Photographing prison vans.

Factual Questions
1

Whenever I see a van transporting a prisoner to or from a courthouse on the news there is always at least one photographer who attempts to take a picture of the inside of the van through the heavily darkened small windows on the side. The second image in this set of results is the type of van I am thinking of.

I personally have never seen a photograph of the high-profile prisoner sitting in the van so I can only assume one of two things is true. Either it is impossible to take a picture through these windows or it is illegal to publish these pictures when taken. Either way it begs the question (in my mind at least) why do they bother doing this? Wouldn’t they be better off getting good pictures of the van arriving or leaving rather than wasting their time waving their cameras at the windows?

2

I would imagine that for your average photo-journalist there’s no such thing as a “wasted shot”, particularly now digital cameras are the norm.

Sure… the chances are you’ll get nothing, but I wouldn’t like to explain to an editor why a competitor has published a photo I didn’t take because “I thought it was a waste of time even trying”.

That’s a guaranteed way to end up doing the P45 dance.

Fire off 50 shots of the prison van… only needs one to come out and you have an exclusive. If it doesn’t work, you’ve lost nothing.

3

I’ve seen a picture of Harold Shipman inside the prison van.