Don said they wouldn’t do that and I was free to go. He then instructed the sev­eral secu­rity guards around me to take plenty of pic­tures and get every­thing. I found this some­what ironic. I’m sure that I was cap­tured on secu­rity video while on-​site. Don’s guards likely took pho­tos of me, my vehi­cle, my license plate and prop­erty. Then I drove off slowly and a Dis­ney Secu­rity car fol­lowed me until I left the property.

There were plenty of peo­ple at Down­town Dis­ney with cam­eras, rang­ing from cam­era phones to point & click to dig­i­tal SLRs. I can only pre­sume I was sin­gled out because I had a DSLR (Nikon D700) on a tri­pod and took my time tak­ing pho­tographs. This hap­pened around sun­set and I took mul­ti­ple shots from dif­fer­ent angles, watch­ing the light and wait­ing for crowds to pass. To the aver­age secu­rity guard, I can only pre­sume this makes me “sus­pi­cious.” I find it inter­est­ing that Don was con­cerned about my archi­tec­tural pho­tog­ra­phy (which really wasn’t the point of my images, but so be it). If I had been tak­ing pic­tures of other guests, would he have instead accused me of a sex crime? I don’t know.

My Dis­ney expe­ri­ence was one of false accu­sa­tions, threats, intim­i­da­tion and humil­i­a­tion. When a cadre of secu­rity guards care­fully walks some­one out of the park, peo­ple look. They assume the worst about you. I’ve heard that all Dis­ney cast mem­bers are empow­ered to make sure a guest has a “mag­i­cal” expe­ri­ence. That pol­icy must not extend to some­one with a cam­era and a tripod.

Here’s what I’ve learned from the encounter:

  1. Appease­ment doesn’t work. You don’t know what is going to set them off, so it’s best to just stay quiet.
  2. Remain calm & polite. I could’ve become as indig­nant as I felt, but I think that would’ve just taken me down a more annoy­ing path and I didn’t want to con­tinue ruin­ing what started out as a lovely evening.
  3. Follow-​up. I’ll be writ­ing to Dis­ney man­age­ment to learn and under­stand why I was singled-​out for harass­ment and if I should expect such behav­ior in the future.
  4. Lis­ten. Bet­ter to let them reveal infor­ma­tion and intent than for me to share infor­ma­tion. See #1.
  5. Share. Ulti­mately, we need to keep this mes­sage alive. Harass­ment of pho­tog­ra­phers is not pro­vid­ing any secu­rity. If there’s some­one out there with ill intent toward Dis­ney, they aren’t going to go out with an expen­sive cam­era and a tri­pod to draw atten­tion to them­selves. They’ll show up with some bud­dies or a fam­ily to look things over. There’s no indi­ca­tion at all pho­tog­ra­phy was used in any other high pro­file attack, so they prob­a­bly won’t even have a cam­era. If we’re going to stop this asi­nine behav­ior from the secu­rity indus­try, we need to con­tinue com­mu­ni­cat­ing about the stu­pid­ity of their actions.

On the bright side, I was treated very well at Portofino Bay. Din­ner at Mama Della’s was outstanding.

Filed Under: Disney, Florida, Orlando, Photography // Tagged: , , , , , , ,
About William

Author, Photographer and IT Manager. I have a fondness for chocolate. I also own Suburbia Press and Aperture vs Lightroom.

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  • http://www.kellyverdeck.com Kelly Verdeck

    I’m sorry to hear that the mad­ness has spread to WDW, or at least to that par­tic­u­lar secu­rity crew. I’ve always shook my head at reports that secu­rity and author­i­ties has­sle pho­tog­ra­phers because they could some­how be tak­ing pic­tures for ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties. As if there aren’t already a mil­lion pho­tos of every angle of every con­ceiv­able civil­ian tar­get on the Inter­net! Any­way, I’m sorry you got has­sled and I think you han­dled it as well as you could have. I’d be very inter­ested in an update on what you hear back from man­age­ment, if anything.

  • http://tjpowell.net T.J. Pow­ell

    I am not happy after read­ing your post. We are headed to Dis­ney in Florida this sum­mer and I plan on tak­ing my tri­pod into the parks and other areas. I hope that this is not going to be the new nor­mal for Dis­ney. Please keep us posted on any responses you receive from the Man­age­ment of Disney!

  • http://www.williambeem.com William

    Thank you, both. It’s my hope that this was an iso­lated inci­dent. I brought up the fact to Don that Dis­ney was one of the most pho­tographed places on Earth, you could find satel­lite pho­tos of it all over the Inter­net, but it changed nothing.

    My only sug­ges­tion for either of you is to take your shot and move on before they get sus­pi­cious. It’s a shame and a dis­ap­point­ment to find Dis­ney is will­ing to employ such harass­ment tech­niques just because a guest was tak­ing photos.

  • http://www.mclanerieger.com Jan Rieger

    This is out­ra­geous! I hope blog­gers pick this up. Sorry you had to go through all that insan­ity. Sim­ply outrageous.

  • http://www.tkrphoto.com Terry Rein­ert

    That is ridicu­lous. You’d think that they deal with pho­tog­ra­phers enough to know bet­ter. It sounds like we should sched­ule a pho­towalk in that area and flood the place with DSLR’s. :)

  • David Terry

    Sad. Sub­mit­ting this to Digg now. I hope Dis­ney hears about this.

  • http://www.anotherpassion.com/ Ras­mus

    I would not have been so nice about it. Also, I would not drop it after the fact.

    I hate aggres­sive wannabe cops, but ulti­mately they are the respon­si­bil­ity of the com­pany that hires them. In this case Disney.

  • Aaron

    Great post, although i dis­agree with the state­ment “They have no right to tell you that you can’t take pho­tographs” Actu­ally, they do, but they’d have to do the same with the hun­dreds of thou­sands of other guests as well.

    Let’s just assume Don didn’t make it though the police depart­ment. You also never know what kind of things are told the upper upper upper man­age­ment about “ter­ror alerts.” If they do what they did on your occa­sion, they look like bul­lies. If they do noth­ing and some­thing hap­pens, they look like they didn’t do their job.

    All in all, i’m glad it was you this hap­pened to instead of me.. I’d of ended up in the back of the squad car for sure.. haha

  • http://www.kelvinjay.co.uk/ Kelvin Jay

    Well done for keep­ing your cool. And thanks for shar­ing your story. Nice shot too. :-)

  • http://www.cranestudioimaging.com Lisa

    I can’t believe that hap­pened. It must have been a just bad luck and a overly para­noid guard. I have been sev­eral time with my canon gear and had some of my larger white L lenses with me and I never had an issue. I mean I had more issues get­ting my bag through secu­rity at the entrances when they want to go through every­thing and every pocket of my bag and exam­ine the equipment.

