AKA That Time We Got Kicked Out of Allan Gardens

Our newest shoot was quite an adventure. In all of our many years of shooting in all sorts of places, both with legit permits and many times without, we have never gotten kicked out of somewhere for doing so- until now! I feel like we ought to get a gold star for finally getting booted from a public place for shooting.

Toronto is notoriously backwards about photography permits, and the language on the city’s website about where and for what purpose you can take photos is pretty vague, thus you end up with a zillion city employees maintaining parks who know *nothing* about the permit rules other than that “no professional photos” are allowed in their space without one (*cough*go mow something*cough*). So arbitrary decisions are made case by case as these employees see fit, so sometimes you get the boot sometimes they cheer you on. Personally I think Toronto needs to realize people will be taking both professional and not photos everywhere these days, even cell phones have the capability of “professional” cameras- maybe stick to enforcing permits for weddings and large scale shoots requiring teams and equipment. Two girls and one camera without even a flash are not disturbing anyone, and we don’t need to pay $113 for 2 hours of 1 room of a PUBLIC garden.

That being said it was such a fun shoot and we got nearly an hour’s worth of photos in before the city worker decided he didn’t like us anymore. So much gratitude for Hexcelle for sharing this adventure with me and being a good sport about getting the boot! 🙂

You can see all the photos we managed in our flickr album.

So now we are officially Bad-Ass I think, since we’ve been booted. 😉

-Taeden