Wednesday night, the first night of Oktoberfest is always corporate night.  A night in which the sponsers of the event get together and celebrate another great year here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Corporate night is always the best in my opinion, simply because you don’t have many of the random strangers walking around.  The grounds in which you stomp during the chicken dance are not crawling with near as many drunks.

The evening was absolutely hilarious.  From the beginning, the dreaded walk from Danielle towards our destination was pretty long.  Upon making it to the gate, we all gathered our corporate invitations and made sure everyone had a ticket to get in.  Nick Reid, Stace, Vanessa and myself all had tickets from companies we do business with.  Once inside, we immediately steered towards the beer tent, not just any tent; the spaten tent!

We grabbed our tickets, purchased our beer and began drinking.  We mingled in and out of various tents for about the next hour or so and Nick and I decided to walk inside another tent.  I noticed a group of Tulsa’s finest men, our police department, and decided that because they were having so much fun at the event, I would take their photo.  This didn’t go as planned — in fact it didn’t go anyway near as I initially thought it would.

Officer Kyle Murray, Tulsa Police Department, dressed in full task force style uniform immediately appraoched me and began tapping on my arm furiously informing me, “You need to delete that photograph.”  I responded, “Sorry, Can’t do it.”  He followed up with, “Yes you can, its digital.”  Regardless of the fact that my photographs were digital or film, I informed him that I would not delete it.

Our conversation began to escalate as he started making demands and threats to me that if I did not “delete that photograph or I will arrest you.”  I could not help but laugh, laugh extremely hard at this situation.  I expressed my concerns as to how he was talking to me and that he would likely get much more respect and a better quality of conversation if he decided to be a little kinder.  Besides, he is a public servant correct?  I’m the public, he’s the servant.  Now get off your high horse and speak to me as if I am a human being.

We exchanged words, some nice some not so nice for about 10 minutes when he informed me that “we can go outside and talk.”  I replied, “talk about my civil liberties, my rights as a community journalist?”  He insisted that I delete the photograph and that he did not want to be in the photo.  I informed him, (1) you’re not in the photograph and (2) if for some reason you were, I would censor you out, or remove you from the photograph all together.

I was astonished at the way in which I was being talked to.  I’m not fifteen anymore, I’m not some little immature child with no intelligence, knowledge of the law or rights as a person.  If it were the president himself I would still carry on the same arguement, granted I might be shot and killed — but I would try!

After our conversation, I walked away.  I began shooting candid shots of the officers again, capturing Mr. Murray in a few positions that I am sure he would be uncomfortable with.  I agreed not to display the photographs, he does not wish to be in them, so I won’t distribute them.  However, I will describe them.  Officer Murray was caught, red nosed, face in chest of another woman.  He was rambling and carrying on, paying no attention to the guy across the tent, standing on a bleacher with a giant telephone lens pointed right at his head.

Alright, there is much much more to this story, but honestly I am spent.  The details are vague and the photographs tell everything, as a man of my word I won’t upload all of them.  However, I placed a bunch in my flickr photostream from the Oktoberfest event, so check them out!