January 4, 2007 – In Photos dot Org

Mark Hancock was present at a police sting in Beaumont, Texas to arrest people involved in the sex trade in that city. He posted photos and commentary on the incident as well as explaining that it’s legal to show the faces of people under arrest.

Before anyone asks, yes, it’s perfectly legal to show the faces of people under arrest. However, our paper prefers to not to “convict before trial” by showing faces of people caught in orchestrated stings of Class B misdemeanor crimes. Capital crime arrestees are an entirely different situation.

However, everyone got a good laugh when the first female arrived at the command post and told the assembled media that she didn’t give us permission to photograph her (standing on a public street in handcuffs).

Judging by what I’ve seen on news reports on television I don’t think anyone under arrest could have any illusions of privacy with cameras poked in their faces at every turn.

Stepping out of the crowd

A girl steps away from the maddening crowd on a busy street.

This was a bit of an experiment for me. I blurred the background by making a duplicate layer, blurring, adding a layer mask and then revealing the girl through the layer mask. It’s not perfect, and in fact, the closer I look the more imperfections I see. Unfortunately I never saved a .xcf file preserving the layers so this is the final product.

I like it. The blur successfully separates the girl from the backgrond and even the zone of sharpness takes in some of the ground around her which exaggerates the effect!

Taken on St. Patrick Street, Cork last October.

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	800
Shutter speed	1/800s

Day: 4 January 2007

Photographing arrested suspects

Stepping out of the crowd