Controversial Locations - Where do YOU draw the line?

I worked in a hospital for a long time and I can tell you that betraying any kind of patient (living or not) trust in a frivolous (or for any reason) way would result in instant termination if not prosecution under the law. Hospitals have to be places where people feel safe from intrusions and there are very high ethical standards that have to be observed while working there. EDIT: I think a mortuary would probably lose their license to operate and be open to all sorts of lawsuits if anything like taking photos of dolls happened there, especially if deceased persons were present.

 

I just remembered something after I posted, so I'm going to say it right now. I have a great-uncle who was killed during Operation Husky (invasion of Italy) in WW2 and was buried in the American Military Cemetery there. I can tell you for a fact that no one in my family has seen his grave, or the cemetery he's buried in. I'll even go on to say probably no has visited his grave in the past 60 years except for the maintainers of the grounds. I plan on going to Italy for a week-hell, even just a couple of days-just so I can see his grave. And you know what? I'm going to be taking pictures. Lots of pictures. Of his grave, his tombstone, the cemetery, everything. Not just for me, but for my grandmother. And if some one has a problem with me doing that, I'm going to tell them, "Hey. This man here is a great-uncle I never knew. My family lives in Minnesota. He's buried here. I'm doing this for my family. And he's probably happy knowing that some one cares enough to actually spend over two grand to fly from said state just to see his grave and take pictures of it for the people that actually knew him back home. I highly doubt you even care about him. You don't know his story, you don't know what effect his death had on my family, so just STFU and GTFO."

This may be a little off-topic, but....I just felt like I had to say that.

 

I don't think anyone here has a problem of just taking pictures of a grave, especially family. I think the concern was more for using graves as a prop for dollie shoots. Also, as he's your family member, that's no one's business but your family's. What you all decide to do with the grave site, what pictures to take, and how to treat the area is all up to you and no one else has any right to say otherwise as it's your own family member. When it comes down to talking about only family grave sites, that's in entirely different matter than just all grave sites in general.

 

I think you've highlighted a couple of the places I would certainly draw the line on location shooting. Abusing a position is always wrong in my book. Always. I would hope it's wrong in most other peoples', too!

 

I think I would be tempted to take photos with the equipment or lab... But not actually do it. It wouldn't feel right. It's pretty illegal to photograph the people being stored there so I certainly wouldn't do that!

Which reminds me, I've seen a couple of photostories involving dead animals. How do people feel about that? I'm not really bothered by it beyond the 'ick, that's not hygenic' feeling I get when I see them.

 

Doesn't bother me at all, but my religious beliefs lend themselves a lot to the idea of not being attached to the physical body. Once something is dead, to me, it has little to know meaning. But the shoots I've seen have all been of a doll almost acting as the animal's guide to the afterlife, or granting last solace, which I find really touching.

 

I can imagine the utter chaos it would cause if someone was caught snapping bjd pctures with dead bodies or in one of the shelves/file thingies they keep them in at the morgue. I wonder what kind of damage that would do to the bjd community.

I agree with you totally, you'd have to be a little messed up to abuse such a highly honored position just to get some "awesome looking pictures" just to please yourself or the community.

I see so many cool home-made lab shoots were they gathered old vials and stuff like that it's too cool I want to do a shoot like someday myself.

As for the dead animals you beat me to it, lol! I was thinking the same thing as long as the animals aren't a bloody pulp and irrecognizable and as long as it tastefull then I think it's fine. When shooting deceased things there is a fine line between tacky and beautiful in my opinion. So far all of the dead animal shoots I've seen here are very well done, giving them a sort of serene feeling to them. I'm not bothered so much by the germ issue as I hunt and clean up road kill to help so my ew factor is very little, lol.

I actually haven't seen any pictures of bjds in a Starbucks!

 

But where do you draw the line for 'tactful'? For me, if you just take a picture of a dead animal, that is okay-but using it as a prop is NOT. As soon as you pick it up and start placing it with your doll you have gone from taking a picture of a once-living thing to downgrading the body to a prop for a 'cool photo.' It's the difference to me from the pictures of the dead that some families used to (and in some places still do) hold dear, and grabbing the person and propping them in an 'interesting' position to use as a prop. Dead person for remembrance? Yes, putting them in any way that it is not solely a picture of them, like having them held up by two people who are holding thumbs up, or putting a party hat on them? No. A thousand times no.

 

I totally agree with you, but I don't think the person moved the animal in shoots I've seen. Or at least I don't think. I know I couldn't take pictures of my dolls with a dead animal it would sit uneasily with me.

 

Ha ha thank you, Aqua's horns & hooves are of particular pride to me.
And the otter is one of them, RiverKelpie has done a couple w/ Brenna posed w/ animals that have passed, and I have been touched and moved by all of them.

 

I don't know...I don't see any problems with taking pictures of dead animals, especially if the animal is fully intact and it looks peaceful. For me that's definitely heart-wrenching. However, when you have your doll picking up a dead animal and then you're taking pictures of it, you are essentially, playing with that dead animal. Why not instead use that time to pick up the body and bury it instead of playing with it with your doll?

 

I know it was a little off-topic, but sometimes I think people in general think that taking photos in graveyards, no matter what the reason, think is taboo. Maybe it's past the idea of taking photos for your family or doing photo-shoots with a BJD or some gawfkid throwing themselves over a gravestone and calling it art, just the idea of a camera in a cemetery seems...wrong to a lot of people. No matter what the circumstances are.

 

That's probably because Starbucks doesn't allow you to take pictures in their store, period.