    I can’t believe they treated you like this and like a crim­i­nal. I doubt a “ter­ror­ist” will set up a tri­pod out in front of the place and snap off pho­tos. Did the guy watch too many episodes of 24. Hon­estly I would have called the next day to cor­po­rate and slowly went up the chain till I got to some­one important.

    Lisa

  • Mel Edwards

    I’d be inter­ested in learn­ing any response you have from senior park man­age­ment on this. It may be they were given some details about sus­pi­cious peo­ple tak­ing build­ing pho­tos and acted as they did based upon that.
    Either way, it brings to mind the inno­cent man at the Atlanta Olympics who sig­naled author­i­ties there was a sus­pi­cious black bag. Only after they ruined his life accus­ing him of being a ter­ror­ist did they finally say, “Ooops.“
    Here’s hop­ing your story has a much hap­pier ending.

  • http://www.disneyfotoblog.com James Chap­man

    Thanks so much for writ­ing this great arti­cle William!

    Every­one read­ing William’s arti­cle should under­stand that this is absolutely not an iso­lated inci­dent, and if you are car­ry­ing a tri­pod of any size, you should def­i­nitely be pre­pared for mul­ti­ple ques­tions (read 1 – 5 above).

    As an ama­teur pho­tog­ra­pher and Dis­ney enthu­si­ast, I spend 90% of my time while at WDW tak­ing pho­tographs and I always carry my tri­pod and back­pack full of equip­ment (flash, wide-​angle lenses, fil­ters, bat­ter­ies, etc). I am con­stantly stopped by both secu­rity guards and staff pho­tog­ra­phers who ques­tion why I am tak­ing the pho­tographs, and if I’m a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher. Obvi­ously I’m not shoot­ing for the “fam­ily” as I have a DSLR (Canon 50D, 18-​200mm) and spend a few min­utes set­ting up almost every shot.

    Most of the time the secu­rity guards are fine and after the ini­tial ques­tion of “why are you tak­ing this pho­to­graph?”, I reply that this is a hobby (exactly as William describes above), and they are sat­is­fied and allow me to continue.

    I have setup in the wee-​hours of the morn­ing and taken sun­rise shots at Down­town Dis­ney and have closed down Magic King­dom and Epcot mul­ti­ple times between 2 – 3:00 a.m. in the morn­ing and been kindly escorted out by both secu­rity and cast mem­bers as they watch me snap a few last shots.

    Their BIG issue is tak­ing “guest shots” with cast or cos­tumed mem­bers. I found this out a few months back with my own inci­dent, much as William is describ­ing above (except my con­ver­sa­tion was with a cast pho­tog­ra­pher who hap­pened to be in the area), and I DID go straight to cus­tomer ser­vice man­age­ment to com­plain. After 30 min­utes of “dis­cussing” the sit­u­a­tion (which I really have to hand it to the cus­tomer ser­vice rep that he did a great job keep­ing the dis­cus­sion calm and below a shout­ing level) I left with this sim­ple understanding…shoot the build­ings, parades and fire­works, NOT the cus­tomers with the cast mem­bers and staff photographers.

    What this all boils down to is money. Dis­ney pays a lot of folks, a lot of money to take pho­tographs for their guests at their parks, and they sim­ply do not like any­one else with a DSLR to make money from their “sys­tem”. It’s absolutely that sim­ple. And that’s why those peo­ple with DSLRs are asked ques­tions and made to feel any­thing but like a guest…it’s because you may be the competition…not a terrorist.

    By the way, my web­site was a Blog about WDW and my family’s vaca­tions. I took every­thing down after that “discussion”.

    We own DVC prop­erty at Ani­mal King­dom Vil­las and Bay Lake Tow­ers, visit WDW about 4 times a year and love eat­ing at all of the restau­rants, and we have three annual passes. At about 10k a year to Dis­ney, I’d love for Dis­ney to tell me to leave. :) Wiz­ard­ing World of Harry Pot­ter and Sea World HERE WE COME!

  • Kevin

    Kind of funny, because I’ve already decided that this is the loca­tion (Down­town Dis­ney) of where I want to lead a Pho­towalk when Scott Kelby announces the World Wide Pho­towalk III.

    I wel­come you to join me and 48 other pho­tog­ra­phers to come pho­to­graph Down­town Dis­ney. I hope Don’s work­ing that morning.

  • dis­neypho­towidow

    we are WDW quite often…quite often 30 – 45 min­utes after parks close with the tri­pod, big lens & nikon d200. We have never been approached. Hop­ing this was iso­lated. U should report him, as it sounds like this is a guy who might be tak­ing his job TOO seri­ously. I hope you have reported him to rec­tify this situation.

  • Jon Grant

    Thanks for shar­ing this story. I am in Dis­ney World with my cam­era & tri­pod about 6 days a month… noth­ing like this has hap­pened yet, but I am almost cer­tain that I will expe­ri­ence some­thing sim­i­lar before too long. It is a shame. Please keep us posted as to how Dis­ney responds when you con­tact them.

    On a sep­a­rate note, I was also at Scott & Trey’s HDR work­shop in Tampa. What an incred­i­ble week­end that was!

  • Bruce

    I travel to Florida for work and have been to Down­town Dis­ney and caught secu­rity guards watch­ing once. I use a basic Canon dig­i­tal rebel SLR which is by no means a “pro­fes­sional” cam­era. I have also had some­one tell a friend of mine I need to watch my cam­era in Bev­erly Hills. I dont think an 18-​55mm lens is paparazi by any means. I would recp­m­mend for­ward­ing this link to Dis­ney guest ser­vices and ask if you are going to recieve sim­il­iar trat­ment if you are plan­ning to take pictures.

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  • Susan

    You need to con­tact the exec­u­tive offices guest com­mu­ni­ca­tions office about this. wdw.​guest.​communications@​disneyworld.​com
    or
    P.O.Box 10040
    Lake Buena Vista, Fl 32830 – 0040

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  • Sean

    You were on pri­vate prop­erty. The own­ers had the right to ask you for your ID. If you’d shown it instead of cop­ping an atti­tude you prob­a­bly would have had an entirely dif­fer­ent kind of experience.

    • http://www.williambeem.com William

      Sean,

      You’re cor­rect that I was on pri­vate prop­erty. The own­ers have a right to ask for any­thing they want. I also have a right to ask for any­thing I want. That doesn’t mean any­one else has an oblig­a­tion to pro­vide it. Con­trary to your com­ment, I did not cop an atti­tude. I was calm and polite dur­ing the entire ordeal.

      There is a very sim­ple rea­son why I didn’t pro­vide my ID to Don. He stated that he wanted to know who to find if some­thing hap­pened. Basi­cally, hand­ing over my ID would be like say­ing “come blame me if some­thing bad hap­pens here.” I’m not dumb enough to vol­un­teer to be blamed for some­thing like that just because I took a pic­ture or because I was stand­ing in pri­vate prop­erty. I hope you can under­stand. Thanks for stop­ping by and leav­ing a comment.

