It's been a while...

Crime-scene officers look over the body of a dead attempted bank-robber in Germiston, South Africa. He was killed in a shoot out with police and seven of his accomplices were arrested.It's been a while since I've complained about the police's attitude and treatment of the photographic press, as it hasn't happend to me for a while, none the less, today they confiscated a photographers camera at a crime-scene and threatened another with arrest, when I rock up to the scene, before I even pick up my camera, a cop hollers at me, "Hey You, Don't even think about taking pictures!".

Now usually, I would bring up the fact that as far as I'm behind the line and not interfering with the cops, I'm legally allowed to take pics, and them stopping me is an infringment on my rights ... this approach usually ends up with me screaming at the cops that refuse to leave me alone and telling them where they can go and what they can do with themselves (BTW, this has ended up with me in the cells in two instances already), so today I tried something different.

Today, I tried the "chilled-out" approach, chatted to the guy, tried to make him see my side, and understand what his problems are, to connect with him ...

Even still the guy continued giving me grief, until he seen the media liason approach, then he changes his tune, saying its fine for us to shoot, and tries to make out he had no problem with us.

That just shows that they know we can take pics, as long as we are outside the crime-scene perimeter, but they don't care, I sincerely reckon they just give us hassles so they can feel important.

The Comrades shuffle

Zimbabwean Stephen Muzhingi crosses the line to win the 2009 Comrades Marathon in Durban, South Africa. The extremely popular 89 km road race is run every year, either from Pietermaritzburg to Durban or Durban to Pietermaritzburg.

I was covering the Comrades Marathon this weekend, which entailed flying to Durban, I missed my flight, by about two minutes, so had to wait two hours for the next one, but I got there eventually.

On race day, I had to wake up at about 02h30 to get to the start of the race, jumped on the back of a motorcycle and slowly made our way along to the finish, stopping to photograph various points of the course, after hopping on and off the bike for 0ver 6 hours, I'll admit I have stiff legs, I can only imagine how sore the legs are of the guys that actually ran the race are.

The next day you can see all the "Comrades shuffles" all over Durban.