As a camera guy, and a 43 year-old married for 11½ years, I have a lot of occasions in life to take "everyday" photos of. As silly (and even juvenile) as it can seem to other persons, I like to take such "snaps" of much of everyday life. For instance, when my wife & I go out to eat at a nice restaurant, or even a cheap one, in particular any non "routine" place (that is, not McDonald's or Wendy's etc), I will take photos everything of from the outdoors of the premises to the very plates of food we're enjoying. Such is common for us and our life. (I also won't use a camera phone for such photos, insisting on "real" cameras, but that's another story.)
In fact, this aspect of our life is so integral to who we are as persons, if there is an occasion where this is interfered with or not allowed, we may go against those conventions. In this sometimes increasingly paranoid world, this seems to happen quite a bit, unfortunately. Today was one of those days.
After enjoying a day at the "Lindale Cliffs," my wife wanted us to eat at a nice Italian restaurant to celebrate her upcoming (2 days away) 34th birthday. We wanted to go somewhere we hadn't been before. We happened upon O'Dells in Winnsboro, TX. We drove up, saw it, and thought it would be perfect--it seemed very charming, yet quite "elegant" inside, and very quaint. We looked forward to our dining-out experience very much.
As is common for such an occasion, I started taking photos of the outdoors of the place, and then some indoor shots of the place. We were the only customers in there, and I even turned off the flash using only the "ambient light" for the photos indoors. We had chosen a chair, had asked for our menus, and were about to place an order.
Out of nowhere, the giddy and nice feeling about the place was shattered. The paranoid owner of the establishment emerged and asked me to stop taking any photographs inside his place. This was an occasion where, frankly, I was glad where my mother was not part of the situation, because she has never much respected or accepted my love of taking photos frequently of such everyday life, and would have, no doubt, pressured me to accept the situation as-is and to "grow up" and not make an issue of it.
However, this is an issue of special importance to me, one that I'm very strong in my feelings about and one that I choose to take a stand on. To me, in recent years, it has become increasingly common (although still, fortunately, relatively rare) for many persons to be paranoid about people taking photos in such situations, as if there's something to fear (what is there to fear?), and to forbid photo-taking. While I certainly can understand situations such as, for instance, certain tourist places in Washington DC not allowing photography (the US treasury, when they conduct tours showing the printing of US currency, forbids it for obvious reasons), I think the growing tendency of photography being forbidden in far more mundane & everyday situtions is something that I find highly ridiculous, and downright offensive, enough so that when such persons do this, I choose to take a stand against it.
In light of this, I decided that we would not be giving this establishment our business. I mean, gee whiz, this was simply a pretty everyday restaurant in a little bitty town (so small, they don't even have a McDonald's or Wendy's of any sort). I explained to the waitress that I was not upset at her, as she was not the one who made the decision (it was the owner), but that I would not be dining at their place in light of their stance, and I would be taking my business elsewhere because, frankly, I was sick & tired of being presumed to be a terrorist or the like. The waitress, apparently having talked to the owner at some point, stated that no one there thought me a terrorist, but that the artwork on the wall was of high value & that it could not be reproduced. While I have heard of this sort of thing before, it is nonetheless something that I find to be very ridiculous and a huge overreaction to an extremely unlikely scenario (someone trying to rip off artwork by photographing it & distributing it to the bootleg world).
So, I explained to the waitress my position, we gathered our belongings, and we left--and dined at a different Italian restaurant in Kilgore (Napoli's) which we had dined at before and enjoyed, and without encountering any of these problems.
As far as I am concerned, this stance that O'Dells took was so offensive and ridiculous and "worst first" in its thinking, that frankly I would sooner throw my nice cameras and the hard drives storing all my photographs into the salty ocean water, sealing their doom, before I would EVER give that establishment any of my business, and I am glad that I found this out about them early-on before I had ordered any of their food and obligated myself to give them any of my money. Any establishment that unnecessarily restricts my ability to snapshot-record our life, on the occasion of my wife's birthday, by thinking the worst about me upfront without giving me a chance, that shows that level of distrust about me upfront and over nothing more than something like this, they don't deserve my money. If I'm that suspicious to them, then why should I trust them with my business?
I don't know what in the world has gotten a hold of people in this country to where they fear something as silly as a birthday snapshot so much, but I have no sympathy or respect for this point of view. It's ridiculous, it's insulting to who I am as a person, and I refuse to participate in it or anyone who engages in it. As I said to someone on the day this happened (today at the time I'm writing this), this is a "hill I will die over."