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  • Andrea

    My and my friends go to Dis­ney­land all the time. One time even, we hung out in Down­town Dis­ney after the park closed around 8pm. We hung out, tak­ing pic­tures, and being a nui­sance until around 12:30am, when they asked us to leave… not for tak­ing pic­tures or act­ing like fools, but because they wanted to clean the streets. So I know this isnt nor­mal behav­ior for security.

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  • angela dimella

    OMG!! Sounds like the DON I encoun­tered years ago at FW camp­ground!!! He actu­ally fol­lowed my son, then 16, around the Fort while he was rid­ing our golf cart. Asked him for ID and what he was doing there. We were camp­ing!! I was right next to him with my 2 younger kids. He asked a hun­dred dumb ques­tions, asked for my id and fol­lowed us back to our camp­site. This was BEFORE 911. It was even before the inter­net was such an easy place. I’m sorry I never placed a com­plaint. Till this day we call him Deputy Fife, since he was dumber than Bar­ney Fife!

    I also give you credit for remain­ing so calm. I would have flipped.

  • http://www.TerenceTam.com Ter­ence Tam

    You are on pri­vate prop­erty — so they do have a right to ask you to leave. That said, if I were harassed like that, as I were leav­ing, I’d make a point to snap as many pic­tures (and videos) of the secu­rity guards as I can, and plas­ter them all over the inter­net, to give them bad publicity.

    Pub­lic humil­i­a­tion and bad pub­lic­ity is a great tool, and cam­eras make that easy:

    http://​www​.flickr​.com/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​t​t​s​t​a​m​/​2​7​3​5​1​4​9​5​98/
    http://​www​.flickr​.com/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​t​t​s​t​a​m​/​3​6​4​5​5​9​8​8​28/

  • Den­nis

    William,

    I’m sorry you had to go through that. My fam­ily and I were at Dis­ney­land last sum­mer and it was a good time. I’ve read a lot of arti­cles recently about pho­tog­ra­phers being labeled as ter­ror­ists. The logic escapes me, as like you said mil­lions of pho­tos of the same places are avail­able on the Web, and Google Earth is a lot more per­va­sive than one measly pho­tog­ra­pher with a DSLR on a tri­pod. ;)

    In your arti­cle you state: “They have no right to tell you that you can’t take pho­tographs, con­fis­cate your cam­era or other prop­erty, or even lay a hand on you.” You are mostly right here. Even police offi­cers can’t con­fis­cate your camera/​memory card/​film with­out a war­rant (unless you’re being arrested). Nor can they tell you to delete pho­tos. That’s called theft and coer­cion. In fact, if you’re already taken pho­tos they are tech­ni­cally your copy­righted images the instant the shut­ter releases and are owned by you, whether you’re tres­pass­ing or not. They can’t take them away from you. That’s illegal.

    You are wrong in say­ing they can’t tell you not to take pho­tos. While on pri­vate prop­erty the own­ers CAN INDEED tell you that you can’t take pho­tographs. When you’re on pri­vate prop­erty you are there at the owner’s will. Pho­tograph­ing on pub­lic prop­erty is another mat­ter entirely. While on pub­lic prop­erty, if you can see it with your eyes it can be pho­tographed. This includes build­ings, peo­ple, air­ports, train depots, etc.

    Also, you are under no oblig­a­tion what­so­ever to sup­ply the rent-​a-​cops with iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or infor­ma­tion of any kind. How­ever, I think your five steps are the right thing to do in those kinds of sit­u­a­tions. When a uni­formed police offi­cer asks for ID you are required by law to sup­ply it.

    Here’s a link to a doc­u­ment called “The Photographer’s Right.” You may have seen it float­ing around. It’s got some good infor­ma­tion in it regard­ing pho­tog­ra­phy on pub­lic and pri­vate prop­erty. I keep a cou­ple copies of it in my photo bag.

    http://​www​.krages​.com/​p​h​o​r​i​g​h​t​.​htm

  • Albert Henry Bruton

    What you have expe­ri­enced is called POWER. Also the very com­mon lack of abil­ity to admit that they are wrong when one finds they have overex­tended their abil­ity to exert power over some­one.
    In short “I can’t back down, and admit I am in the wrong”.
    It’s a sim­ple mat­ter of they can’t accept a loss of face.
    Most peo­ple never are afforded the chance to expe­ri­ence the feel­ing of hav­ing power over some­one else.
    When some­one is given that power, but does not under­stand how to prop­erly use the power, they will get them­selves into a sit­u­a­tion where they need to have the abil­ity to sim­ply admit their mis­take and walk away.
    Your expe­ri­ence was a per­fect exam­ple of the results of some­one wrongly given power who has no abil­ity to under­stand it’s proper use, and how to deal prop­erly with their mis­taken use of that power.
    “Power cor­rupts. Absolute power cor­rupts absolutely”

    • http://www.williambeem.com William

      Albert,

      I believe you are cor­rect. As he made his con­cerns know, I refuted some of them. He wasn’t inter­ested, though. His body lan­guage made it clear, in my view, that he just wanted to have my com­pli­ance. When he didn’t get it, I think he became more irritated.

  • Gina

    For what it’s worth, I had a sim­i­lar (yet much shorter) inci­dent at the Dis­ney Store in Flo­rence, Italy two years ago. After shoot­ing a few pics of the store with my hum­ble, stan­dard Olym­pus cam­era, I was told not to take any pho­tos, etc. etc. At first I thought that they were jok­ing, but after a minute, I real­ized that they weren’t. It was all very odd! Because I was a for­eigner, I didn’t push the issue. We just left.

  • http://www.ahansendesign.com Adam

    I was shocked to read this. One of my favorite things is to pho­to­graph at WDW, in fact I just got back from spend­ing a few days doing just that in March. I have never been to Down­town Dis­ney so maybe rules are dif­fer­ent there? I have never been approached by secu­rity at any of the four parks or resorts though. I have had guards com­ment on the amount of gear I bring in when check­ing my bag — but noth­ing like this. They are more com­ment­ing that I will get good pho­tos and I must really enjoy photography.

    Sorry to hear about the trou­ble you had — hope­fully it is not some­thing that Dis­ney will be start­ing to do prop­erty wide.

  • Wendy

    Obvi­ously a one-​sided point of view. You should have just shown your ID. After all, you are a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher, so they had every right to be concerned.

    • http://www.williambeem.com William

      Wendy,

      You are cor­rect that this is a one-​sided point of view. After all, it’s my web site. I am not, how­ever, a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher. Whether I was or wasn’t, I am under no oblig­a­tion to hand over my ID to a secu­rity guard. If you come to my house and I say, “show me your ID or I will call the police”, what would you do? My choice was to leave.

      I was never snarky, rude or abu­sive. Please tell me why they have every right to be concerned.

