JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Facing a backlash from wedding vendors and brides alike, park officials are walking back new proposed regulations on photographers in Grand Teton.
The original plan appeared underdeveloped and out of focus, not to mention impossible to enforce. Wedding photographers were facing a $300 permit to shoot a ceremony within the park. Only the wedding photographer. So, theoretically, any other participant or attendee of a wedding could take pictures, but a professional could not.
How would peeping park rangers hiding in the bushes be able to tell who was the wedding photographer and who was Aunt Jane? Easy, the pro shooter would be wearing a uniform. That’s right. In addition to coughing up Uncle Sam’s share of the take ($300 plus 3% of their earnings on the wedding), wedding photographers would be required don the acceptable Grand Teton wedding uniform—whatever that might have looked like.
Any if this sound like Big Brother going a bit heavy-handed. How about unconstitutional?
That’s what lawyers representing several professions and organizations including the National Press Photographers Association thought when they contested the new regs in early March with the wedding season fast approaching.
“It is clear that Congress intended for photographers—including commercial portrait and wedding photographers—to be allowed to take photographs in national parks without a permit,” wrote attorneys Mickey H. Osterreicher and Alicia Calzada in a letter to superintendent of Grand Teton, Chip Jenkins. “Even without the statute and federal regulations—which dispositively prohibit the new GTNP rules, the rules would violate the First Amendment because they are ‘content-based restriction on commercial photography.’”
The park says it is simply trying to get a handle on what has become overuse by all user groups. In the case of wedding ceremonies, for instance, some photographers and planners have staged events with outside props including prohibited vegetation.
But, as applied, the park’s proposed rules would have made a seemingly arbitrary distinction between the work of professional and amateur photographers.
The policy lacked any real depth of field, as they say in the biz. It smacked of shutter speed reaction to a problem with typical government overreach—killing a fly with a hammer.
PHOTO: Courtesy Jayme Chrisman Photography
