This evening was meant to be a fun experience: my first ever live Rugby League game. Let me set the scene. My father and I are at Leeds Carneige Stadium in Headingley to watch the Leeds Rhinos play the Salford City Reds at home. You may be asking yourselves ‘But Stu, you’re not a sports fan, you hate sports!’ Normally you’d be right, however on this occasion we’d acquired free tickets through my mother’s job, and being Lancastrian I don’t turn down free tickets.

The real reason I wanted to go was to take my camera, a really nice Canon EOS 1000D with the stock 18-55mm and a Sigma 55-200mm I bought last year. I wanted to get some practice of taking sports shots and fast action stuff, what better place than a fast paced Rugby League game?

Well, Leeds Rugby Ltd. had other ideas, which led to me being rather annoyed and not enjoying the game at all. So before I go any further, LRL you’ve made the list! They claim that they don’t allow photography at their games without prior written consent, which in itself is annoying and in my opinion ridiculous.

That’s not my issue though: my issue is with the fact that they only ‘picked on me’ because I had a DSLR, which of course looks like a pro level camera. Probably even more so because I had the fairly large Sigma lens complete with lens hood bolted onto the body.

Now I do want to say that the member of the security team who asked me to put the camera away, before the game even started I have to add, was very nice about it and from the tone of his voice I got the impression he didn’t think it was fair either.

I suppose I can look at this through their eyes. They probably assume (wrongly so, of course) that anyone using a DSLR is going to be selling the photos they take, or trying to make money from them.

There are a few major flaws in that thinking, foremost of which is that if I were wanting to make money from the photos I wouldn’t be sitting in the front row. I would have gotten a much better seat higher up to get better wide angle shots. Secondly, have they not heard of amateur photography?  Many people, including readers of this post, enjoy photography and never sell their photos, often that isn’t their aim either.

The other issue here is that a lot of compact size cameras are becoming increasingly closer to the image quality of the entry-level DSLR. A  few perfect examples of this type of camera are the Canon PowerShot G9, G10 and G11 cameras; these are fantastic compact cameras and can produce amazing results, with the right photographer of course.

So my question to you all is this: has this happened to you, how did you handle it and what steps can we take to prevent this problem for other photographers.