The all-too-brief period for public comment ends Aug 3. Please make your voice heard now. Post your work shot in NYC or new work commenting on this issue to YouTube or Flickr. Visit our video section to view video comments. Photos added to the PictureNY Flickr group will be displayed randomly in the top banner of the website.

+ Tag the video “PictureNewYork” and “CameraWars”.
+ Send the links to jcho@film.nyc.gov and to us at info@picturenewyork.org

You can make a movie on a cell phone, but what if you want to use a tripod, or stay in the same spot for more than 30 minutes? New regulations from the Mayor’s Office of Film set absurd restrictions that would require you to have a permit, and a million dollar insurance policy. No doubt it would be selectively enforced, AND who needs that kind of law on the books in the first place?

Not you, not us, not anyone that wants to take some pictures at any random time. We bet not even the Mayor’s Film Office actually wants to process thousands of requests from shutterbug tourists, wedding photographers, and school groups.

Yes, the rules are written THAT broadly. A film school grad standing on a corner with a camcorder, a friend and a dream will now have to pay as much as HBO or Fox to make anything that involes two people and takes a half hour to shoot. The new Bernice Abbott or Diane Arbus or WeeGee might not ‘get the shot’, because they were forced to move along, or were arrested for refusing to leave until the light was just right.

That’s nuts. A love affair with New York City happens in pictures. The history of the city - its summer hydrants, its rainbow children, its aching splendor - is etched in our minds by images so vivid we no longer know whether they’re photographs or our own memories - or perhaps they’re our own memories of photographs.

The Daily News and The NY Sun have both written editorials ridiculing the new regulations. You can read the eleven page brick of regulations here.

We need to fight back. With enough public outcry we can stop these regulations from becoming law. There’s a recent precedent: a ban on photography in the subways was successfully fought off in 2004 – 2005.