"Michael Wise" wrote in message
...

P.S. Do you have any issues with hobbyists filming airshows for
thrill-seeking prurient reasons when the content does not contain a
crash?

I'll deal with this question directly.

Generally, in the race and air show community, we have no objection to
crash video and photography shot generally when the purpose of this work
is either associated with a safety context or a news context. As for
the "hobbyist" photographer; this is a complicated issue for us, as
there are very distinct differences between the good and bad side of
this coin.
Naturally, there will be photographers present at a show site who have
come simply to watch and enjoy the show. These I might add are
considered by us generally to comprise the larger percentage of the
hobby photographers. What these people want is to record what is taking
place simply for their love of aviation and their desire to create a
beautiful image that can be enjoyed by others. We have no problem at all
with these people. In fact, we work actively with these photographers on
many occasions to help them.
Now we get into the gray area of crash photography; that being what
happens when the crash occurs and how that relates to the photographer.
Before a crash occurs, you will have on the field several types of
personalities with a camera in hand. You will have the legitimate
photographer taking pictures as the crash occurs. Then on the bad side,
you will have those with camera in hand, WAITING for something to
happen. These photographers are the ones we object to so strongly.
In our world of flying high performance airplanes, we only have one real
way to judge when a photographer is ethical or unethical, and that
happens AFTER the crash has been filmed. We watch as the film comes in
to see what is being done with it. The legitimate private video people
bring the film immediately to the investigation teams for use in aiding
the investigation. If there are news photographers on site, they usually
take their film for use by their news departments. This is acceptable to
us, and these films are almost always made available to the accident
investigation teams after use by the news departments.
Then we have the hobbyists! The good ones make their film available at
no cost to the investigation teams; later to be returned to them. The
bad ones are the object of our scorn. These people wait for the accident
to happen, film it as it's happening, and consider the film private
property to be used in any way they see fit. This usually means private
viewings within their peer group and releasing of the film on the net
for various reasons; some financial; some image enhancing. Either way,
these are the photographers we have no use for in the demonstration and
race communities.
I said what I said to the photographer involved with this thread because
he cross posted to five different newsgroups pushing crash video without
any safety or news aspect whatsoever. This is what we in the community
refer to as prurient action since no reason other than entertainment is
insinuated by the venue of presentation.
Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship
Commercial Pilot/ CFI Retired