People should probably keep that in mind when they're setting up photos in stores and such... some of those places just don't allow it, and they'll kick you out for doing it.

I'm not saying it can't be done... but to do it, you have to be ok with disrespecting the company's wishes... and ok with the fact that you may be kicked out and asked never to return.

 

For a graveyard I would wait for halloween and take pics at a fake one or such. I do agree its disrespectful. Um other places to me would be like, i feel taking a doll to school isnt such a good idea for photos or otherwise, way to dangerous if u care about ur doll i feel.

 

As a social experiment, I took Kitty with me when I accompanied my mom to our local voting station. The election officials were very nice and even gave her an "I Voted" sticker. xD Then again, it was 10 AM, so there was just about no line, and everything was pretty chill.

Also, I may or may not have a photo of her with our touch screen balloty device. *shifty eyes* Again, the election people didn't seem to mind - she was in plain sight the entire time, bright blue wig and all.

 

I'm going to have to intervene here, and say that your implication that you can make a hunk of styrofoam, and a can of 98 cent spray paint look like the artistry and beauty of a GENUINE cemetary headstone, or statue is, in the very least, ludicris. You also act like every one should just run out and grab stuff and MAKE a tombstone, like it's just easy as cake, and your implication is that they will be able to have the same effect as the stones in a cemetary. WRONG. I'm sorry, but the day you can make a bunch of 99 cent craft store materiels look even REMOTELY like a real cemetary stone marker, please come and visit me, and make my halloween set-ups....because they've been using that crap in target for YEARS, and it looks HORRIBLE. Personally, i find cemetary shoots beautiful, and calming. Slightly sad, but in a beautiful way. If i see people using cheap foam cut-outs, and 98 cent spray paint to attempt a fascimile, it just IMO, it just looks silly, and way worse than 'out of scale' real stone props. Also, just so you know, if you spray paint styrofoam, it MELTS. Just like u are pouring Gasoline on it. you have to seal it with usually an acrylic brush paint, or elmer's school glue. That ALONE can take hours. Brushing paint or glaze or acrylic varnish into the small, micro holes of styrofoam, is a pain in the ass. And the smooth stuff, well, it isn't smooth anymore after you cut it up. And ur back to square one. so your little 'grave stone' project is not going to take the 'hour' that you idealistically think it will.

 

I find it highly unlikely that a mortuary would have its license to operate revoked just for taking photos of dolls. The offending employee being fired, sure. Lawsuits? Maybe, especially if people's loved ones were visible in the photo. But I just can't see how a photo of a doll on a desk, say, with the tools of the trade in the background would be that big of a deal--reprimand material most likely, but I'd be shocked if the consequences you suggest were carried out.

When the person brought up "abusing" your position at work for doll photos, I admit, I didn't immediately think of actual abuses (i.e. betraying a patient's trust, acting in a medically or ethically inappropriate way). I thought of, say, taking time on your break or before or after a shift to take a photo of a doll in an unused wheelchair, or the aforementioned “doll with mortuary in the background,” which are both somewhat challenging shots for Josephine Public to get, but not really “abuse” in terms of actually crossing ethical lines in your profession. Waiting until the end of a closing shift as a barrista and then taking a photo of your doll standing on top of the industrial espresso machine (assuming your work doesn’t explicitly disallow photos). That kind of thing. I’ve considered “abusing” my summer position as basically a camp counselor for university-aged ESL students to take pictures of my dolls at the local museum or a particular beautiful garden (actually got a few shots there, but accidentally deleted them from the camera )…because my job requires human interaction I wouldn’t think of doing anything more than a quick snapshot (no careful artsy poses here), but I don’t think it’s super shocking to do something like that either.

 

In relation to several posts about "make it yourself" for a graveyard curch etc.... this is a good link for anyone who has the time and patience to build one themselves, it belongs to Shuen Build a scene - church/graveyard

And after having a quick mental calculation of the costs, its got to be over $100 when you take into consideration all the foam-core board, paints, glues, texture paste, decorations, cost of printing, doll stand etc...

And I'm guessing with drying time you're looking at a full day or two's worth of work....

Back on-topic for the debate..... The idea of the Morgue freaks me out, I know an undertaker who found it amusing to take Tanus's head cap off and pretend to perform autopsies etc... but never in a million years would I take pics in a morgue... A little too left of field for me

 

Don't get me wrong, cemetery shots are beautiful and calming if done properly. I'm simply suggesting, as mentioned in a previous post, that if the picture should have to be of certain things such as sex, horseplay or other actions not suitable to a cemetery, a substitute graveyard may be best. As for actually making a substitute grave, styrofoam isn't the only material you can use, I was merely using it as an example. You can get some nice results with air dry clay, paper mache, plaster, there are fairly cheap possibilities everywhere. Also, perhaps I'm using a different styrofoam than you are, or perhaps I'm using a different method, but I've been using spraypainted styrofoam in projects for years and mine doesn't melt much and that's without acrylic sealer. Even i it does melt a little, the effect still makes the soon to be grave look more eroded with age. I wouldn't know about the gasoline part. I can't afford to dump gasoline on things even if I'd like to. In short, I maintain that it is possible. Perhaps not for a beginner, but still possible given a half hour here and there to do it. That's how I learned to make stuff out of such materials. If there was nothing going on, nothing good on the computer, no work to do, I'd pull out some random junk and make something. Maybe I came off differently than I meant to, but I've just always done things like that. It seems so normal to me that sometimes I forget not everyone is like that.