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  • Andrew

    Tweeted:
    Magic King­dom not quite so Mag­i­cal for Pho­tog­ra­phers Any­more – Dis­ney Thinks Pho­tog­ra­phers Are Ter­ror­ists — http://​twit​ter​.com/​e​l​_​t​r​o​t​a​m​u​n​d​o​/​s​t​a​t​u​s​/​1​2​1​2​1​4​2​5​199

  • John M

    Just a point of clar­i­fi­ca­tion, accord­ing to the US Supreme Court, one never has to pro­vide ID to a police offi­cer who requests it. You are required to iden­tify your­self when asked but you do not have to have ID on you nor do you have to pro­vide it when asked.

    Hav­ing said that, you may find that the reac­tion from the the police offi­cer is less than thrilling since most offi­cers will take your refusal to indi­cate that you are hid­ing some­thing. Just ask Bob Dylan when he was picked up in Cal­i­for­nia with­out his ID.

  • Tim

    Oh My God! I had a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion down­town LA yes­ter­day, 4−12−10
    I was doing time-​lapse pho­tog­ra­phy of clouds. On the side walk, (not pri­vate property)4 plain clothes security)approached me, ask­ing me all kinds of ques­tions. Yes, I had a tri­pod but it was min­i­mally set and I stood in front to take care, no one would walk into it.

    Isn’t great being a pho­tog­ra­pher, an Amer­i­can these days?
    I thought that only hap­pen to me.

    Thanks for shar­ing and doing a good job writ­ing what hap­pened to you. Let’s form our own group, it seems to work for every­one else.

  • http://Newwhalom.com Michael

    I have to com­mend you on your Patience I know I woudl have lost my cool were you didn’t. I love pho­tog­ra­phy and often take Pho­tos on my trav­els. I am also take my time look for the right shot and do my best to avoid peo­ple. I hope this is an iso­lated inci­dent and you were on the unfor­tu­nate end of per­haps a big­ger prob­lem not aware of. I have not been to Dis­ney in quite a while I will return some day. I hope I am not greeted with teh same para­noia you were while I’m tak­ing pictures.

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  • http://gerryrosser.wordpress.com gerry rosser

    I’ve taken lit­er­ally thou­sands of pic­tures at WDW, includ­ing many hun­dreds at Down­town Dis­ney. I use a DSLR, and one of my favorite, and ear­li­est, HDR pho­tos is of the front of the House of Blues. No secu­rity guard has ever approached me, and many have seen me doing my thing.

    That said, I do not doubt your story a bit. I’ve had peo­ple at sev­eral places where pho­tog­ra­phy was fairly nor­mal ask me my busi­ness. This whole ter­ror­ist thing, as applied to ordi­nary cit­i­zens doing ordi­nary things, is just insane in my view.

    I really like the pic­ture you included with this post.

  • Robert

    My guess would ini­tially have been the tri­pod, and I avoided tak­ing one for con­cern of run­ning kids trip­ping over a leg. I know it can be an insur­ance issue.

    I used to go there to take pic­tures all the time. One day with an 8mm, another with a 300mm, I’d use one lens a day and see what I could see.

    One time they said I could not take pic­tures of peo­ple. Another time peo­ple were fine to pho­to­graph, but I could not take pic­tures of the rides, espe­cially the gear­boxes or con­trols. Because we all know that Al Qaeda is just wait­ing to get their hands on the Teacups con­trol panel.

    And yes I too was escorted off prop­erty. The fun part was try­ing to remem­ber where I parked my car and lead­ing guards around in cir­cles. Onlook­ers must have seen me as some sort of VIP with all my security.

    Remem­ber right after 9⁄11 the gov­ern­ment wanted every­one in Amer­ica to get their film devel­oped in case any­one had seen any­thing. I bet it every Amer­i­can took just one pic­ture a day of any­thing we’d have less issues, not more.

  • David Hobby

    My let­ter to Disney:

    Dear Dis­ney people;

    All it takes is one, stu­pid overzeal­ous pri­vate secu­rity guard who has absolutely no knowl­edge of peo­ples’ rights under the first amend­ment and it makes the whole com­pany look like igno­rant thugs.

    In case you are won­der­ing what I am talk­ing about, first ref­er­ence is here:

    http://​williambeem​.com/​?​p​=​330

    Con​sumerist​.com picked it up — that’s hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple right there:

    http://​con​sumerist​.com/​2​0​1​0​/​0​4​/​b​e​w​a​r​e​-​i​f​-​y​o​u​r​e​-​s​o​-​b​o​l​d​-​a​s​-​t​o​-​t​a​k​e​-​a​-​c​a​m​e​r​a​-​t​o​-​d​o​w​n​t​o​w​n​-​d​i​s​n​e​y​.​h​tml

    I tweeted it from Con­sumerist (one of *many* I am sure) to 24k+ people:

    http://​twit​ter​.com/​s​t​r​o​b​i​s​t​/​s​t​a​t​u​s​/​1​2​1​1​3​2​8​8​433

    Used to be, one igno­rant rent-​a-​cop held power over every­one he came in con­tact with. No the inter­net has flipped that equa­tion, and one idiot secu­rity guard can give your whole com­pany a black eye.

    If you find this uncom­fort­able, then maybe you should take a moment and explain that a pho­tog­ra­pher who hap­pens to be using a tri­pod in one of your parks *might* not be a ter­ror­ist. He might be try­ing to tale a series of pho­tos to com­bine into one frame to com­press the high dynamic range into an inter­est­ing photo.

    That’s what one inno­cent pho­tog­ra­pher was doing before your guy acted like a thug and repeat­edly intim­i­dated him into leav­ing — pho­tograph­ing him (iron­i­cally, dontcha think?) the whole way.

    Dis­ney looks really bad today, to many, many peo­ple. This thing could well go much more viral than it has. You might want to con­sider a pub­lic apol­ogy to the pho­tog­ra­pher (top link) your “cast mem­bers” screwed over.

    Or maybe you deserve all of this bad PR.

    Sin­cerely,

    David Hobby
    Colum­bia, MD

  • http://www.samanthadecker.com Saman­tha Decker

    I’m highly dis­ap­pointed to read this. I thought Dis­ney World was the one place on earth where you could bring in a huge cam­era, a tri­pod, and a big honkin’ lens and no one would look twice at you. After all ‚peo­ple do it all the time. This is just absurd. On the plus side, I just dis­cov­ered your awe­some pho­tog­ra­phy! Keep up the great work! =)

    • http://www.williambeem.com William

      Thanks for the kind words, Samantha.

  • Christo­pher Stampar

    Really great post. I think you han­dled the sit­u­a­tion extremely well, and did every­thing you can to assert that pho­tog­ra­phy is not a crime. I’ve cer­tainly expe­ri­enced sit­u­a­tions sim­i­lar to this, but for­tu­nately not quite as extreme. Great to see you stick­ing up for all of the pho­tog­ra­phers and please let us know if Dis­ney responds. Keep up the great work!

