And hey Black, before you call me a Monday morning quarterback who never takes any risks, I’ve been harassed by private citizens, security guards, transit workers, and yes, even police in the course of my photography, and have been psychically assaulted once, and I don’t even get PAID for most of the shots I take.

So, if you’re going to turn this into a competition of manliness, which you seem intent on doing for some bizarre reason, I think the fact I’m willing to put up with this abuse out of pure love for the art makes me a better man than someone who does it for a paycheck and then quiets when it gets too real.

Good riddance to a crybaby. Let’s hear it for the real photographers with the sand to keep doing what they do against all opposition.

I’m sorry if my words of encouragement: “Never Give Up – Never Surrender” offended you. (Obviously you’re not a fan of the movie “Galaxy Quest”) But they were meant as encouragement.

Perhaps you’re anger is because you’re not making the correct moral decision. The psycho-babble folks say that anger is depression turned outward. But it is your life and you must make your own decisions.

As far as your personal criticism of me. Your mistake is making that judgment by my flickr postings. It’s not your fault that you didn’t come up with my experience fighting “The Man” because it’s not from my photographic experience and is PBE (pre blog-era).

As a photographer I chose the fashion route and spent most of my time with pretty girls in Manhattan. I had a good run for a while. I never had the desire to be a photojournalist. Sorry, I don’t have the stomach/drive/stamina for it. Though I do admire and respect those who do.

I gave up my commercial/advertising/fashion photography career and became a magazine publisher in 1994 when I bought a fledgling motorcycle publication called City Cycle. It promised to be more fun and more profitable than photography and during the 13 years I owned it I rode motorcycles around the world on other people’s money and never had to compete for a photo job–but that’s another story.

One cool Sunday morning in April 1996 every police department north of NYC set up roadblocks to stop every motorcycle en-route to an annual fund-raising event called Super Sunday (at the Marcus Dairy) in Danbury Connecticut.

They stopped over 2000 bikes, seized 83 and wrote about 100 summons. They created dangerous traffic situations, damaged every bike they seized and didn’t catch any criminals. Most of the riders were my readers.

I was quoted in all the local papers that “this was a conspiracy of all the local police departments to steal the money from the charities that motorcycle riders and Super Sunday supports and put it into their own coffers”

Then I filed a Federal Civil Rights class-action civil rights lawsuit naming each of those departments and the police chiefs as defendants. We set up a legal defense fund and received donations from bikers worldwide.

My stupidity was that I drove a blood-red Chevy S-10 pickup truck with a red cap and the vanity license plate “MOTOMAG”, Can you say “target”? – In the end I beat every traffic ticket I was issued (except one) by putting the cops on the witness stand and asking simple questions.

Today I’m back doing photography and while I have no desire to photograph cops or the “dirty-underbelly” of anything (except maybe naked girls), rest assured, that if I find myself harassed by the police or security guards I will stand my ground and, if necessary, submit to arrest. Should that happen I am buoyed by the fact that there have been other photo-patriots before me and the legal settlements they have received are more money than I’ve earned in the last few years.

I’m sorry for your situation but what makes me even more unhappy is that there isn’t some lawyer or journalist’s association up there willing to help you pro-bono.

You know, people can, and should, have strongly held opinions about police abuse who have not been abused. Your assertion that absent some experience in the matter he shouldn’t leave comments here, well, you’re just an ass, aren’t you?

The exhortation to never give up wasn’t likely particularly personal to you, but rather relates generally to the fight you no longer deem worthwhile. Mark Kalan disagrees. I do too. I’m not criticizing your decision, I’m not in your shoes. I’m criticizing your asinine attitude toward your fellow photographers.

“Do you work hard at being that STUPID.. or does it just come naturally!?”

And some people wonder why their gene pool sometimes needs to be stopped.

Rail Car Fan

I’m the photographer this article was written about. I took a look at your blog and your Flickr photostream and found one photo of a traffic cop writing a parking ticket.

Until you start taking some risks as I have done, photographing police at crime scenes in the poorest neighbourhood in all of Canada, in the lead up to and during the most heavily secured Olympic Winter Games in history with 15,000 police, military and security guards stationed in the Host City, and making those photos public with critical commentary, don’t tell those of us who do to never give up or surrender. You sound like a sports fan who likes to take credit for his team’s success because he was at the game. Trouble is, there’s a big difference between the player taking hits and gutting it out on the field and a binocular-wearing, beer-drinking fan in the nosebleed section bitching because a player on his team went down. The sad thing is, that’s where you’ll stay. You won’t jump in and join the skirmish, you’ll safely kick back like any other armchair quarterback and get fat while those in the field go down. Pretty tough not to “give up” or “surrender” when you haven’t even stepped out onto the field, eh?

Before telling others not to give up, why not try getting involved yourself? And by that I mean more than joining a Flickr group called the harasses photographer. At least then you’ll have earned sufficient respect to leave such a comment here. I still feel harassed … by YOU.

Rail Car Fan