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The cost of shooting in Rocky Mountain Parks
It's expensive, darned expensive. If you want to avoid be tossed out of the park, you'd better have a permit, and in order to get that permit, you need to dig deep! If you want to shoot in Banff, Jasper, Kootenay, Yoho, Mount Revelstoke, Glacier or Waterton Lakes National Park, you need a permit, the application for which must be completed at least ten days in advance, and can cost you up to $2000.00 for a weekend of shooting. Yep, you read that right. Here's how it breaks down: (For groups of less than six): Application fee: $148.60. Location fee: $495.30 (PER DAY!) AND you need to carry $2,000,000.00 liability insurance. The full policy can be found here
It seems that the intent of the permit process was to prevent huge production companies moving in and filming in the middle of our parks. That's great, but as detailed in the excellent article in Outdoor Photography Canada (OPC) where I first learned of this (Summer-Fall '08 issue), it applies to anyone with a camera who wants to sell their work. In other words, you can take pictures for yourself (You may still get hassled by the parks staff if you go in with your 400/2.8 because you "look" professional) but if there's any chance you are going to sell, you NEED a permit! The article does go on to say that interpretation of this regulation varies by park, and that the park staff don't deliberately go looking to hassle photographers, but regardless the rule is there, and you can be ejected from the park for failure to comply.
Personally, I think this is beyond idiotic. I have no problem with a permit process so that they know where I am and what I'm doing (in general terms) so that in the event there were damage to sensitive areas, or other problems, they have a record, but asking me to pay somewhere in the area of $2000 for a weekend of shooting? I doubt if I would shoot enough images in a weekend to recover that cost in a lifetime!
Another excellent point in the OPC article is that no other artist has to pay this fee; you can take your easel and paintbox and stay a month if you want. I fully intend, and encouage everyone else in Canada, or who may visit these parks, to write the The Honourable Minister responsible and demand a change in this policy to make it more reasonable on those of us who might spend a few days a year in the park, and if we're lucky, make a few hundred dollars from the sale of those images.
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Originally Posted by baddness
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