  • Rich

    Willaim,
    Oops. Maybe William will want to be care­ful about what you ‘AIM’ your cam­era at in the future. The pic­tures, above, of Mickey rodent and the moped are fan­tas­tic! The best I’ve seen in many (of my 70) years.

    I’m curi­ous, did the sub­ject of a pos­si­ble refund of your admis­sion fee come up? It sure would have if it were me that was asked to leave before I was ready. Also, do you know if any of the other “Guests??” were harassed by ‘Don’ or ‘Eugene’ that day?

    If you come to Las Vegas and take pic­tures on the Strip you might well receive an offer from one of my fel­low VIVA vol­un­teers to take the shot for you. Not every­thing that hap­pens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

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  • Jay

    I just wanted to offer some of my per­sonal insides on this. First as a for­mer long term cast mem­ber of a Dis­ney Store and many other retail stores we have always been instructed that there is no be no photo’s taken in the store. With the Dis­ney Store the only excep­tion to this rule is if you received a call from the home office and the pho­tog­ra­pher must have the writ­ten con­sent with them. This hap­pens for many rea­sons and the biggest one is com­pe­ti­tion. Try walk­ing into Wal-​mart and mak­ing it know to the man­age­ment that you are going to take ran­dom pic­tures of the store for no rea­son and see what they say. Now think about the secu­rity team and we don’t know who they were act­ing on. Most peo­ple think that Dis­ney owns all the busi­nesses on prop­erty and the truth is they don’t. Most of the busi­nesses on the West Side of Down­town Dis­ney are not owned by Dis­ney. The com­pli­ant they may have got­ten could have been from the House of Blues them­selves. It is the duty of the secu­rity guard(s) to pro­tect the inter­est of these busi­nesses. With tak­ing these kinds of pho­tos it is hard to believe that this is a hobby of yours, and in fact you have your own web­site and thus is more than a hobby and part of your port­fo­lio and income. If you would post your photo of the house of blues on your site that would turn it into a com­mer­cial photo that you are mak­ing money off of because it is help­ing you get work. Just like your beau­ti­ful photo of Portofino Bay is now a com­mer­cial photo adding to your bot­tom line. I have taken a tri­pod and cam­era into the parks many, many times and have never once had a prob­lem, but any­one could tell it was for pure per­sonal use.

    • http://www.williambeem.com William

      Jay,

      I’m not sure how many more times I can say it. I’m not a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher. There is no com­mer­cial inter­est here. Besides, Don’s con­cern was not about com­mer­cial­ism, but ter­ror­ism. You may find it’s hard to believe that this is a hobby, but that doesn’t make it untrue.

      Also, please note that I did not enter any build­ings dur­ing this visit or attempt to take pho­tos inside. I just wanted to prac­tice some HDR and thought the HOB would be a cool subject.

  • Curt Loghry

    Head­ing to DW this week­end for the first time.Plan on tak­ing my D700 with a SB900 flash. Thanks for shar­ing your story,i had no idea pho­tog­ra­phers were being targeted.

  • Justme

    I am not excus­ing their behav­ior but is it pos­si­ble per­haps that they had recieved a tip or a warn­ing of some pos­si­ble tar­get at Dis­ney? I am sure Dis­ney is high on the list for those cra­zies but that they seemed to go so far above and beyond in their pur­suit of you makes me think there may have been some­thing more going on.

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  • http://jronaldlee.com James

    I was in an air­port yes­ter­day and wanted to take some pho­tos… the entire time I was walk­ing around with my D90, I was wait­ing for a tap on the shoul­der by a TSA offi­cial demand­ing me to erase the card. Instead, I had a nice chat with a TSA offi­cer who pointed out some inter­est­ing fea­tures that I might want to photograph.

    Strange that the TSA could get it right and Dis­ney could not.

  • Joe

    Hon­estly?! Peo­ple take pic­tures in every dis­ney park like that. I go to WDW every year and see pho­tog­ra­phers there like you, who just do this as a hobby. I dont know when this hap­pened, but i wish you the best of luck

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  • Con­cerned Photographer

    Very uncool if this story pans out.

    Very unac­cept­able.

    First, lying to the police that you didn’t give your name and yet you did, is in itself a crime and it is ille­gal. Dis­ney security’s man­ager “Don” should be checked in for his integrity.

    Sec­ond, usurp­ing your power to show you can call other min­ions typ­i­cally is expected in mid­dle school like you want to gang up on the new kid. A “man­ager” is expected to lead by exam­ple and this was a far cry from a good example.

    Two things should hap­pen from here:

    1. Con­tact Dis­ney exec­u­tives telling them this is unac­cept­able for the secu­rity man­ager at Down­town Dis­ney, “Don”, to be lying to the police and being a bad exam­ple to his team. [wdw.​guest.​communications@​disneyworld.​com]

    2. Con­tact the sher­iff depart­ment regard­ing this inci­dent and file a civil­ian com­plaint, stat­ing that we want them to under­stand Down­town Disney’s secu­rity man­ager “Don” and his reac­tion was unac­cept­able when some­one was sim­ply tak­ing pho­tographs for his per­sonal use. He was not doing any­thing ille­gal and lied about an inci­dent that the pho­tog­ra­pher did not give his name. We want the Orange County Sheriff’s Office to under­stand that we don’t want our tax­pay­ers money to be used against free speech and we don’t want our money to sup­port any pri­vate power trips of Down­town Disney’s secu­rity man­ager, “Don”.

    Con­tact form here: http://​www​.ocso​.com/​C​o​n​t​a​c​t​O​C​S​O​/​t​a​b​i​d​/​1​6​0​/​D​e​f​a​u​l​t​.​a​spx

    Phone:
    407−254−7000

  • ted

    My wife of Asian ances­try wants to see Dis­ney­land but we will boy­cott the one in Ana­heim, CA if that’s the way they treat pho­tog­ra­phers of any sort. Is Dis­ney­world in Orlando,FL any dif­fer­ent? My wife loves to take pic­tures to show our granddaughter.

    • http://www.williambeem.com William

      This hap­pened in Orlando, not in Ana­heim. At this time, I don’t know if this is an iso­lated inci­dent or not. I never had a prob­lem with pho­tog­ra­phy at Dis­ney before this inci­dent and many oth­ers have reported sim­i­lar pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences. A few, how­ever, have shared sto­ries with me of sim­i­lar events at Dis­ney. It appears to be some­what incon­sis­tent to me.

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  • http://DLDHistory.com Richard

    I have a story from the other coast..A few years ago I was drove down to Ana­heim to visit the Dis­ney­land Resort for 5 days..

    I run a web­site about the his­tory of Disneyland..When I am in the park I take hun­dreds of pho­tos (with an aver­age dig­i­tal cam­era noth­ing fancy) some of them will make it to my website..

