what happened to the images in my AHSC posting?

Asian Heritage Street Celebration

Hey...Howzit going?

I got an email from a staff person of the Asian Heritage Street Celebration, an event I have been attending and enjoying since the beginning eight years ago. She wrote me about a blog entry I made in May 2009 following a bizarre incident which the stage staff of the event made false accusations at me.

Here is the entry: http://lwongphoto.blogspot.com/2009/05/asian-heritage-street-celebration.html

Since that traumatic experience, I have volunteered to photograph officially out of fear that such an incident will not happen again. I volunteered for this year as well. I got the following letter from the organizer:

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Hi Leland, 

Thank you for your interest in photographing our event! Before we move forward in having you volunteer, a few years ago there was an unfortunate incident with you and some of our street fair volunteers which you blogged about it on your website: http://lwongphoto.blogspot.com/2009/05/asian-heritage-street-celebration.html. I am sorry you had a misunderstanding and bad experience at the festival. Would you please remove the post and all associated photos? Our concern is that it brings negative publicity to the street fair and is counterproductive to our mission. 

-(name withheld)

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In no way did I say it was the entire event that was responsible for what happened. In fact I stated in the blog entry, "Please don't get me wrong, I believe this is a great annual event. I'm just sad that they have to involve such people to run this event. They have to educate people about photographing in public places."

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I do not intend to take down my blog entry. This incident is reported as is. I did not make this up. I want this to continue entry continue to educate photographers of their rights. And also to educate people about photography in general. These individuals of the stage staff continue to be in charge of the stage to this day.