Nick Miners Photography

A Bel­gian couple pose for the cam­era out­side the Con­cert Hall in Bruges.

One of the most strik­ing aspects of my recent trip to Bruges with my friend Mark was the markedly dif­fer­ent atti­tude to pho­to­graph­ers that we exper­i­enced com­pared to that in the UK. You can’t open the paper these days without read­ing about yet another pho­to­grapher being har­assed by police for tak­ing (legit­im­ate) pho­to­graphs in a (pub­lic) loc­a­tion. How­ever in Bruges, des­pite the fact that the major­ity of people walk­ing about were tour­ists tak­ing pho­to­graphs, the loc­als appeared to act­ively wel­come the chance to appear in a pho­to­graph (see above). We both felt that we were free to go wherever we pleased, whenever we pleased, even as far as the indus­trial docks to the north of the city where pho­to­graph­ers with large lenses in the UK would prob­ably be accos­ted by offi­cious staff or police almost as soon as they stepped on the premises. Wan­der­ing round the streets and canals at mid­night has never been so much fun.

Whilst I don’t want to use my blog to make polit­ical points, the Con­ser­vat­ive party did prom­ise prior to the elec­tion to stop the abuse of stop-​​and-​​search powers gran­ted to police under sec­tion 44 of the Ter­ror­ism Act, and the newly pub­lished coali­tion agree­ment also makes the same prom­ise. I will be watch­ing closely and hope­fully we will see an end to the non­sense that inno­cent pho­to­graph­ers have been sub­jec­ted to for far too long.

Tags: Belgium, Bruges, Brugge, Flanders, Section 44