    On the first 3 days I parked in the park­ing garage and went into the park and took photos..as I would pass plain clothes secu­rity they would talk into their wrists ..but I thought I was just being para­noid they could not be talk­ing about me… at lunch time I would return to my car and have lunch (I refuse to pay the high prices for food in the park) in my car..

    Well on the 4th day I was sit­ting in my car enjoy­ing a cold sand­wich and work­ing on my lap­top when 2 secu­rity guys rode up on their bicy­cles and asked nicely what I was doing..I explained about my web­site and that I was going through the pho­tos I had taken..they were inter­ested so I got out and put my lap­top on top of my car and showed them my website..they thought it was great..I asked if there is any­thing I should do in regard to tak­ing pho­tos inside the park..they said I should just let City Hall know and that should clear me..I thanked them and they went on their way…

    I went in the park and talked to City Hall told them what I was doing (tak­ing pho­tos for my web­site) they said it was unnec­es­sary to let them know..no problem..I went out and shot lots more pho­tos with no problems…

    On the 5th day I when I parked in the garage I saw the same secu­rity guys on bicy­cles I waved at them.. they came over and asked how things were going with my web­site very friendly..We talked a bit…I went into the park..I noticed dur­ing the night they had erected a new Space Moun­tain spire soon to become a new sign so I took a cou­ple of pho­tos of it..as I started to turn away I noticed the cast mem­ber at the entrance to Space Moun­tain grab a phone star­ing at me..I had a feel­ing he was call­ing secu­rity about me..so I went to a bench and waited… 5 min­utes later secu­rity showed up..they asked why I was tak­ing pho­tos of the spire..I told them the story about my web­site ..they took down my name and the name of my website..their excuse was they did not want the new Space Moun­tain sign to be used in any advertising..off they went..

    At lunchtime I went to my car to have lunch..as I am eat­ing I see the 2 secu­rity guards and flag them down ..they said they heard on the radio about my run in with park security..they laughed about it…we joked about me being watched all the time…well they decided to reveal why I was being watched and how to avoid being watched…by the way these secu­rity guards are friends to this day and say the sys­tem is still in place..hence why I wont reveal their names..they said 4 things trig­gered them (secu­rity) to watch me 1) I am alone 2) Cam­era 3) Annual Pass 4) My car plates were from out of state.….I told them that makes no sense and they agreed..Think about it other than a per­son being alone how many peo­ple must fit that descrip­tion from out of state with a cam­era at a Dis­ney Park … but it is part of the signs the com­pany looks for..I asked them what would make me “invis­i­ble” to secu­rity they said easy… park off site…bring a friend have your friend stand out of frame and “point the cam­era at your friend” and you are good to go…

    I drove back from my vaca­tion with a new under­stand­ing of Dis­ney Secu­rity Tactics…

    PS To any­one that wants to do harm to Dis­ney these are not the only signs that trig­ger them to watch people..If you are harm­ing Dis­ney they will catch you so don’t!

  • Denise

    We didn’t have any prob­lems with tak­ing pho­tographs at Dis­ney­land 18 months ago but we had prob­lems with what we were told were copy­right infringe­ments when my neice wanted to do a Princess din­ner for her 21st birth­day. She decided that we should dress like princesses for her din­ner cel­e­bra­tion. We were stopped first and told that we couldn’t wear our dresses on the rides. We assured them that we were going to Ariel’s Grotto for the Princess din­ner. We were then stopped by one of the women at the secu­rity booth until the uni­formed guards could come har­rass us. First they tried the “can’t go on the rides” rou­tine that we first encoun­tered and finally after almost 3 hours they told us that their con­cern was that some of their smaller patrons would con­fuse us with “their princesses.” We informed them of the fact that their princesses do not wear sparkly eye makeup or have vis­i­ble tat­toos. That was when they said that they only allow chil­dren under the age of 10 to dress-​up. When we then informed them that some of their shops sell Princess dresses in adult sizes that that seemed like they may be prof­it­ing when they wouldn’t allow the adults to wear the dresses that they sold them in their park. My sis­ter was insist­ing on speak­ing to some­one a lit­tle higher up to com­plain but after 3 hours with no jack­ets, (as we assumed we would be back at our hotel before it got dark) no din­ner and my neice’s birth­day all but ruined, we came to the real­iza­tion that Dis­ney offi­cials didn’t seem to care because they feel any­thing that they do is right. I will never, ever pay one more dime to this com­pany ever again. I refuse to buy any of their DVD’s, go to any Dis­ney or Dis­ney spon­sored movie, buy any Dis­ney mer­chan­dise or go to one of their parks. I took my sis­ter and her daugh­ters to try and put a lit­tle hap­pi­ness back into their lives after her hus­band of 21 years killed him­self about 6 months before. It was going to be my neices first birth­day since los­ing her father and I thought that Dis­ney­land would be the per­fect place. I wish that I had a pic­ture to post so that every­one could see that we didn’t look at all like any of their Princesses and any young child would not have thought any­thing of the sort. So much for their copy­right infringe­ment excuse. Unfor­tu­nately Dis­ney secu­rity seems to be the same at all their parks.

    After read­ing about what hap­pened to you, I wish that I had com­plained to higher man­age­ment. I did send a rather scathing review to Tri­pAd­vi­sor and also included my boy­cott of all things Dis­ney. The hard­est part of my boy­cott is that I love Win­nie the Pooh and The Mup­pets and Dis­ney owns the rights to those too.

    BTW, I heard about your inci­dent on The Travel Insider’s newsletter.

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  • Ivan Chan

    Dis­ney, just like most things Amer­i­can are pure rub­bish. the sooner the place goes down the toi­let, the better!

  • Matt

    Wanted to thank you for shar­ing this story. Based on the infor­ma­tion you pro­vided I don’t think you did any­thing wrong. BTW the HDR shot is great :)

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  • Glenn Mur­dock

    OK — let’s grow up here. Every place has the right to be sus­pi­cious and pro­tect the secu­rity of the build­ing. By blog­ging this way, you are just try­ing to get revenge, which doesn’t say much about your busi­ness ethics. Sorry about your luck, but I’d rather Dis­ney pro­tect my secu­rity. It’s your hobby, and you need to respect the places and their rules. You should have left when first asked. They shouldn’t have had to approach you 4 times.

    • http://www.williambeem.com William

      Glenn:

      I find noth­ing uneth­i­cal about post­ing my expe­ri­ence here. You seem to be a bit con­fused as to whether I’m in busi­ness or a hob­by­ist, so let me clear that up for you. My pho­tog­ra­phy is a hobby. That doesn’t mean that I won’t try to make some sales here or there at some point, but that had noth­ing to do with my trip to Down­town Dis­ney. I wanted to take some HDR pho­tos of the House of Blues, both for the fun of it and as practice.

      I also really don’t buy the argu­ment that has­sling pho­tog­ra­phers does any­thing at all to enhance secu­rity. Don’t take my word for it, though. Read the opin­ion of a secu­rity expert, Bruce Schneier, about the war on pho­tog­ra­phy.

