Wildlife Photographer in trouble for Skyfall Pics

The only real news coming off the Skyfall set has come from photographs and video taken by bystanders. When filming moved to Hankley Common, near Elstead, Lucy Browne a naturalist photographer began following the developments in her blog,Ā The Foraging Photographer . She got some astonishing photographs of the Skyfall set being constructed along with a few interesting tidbits of information from the film crew constructing the set.

Some of the photos created quite a stir among the Bond fan sites, as we have been following the various developments in our Forum,Ā  when The Daily Mail recognised her contributions it apparently got the attention of EON who then sent the Military Police to warn her off. It is not clear what if any law she violated, and as far as we are aware she is not a participant to a None Disclosure Agreement.

From the outside looking at this it appears the Bond bosses got upset at the spoilers coming from Lucy’s well written site. It is understandable that they would like to stem the flow of possible spoilers, however it is not realistic on a production this size, as the Call Sheet troubles have shown us.

This all may be a big misunderstanding, it may be the MPs were not acting on orders from the film producers, as unlikely as this may seem. What is clear is private citizen was harassed for causing no real trouble and doing no real harm, if anything the pictures would help to promote the movie. And it is not like there are not hundreds of pictures taken on set already out there.

We think that if the film bosses had a problem with The Foraging Photographer they should have contacted them to either buy the photos (maybe for a making of the movie book?) or politely asked her to not publish or to delay publishing any spoilers. It would be understandable sicking the MPs on her if she were…oh… say…us. šŸ˜‰ But that is not the case, this is a honest to goodness naturalist blog the Bond production stumbled across not the other way around.

Lucy’s blog is a wonderful collection of photographs and thoughts. She had me at Fantastic Fungi, no seriously she did.

If you are Bond fan who has appreciated these photographs please take the time to let her know.

 

Special ThanksTo “the Sweeney

Discuss this in our forum; Wildlife Photographer in trouble for Skyfall Pics

 

You may have seen the many photographs published online over the past few days of Hankley Common, near Elstead, which have been transformed by the arrival of film crews, trailers and marquees involved in the blockbuster movie Skyfall, the latest in the Bond franchise.

These photographs were taken by nature blogger The Foraging Photographer, who had taken many stunning pics of the set while the Bond crew were filming. Well today she has been firmly warned not to take any more photographs of the set.

 

BlogĀ interrupted

Weeeeeeellā€¦ I donā€™t know where to start, really. Or indeed where to finish. I arrived at Hankley this morning, with dog and child, friend and dog, expecting our normal walk around the common only to be enlivened by the film shooting. I greeted, in naive innocence, the (lovely) lady on the main security gate, only to have her call after me ā€œā€¦are you [my name]ā€¦?ā€, and tell me that I was in (and had created) a lot of trouble. They kept me there while they radioed the location manager to come and discuss things with me.

As it turns out, Iā€™ve been a wanted woman on Hankley Common since yesterday, when it became apparent that I had breached military byelaw 4(13). On reading and re-reading this byelaw, I canā€™t say Iā€™m yet entirely clear about how Iā€™ve breached this, but Iā€™m taking them at their word, and certainly the military police were perfectly serious about finding me and arresting me ā€“ the policeman I talked to later told me that if theyā€™d found me first I would have been arrested, cuffed and charged. I do wish to extend my apologies to the lady with a cocker spaniel who matched my description, who had some tricky questions to answer this morning!

What did distress me is that I seem to have dropped some of the site crew right in it. This really does upset me, because everyone Iā€™ve spoken to on-site has been absolutely lovely, and Iā€™ve greatly enjoyed having chats with them. I certainly wasnā€™t trying to get anyone into trouble, nor was I doing anything deliberately surreptitious (except maybe sneaking a bit close to the chapel on Weds, by which time the headstones were already long gone). I have been genuinely enthralled by the development of the set, and the incredible skill displayed therein. I love taking photographs of beautiful things, and, to me, the creation of this fake reality was an amazing thing to witness.

I think I got a bit carried away with the excitement of it all and the enthusiasm of the Bond fans wanting more detail. I didnā€™t properly consider the fact that the people who were telling me these fascinating titbits were not expecting them to reach such a wide audience. I didnā€™t expect such a wide audience either! I am genuinely very sorry if I got anyone into trouble. In my opinion, no-one behaved remotely improperly and Iā€™d be most upset if they suffered repercussions due to me sharing stuff on here that was common gossip amongst the Elstead locals and dog walkers.

The upshot of this morningā€™s events is that I certainly will not be taking any more photographs of the set, nor will I be divulging any more information about the filming or what that indicates about the plot. I have to say that this resulted in me almost chewing my fingers off with frustration over what I saw them filming at the lodge today. Oh my, I canā€™t tell you how much I want to share the details of what we were all watching through our binoculars!!

Anyhowdyhoo, you poor deprived Bond fans will just have to be content with some older pictures that I took of the set, and some pictures of SHOCK HORRORā€¦ NATURE! which was, after all, what my blog was supposed to be in the first place. I must say Iā€™ve had enormous fun doing this blog and riding the unexpected wave of enthusiasm that resulted from the Skyfall stuff. Iā€™d like to say a fond goodbye to yā€™all, and I hope that just a wee handful of you might continue to visit for pictures and explanations of the stunning beauty we find all around us. :-)

I will include some pictures with this post, and edit it a bit, but mainly I just wanted to get this up there as an apology to anyone I dropped in it with my over enthusiasm

 

Edited to add:

I just want to make very clear that I did not at any point go anywhere that the public were not free to go, nor was I at any point asked not to take photographs. I did not at any point go inside any fences around the structures which were up during construction. Once the fences were removed, I assumed the boundary to be the ā€˜flooringā€™ around the sites (the plastic roadway stuff that protects the ground underneath). Only once did I set foot on that flooring, and that was with permission. There was full public access to the site throughout construction (itā€™s MoD land), and lots of members of the public taking photos and videos. It was only during filming that the security guys were present. I do feel that if the chapel site was such hot property, then the production team should have made the construction team very aware of this, and put security on the site. Itā€™s not like I was skulking around ā€“ I was there with two loud children and a dog!

I was told by the military policeman that I had breached a military byelaw, copies of which are displayed onsite. This is the byelaw in question;

It is prohibited toā€¦Ā  4(13) deposit or distribute, or cause to be deposited or distributed any handbills, leaflets or other literature or printed matter of any description.

All this seems to revolve around the fact that the mailonline bought 8 of my pictures to go into the artice that had already gone up on their site. At the gate I was toldĀ  that itā€™s to do with ā€˜commercial gainā€™ and that if I hadnā€™t received money for the pictures then they wouldnā€™t have been able to stop me blogging. I donā€™t know how that relates to the byelaw though. Itā€™s all a bit mystifying really and not at all worth the Ā£200 the mail paid me.

 

 

MOD Hankley Byelaws

  3 comments for “Wildlife Photographer in trouble for Skyfall Pics

  1. If it were movie blog going to inappropriate places I could understand getting upset, a wildlife photographer who gets a few good pictures who cares?

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