Commuter, railfan, transit nerd, and photographer…
March 5, 2012, 11:34 PM
And this past week, it seemed to all come together. Twice in the last week, I was interviewed on things related to Metro.
The first was for a three-minute video, where a group of Corcoran students interviewed me as a Metro commuter. They also interviewed Chris Barnes, aka @FixWMATA, as a vocal Twitter user, and then Metro chief spokesperson Dan Stessel representing Metro. That was actually a lot of fun to do. About a week and a half ago, I was approached about the possibility of appearing in the short video on Metro. I agreed, and so then on Monday the 27th, the group producing the video met me at my apartment complex. There, they wired me for sound, and filmed me on my commute and we talked about commuting via Metro. I am a daily Metro and bus rider, and one of the things that I shared was that I do have my commute down to a science. I know exactly what time I need to be at a given point in my commute in order to make my connections and then get home at the time. I also shared how since so many people take Metro, if the Red Line is going to be messed up, then a lot of people in the office will be affected.
Then the video also shows my particular geekish side, as they got a good shot of me doing my little transit log book, writing down the number of CAF 5188.
And here’s the video:
It’s very strange hearing my voice in a documentary-style video, though. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy participating in the making of it, and I liked seeing the final result.
TBD also blogged about the video on their site.
Then in the same week, I was asked to provide insights for an article by TBD about harassment of photographers on Metro by Metro employees. That was fun to do because I didn’t have to say much that I hadn’t already said in this space, and so it was mainly a matter of pulling together a number of entries from over the years about my incidents with photography on Metro. After all, I do have a lot of photos of Metro, and when you photograph transit as much as I do, you’re bound to run into someone who sees my camera and wets their pants. I still can’t get over that a Transit officer actually played the terrorism card on me, for one thing.
And then here’s the article: Photographers shouldn’t have to defend legal Metro photos to WMATA.
My experiences are discussed next to the photo of the group of people with cameras. In any case, I hope that a little sunlight on the issue of photographer harassment will make people pay more attention to the problem of photographer harassment, as it not only happens on Metro, but on transit systems across the country.
And please note: if anyone wants to give me a problem about photographing legally, within the law and any applicable regulations governing the space, I do take names, so you may be held accountable for your actions.
Web site: The video!
Song: "*ding ding* Doors opening! Step back to allow customers to exit. When boarding, please move to the center of the car."
Quote: So there you have it...
Categories: WMATA