      Finally, I was never asked to leave Down­town Dis­ney. Not once, much less four times. I was never asked to stop tak­ing pho­tographs. Per­haps that part wasn’t clear to you when you read my arti­cle. I agree they shouldn’t have approached me four times, though. You would think they’d treat a guest with more respect.

  • william kos­turko

    Maybe you should have just lis­tened to secu­rity! Some how I feel that some infor­ma­tion is miss­ing here! I am sure that all pho­tog­ra­phers are beau­ti­ful peo­ple and never bother anyone!!

    • http://www.williambeem.com William

      William,

      I lis­tened to Secu­rity. What part of the arti­cle made you think I wasn’t pay­ing atten­tion? Also, what infor­ma­tion do you think is missing?

  • Rizz917

    Before we all draw a con­clu­sion with just one side of this story, let’s remem­ber there are always two sides to a story. Now, the pho­tog­ra­pher of inter­est here may have fit a cer­tain pro­file that Dis­ney secu­rity agents are trained to look for. Even the model of cam­era he was using may have fit that pro­file. Heck, he may have been wearng a pro Islamic T-​shirt, we just don’t know. I have to say though, I find it hard to believe Dis­ney will lock on to a ran­dom pho­tog­ra­pher for absolutely no good rea­son. There is enor­mous risk involved with that kind of activ­ity. There is poten­tial for end­less lit­i­ga­tion, foll­wed by dam­ag­ing PR for years to come. Dis­ney is the most fam­ily friendly place on the planet, are they really going to risk their rep­u­ta­tion like this? Now, I’m not say­ing thing don’t hap­pen because I know they do but I’m not draw­ing any con­clu­sions until I know Disney’s side of the story.

    • http://www.williambeem.com William

      Rizz:

      I con­tacted Dis­ney sev­eral times for their side of the story. I received only one reply, which I posted here, as requested by folks who read my ini­tial post. Last night, Trey Rat­cliff (Stuck​In​Cus​toms​.com) posted on Twit­ter that he was in Down­town Dis­ney to pho­to­graph a sun­set. Next Twit­ter post was that he had four secu­rity guys con­fronting him. Next post was that his wife and kids arrived, freak­ing out. Then we learn that Dis­ney called the Deputies to con­front him. All of this because a guy with a tri­pod wanted to take a photograph.

      I would truly love to know Disney’s side of the story as to why they think we’re a secu­rity threat. They started off with me about con­cerns regard­ing image rights (and I gather some­thing sim­i­lar hap­pened with Trey), but I’m start­ing to believe that’s not really the truth of it.

      While I agree with you that this is just bad PR for Dis­ney, they don’t seem con­cerned about it at all. They con­tinue to has­sle pho­tog­ra­phers at Down­town Dis­ney. If you can find out some­thing regard­ing Disney’s side of the story that they haven’t shared with me, I would very much like to know about it.

  • Nick

    I under­stand your upset. And it may of seemed very unfair how­ever, under­stand it is secu­ri­ties job to notice any­thing unusual. Typ­i­cally a nor­mal tourist would snap a off cen­ter pic­ture and move on and buy some­thing in the gift shop. it sounds like you were there tak­ing lots of pic­tures for a long time. because DTD is an open area they are prone to attacks and shady busi­ness. also, if you were with the media you would need to go through media rela­tions at dis­ney. i under­stand you weren’t doing this but they need to make sure every­one is safe and if you let some­thing like that go some­thing bad could happen.

    • http://www.williambeem.com William

      Nick,

      “Some­thing bad could happen.”

      That seems to be the extent of think­ing on this issue, and most peo­ple accept it. I like to ask, what is going to hap­pen as a result of my pho­to­graph? What am I going to cap­ture that isn’t avail­able on Flickr, Google Earth, or even pub­lished in Disney’s own books?

      Prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence shows that “bad” peo­ple don’t take pic­tures for their “bad” activ­i­ties, but secu­rity guards around the world need a “bad” guy to has­sle. Why not choose the guy with a cam­era on a tri­pod? He looks dif­fer­ent than every­one else, so he must be “bad.”

  • Carl

    William — The one thing I don’t under­stand is your rea­son given for not show­ing your ID. It seams that your say­ing on the one hand it was “ridicu­lous” for secu­rity to think you had any covert intent, yet on the other hand you wouldn’t show your ID because if “some­thing bad hap­pened” you could be blamed? What are the chances? Is that really a valid rea­son to not comply?

    Like many have stated, we don’t know the other side of the story. I can under­stand how you might have been offended, but in hind­sight it seems it would have been bet­ter to just show your ID and put the secu­rity manager’s mind at ease… IMHO.

    • http://www.williambeem.com William

      Carl,

      Think this through a bit. What was the secu­rity man­ager going to do with my infor­ma­tion? If he wrote it down, how was he going to pro­tect it? A police offi­cer doesn’t even have the author­ity to demand ID from some­one just walk­ing around. When you get pulled over in a vehi­cle, you have to show your ID to prove that you are licensed to oper­ate a vehi­cle — not to show ID. As a pedes­trian, I was under no such restriction.

      Also, keep in mind the secu­rity manager’s intent. He wanted some­one to hold account­able for some­thing “bad” that may hap­pen in the future and he was look­ing at me as that per­son. Imag­ine I com­plied and gave him my ID. Who knows where it’s being kept or how it’s being used? Given some of the recent prob­lems at Dis­ney (e.g., a hotel clerk using guest ID and credit cards for per­sonal gain), why would I trust some­one with such sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion when I received no ben­e­fit at all?

      I was polite, but I asserted my rights. If oth­ers would have cho­sen to give up their rights, that’s their busi­ness. It’s untrue that you only heard one side of the story here. As I noted, I asked Don ques­tions, such as why he needed my ID, and I’ve given his responses. If you want to know more, con­tact Dis­ney and ask for Don.

  • Kelly

    You were sin­gled out because of your dSLR — I’ve been harassed for shoot­ing the Pru­den­tial Cen­ter, by crazy women who have fol­lowed me 1/​4of a mile to find a cp to accuse me of try­ing to take their pic­ture — wouldn’t wast the dig­i­tal space on her, and other ridicu­lous sit­u­a­tion when I’ve used my Canon 20D. Not a peep with my Sony DSC-​N1 points/​shoot.
    When the ter­ror comes, it will be with a Casio exlim.

    • http://www.facebook.com/jenna.shumate Jenna Michele Shumate

      “When the ter­ror comes, it will be with a Casio exlim.“
      Hah. Exactly.

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  • Ron C

    If this had hap­pened to me, I would have gone imme­di­ately to Guest Relations.

    I think you’re putting way too much faith in what Don said to you. There are a lot of dumb peo­ple who think cam­eras and ter­ror­ism go together but I doubt that he’s one of them. I think he was jerk­ing you around.

