Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
It happened again in San Francisco.
A wedding photographer was attacked while covering portraits at the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts, yet another in a long line of terrible situations playing out in a city that has chosen, for whatever reason, not to crack down on these series of camera crimes.
Two masked men recently attacked a photographer in San Francisco. The men were holding him at gunpoint, trying to take his gear bag. As he was struggling and holding on to his gear, the thugs pistol-whipped him, causing him multiple injuries.
The terrifying incident took place in broad daylight at the Palace of Fine Arts. It’s a popular location crowded with people, and someone managed to catch it all on camera.
I was in San Francisco this week to make an appearance on KRON4 TV, plugging PhotowalksTV (thank you Ken Maccarone!) and in-between, naturally, cruised all over the city photographing the magic.
I didn’t get robbed of camera gear this time, but it did happen near me, in real-time, to two people, as I stood in Alamo Square, photographing the “Painted Ladies,” the row of Victorian homes made famous in the opening credits to the old “Full House” TV show.
Camera equipment is an ever-increasing target for thieves, and unlike mobile phones and other electronic equipment, it doesn’t usually come with tracking or disabling devices installed. But tracking options do exist, we just need to add them to our gear.
One photographer in Australia was incredibly fortunate to be able to recover around $7,000 worth of camera equipment after putting Apple AirTags on a few of the higher value items.
If you missed the explosive report by KGO-TV reporter Dan Noyes on the theft epidemic in San Francisco, I want to both share his stories, and offer some common-sense solutions to a problem that’s gotten way out of hand.
You know that thieves in San Francisco (and elsewhere) are smashing the windows of cars to rob stuff, sensing that the police won’t chase or arrest them. Photographers have been followed by thieves, had their gear taken, which got quickly resold on the streets. They easily move laptops in broad daylight, and even though they’ve been recorded on video doing so, the city continues to allow it to happen, with few arrests.
Over the last few months, we’ve seen quite a lot of gear theft in San Francisco. Thanks to ABC 7 News, one of the locations where stolen gear ends up has been found and identified.
Reporter Dan Noyes spoke to a San Francisco man who revealed that many of the stolen goods are sold in the street, often hours after the theft. One of the locations for these transactions is an open-air market at Garfield Square in the Mission District, and it’s all happening in broad daylight!
A Canadian film crew was recently robbed at a gunpoint in San Francisco’s Twin Peaks parking lot. Two men attacked them from a car, and it’s estimated that they took the gear worth $35,000.
Since Twin Peaks is a popular spot, there was another group of people in the car behind. They filmed the entire incident, where you can see one of the victims getting pistol-whipped and the other held at a gunpoint.
As you know, my gear was stolen in broad daylight as the camera was rolling two weeks ago in a public San Francisco park.
Another photographer got hit this week near San Francisco and way worse than I did. He was parked near Battery Spencer Park in Sausalito, in the Marin Headlands, which offers one of the best views of the Golden Gate Bridge, and thieves bashed in his SUV windows and fled with multiple cameras, computers, hard drives, and more.
One night two years ago, someone stole $10,000 of my camera equipment. Just recently, I found one of my more iconic lenses — a pink Handevision 40mm f/0.85 Mark II — for sale online. The police are slow to respond, and eBay won’t help until law enforcement is involved.
My name is Nathan Cowlishaw, but my business and brand as a professional tour guide are Nathan Arizona, LLC, and Talking Tree Photo. I’m a professional Southwestern Interpretive Tour Guide of 17 years, a landscape photographer, and an avid traveler of the American Desert Southwest. I run a small Instagram account where I post recent images of some of these travels.
On December 31st, 2019 — New Year’s Eve — I was just wrapping up a commercial tour I had conducted to Antelope Canyon, in Page, Arizona — which is one of the most popular photography destinations in Arizona on the Navajo Nation — when I went into the office to clock out for the evening and head home. As a creature of habit, I never leave my expensive gear in my vehicle and it was routine to take it into work.
That night though, for some strange reason I can’t explain and still regret, I left my camera gear in my Jeep Cherokee 4×4 on the front seat of the passenger side just long enough to clock out. In that short time frame, someone came along, smashed the window of my SUV, and stole $10,000 in camera equipment.
It’s the kind of cruel irony you see in a scene from a movie or a TV show or something. Don Ford, a reporter for KPIX 5 News was shooting a story on the rise of robberies in San Francisco’s Twin Peaks neighbourhood since certain roads were closed off due to the pandemic. These roads had previously led to tourist attractions, but with local thieves’ main targets no longer visiting that area, they’ve restored to robbing the people that live there instead.
Ford was interviewing nearby homeowners about the robbers when a “white luxury sedan” vehicle pulled up outside one of the homes, three men stepped out, with a fourth remaining in the vehicle, and robbed Ford at gunpoint, proclaiming “we’re taking the camera”.
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