    For many years until 2008, I lived in Orlando and have a good friend who worked at Dis­ney World Secu­rity for 8 or 9 years. He said that some­times the topic of pho­tog­ra­phers would come up. Some of them felt that they should be sus­pi­cious of peo­ple with fancy cam­eras or lots of equip­ment being pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phers but oth­ers thought that was ridicu­lous and they shouldn’t bother peo­ple just because they have a nice camera.

    At least one of those secu­rity offi­cers you encoun­tered didn’t believe you about being a hob­by­ist– despite any con­ver­sa­tions you had with them– or they wouldn’t have gone to a super­vi­sor. They wanted to make you go away because they sus­pected you of being a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher. You didn’t get the hint and leave on your own right away so they esca­lated it. They never thought you were a ter­ror­ist. That was a load of garbage they fed you to make you ner­vous and throw you off bal­ance. The peo­ple at Dis­ney World Secu­rity are smart enough (well, most of them are) to know that cam­eras aren’t ter­ror­ist threats. As you noted, it’s a well pho­tographed place and your com­ments to them about that didn’t change the sit­u­a­tion because it didn’t really have any­thing to do with the sit­u­a­tion. Unless they are con­cerned about an imme­di­ate dan­ger, they would not con­front a sus­pected ter­ror­ist but would dis­cretely con­tact the author­i­ties and the per­son would be fol­lowed.
    The ter­ror­ism thing was an excuse of con­ve­nience to harass you and make you go away and not want to come back. How can you defend your­self? By telling them not to be con­cerned about ter­ror­ism? How can you, or any of us, prove that you aren’t a ter­ror­ist? It’s a head game they play. A stu­pid game, for sure, but a game nev­er­the­less. So was insist­ing on your ID and tak­ing pic­tures of you leav­ing and fol­low­ing you out. They believed you were a pro­fes­sional who was lying about being a hob­by­ist and they wanted you to leave. They got what they wanted.

    Don’t believe every­thing secu­rity peo­ple tell you, espe­cially if you are in a con­fronta­tional sit­u­a­tion. Very often their goal is to manip­u­late you in the eas­i­est way they can think of. Remem­ber, they deal with lots of peo­ple every day and they can be a lot bet­ter at this than most people.

    • http://www.williambeem.com William

      Ron,

      I believe pretty much what you wrote. Hav­ing dis­cussed it with friends who are both for­mer deputies, they said a lot of what I heard from Dis­ney Secu­rity was just made up. As you say, it’s a tac­tic. Sadly, it’s a stu­pid tac­tic that really doesn’t accom­plish any­thing pos­i­tive for the busi­ness that they’re sup­posed to sup­port. At the time, I wasn’t aware of Guest Rela­tions. Should this ever hap­pen again, I’ll take that advice and visit their office to see what happens.

  • Kirk

    Because of this, we are no longer con­sid­er­ing WDW for any events our com­pany sponsors.

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  • Shut­ter Expressions

    I’m sorry to hear that hap­pened to you, and some­times there really is no rhyme or rea­son for another person’s action. I feel you han­dled it very well as it could have been worse. Now, I don’t know why you are not con­sid­er­ing your­self a pro­fes­sional as from what I saw on your web­site, you sur­pass those who charge pro­fes­sional rates. AMAZING!!!

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  • Kyle

    Are you sure you even took pho­tos as I can­not find them any­where except the paint­ing. :(

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  • Tam­myN­aborsMid­dle­ton

    Beau­ti­ful pho­tog­ra­phy! But every­one should remem­ber — Walt Dis­ney World is PRIVATE PROPERTY. As a secu­rity man­ager there, for many years, I know that secu­rity offi­cers have to right to ques­tion any guest, not har­rass, but ques­tion. The same right you would have if some­one came into your home. The event of 911, has put high secu­rity every­where for good rea­son. Coöper­a­tion goes a long way. And you are cor­rect — it is a beau­ti­ful place to photograph.

    • http://www.orlandolocal.com William Beem

      Of course it’s pri­vate prop­erty. How­ever, I was NEVER asked to leave. I was harassed. The secu­rity man­ager demanded my ID, claim­ing he needs to know who I am in case some­thing “bad” hap­pens. What non­sense is that? If some­one else does some­thing “bad”, I’m auto­mat­i­cally to blame because I took a photograph?

      The 911 attack­ers didn’t use pho­tog­ra­phy in the plan­ning of their attacks. So why are secu­rity guards still cit­ing that tired excuse that has absolutely no bear­ing on pro­tect­ing prop­erty? It’s a tourist des­ti­na­tion. Plenty of peo­ple take pic­tures and post them online. There are satel­lite pic­tures on Google of the entire prop­erty. A ter­ror­ist doesn’t show up with a large cam­era and a tri­pod — some­thing that causes him to stand out in a crowd.

      Down­town Dis­ney is a pub­lic place. My home is not a pub­lic place. Com­par­ing the two in that man­ner isn’t really equivalent.

      How­ever, I was nice. I coop­er­ated. I showed them my pho­tos. That’s when it got WORSE for me. That’s when Don started mak­ing accu­sa­tions, so I told him I was leav­ing. He called up every other avail­able secu­rity guard. I was cir­cled by nearly a dozen Dis­ney guards. Don told them to make sure they got pic­tures of me, my car, my tag, etc. Basi­cally, pho­tos are good for secu­rity guards, but not for guests.

      I haven’t patron­ized Down­town Dis­ney in the past cou­ple of years since this expe­ri­ence, and I wouldn’t rec­om­mend it to any­one else.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jenna.shumate Jenna Michele Shumate

    I can attest that this is how it works now. I was pho­tograph­ing the hol­i­day inn directly across the street from uni­ver­sal stu­dios, and dur­ing the shoot I went over to the top of the park­ing lot lev­els with the gm from the hotel, to shoot the hotel — not uni­ver­sal stu­dios. Within 10 min­utes there was a guard on a bike telling us to stop tak­ing images while he called his boss.… the short story is that we were told to leave. The guards weren’t accus­ing or harass­ing, but we weren’t even allowed to take pho­tos of another struc­ture from the park­ing lot!.… that said, shoot­ing at dis­ney board­walk was not a prob­lem at all. I think cer­tain areas have dif­fer­ent secu­rity issues?

    • http://www.orlandolocal.com William Beem

      I think you’re right. A cast mem­ber at Ani­mal King­dom told me the guys at Down­town Dis­ney were prob­a­bly much more heavy-​handed because it’s an “Open” area — mean­ing there’s no ticket required for entry. On the other hand, I’ve also shot pho­tos at the Board­walk with­out inci­dent. The only issue I had there was the con­fu­sion of the guard when I drove up to the park­ing lot. She asked me why I was there and I told her I was going to take some pic­tures. She replied that she had NEVER heard of any­one com­ing there just to take pic­tures. I got the feel­ing she didn’t like the idea at all, but she let me park and that was the end of it.

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