These questions/thoughts came about after the numerous obstacles arising to keep us from photographing planes.

We (those of us who actively contribute to this website) do the following with our photographs do the following:

1) we document aircraft movements
2) we document unusual situations and circumstances
3) we document people,air operations and locations

In short we contribute to the knoweledge database on aviation and the work is published in a public forum i.e. the photo database

Is not what we do freelance Aviation photojournalism?

Definitions of photojournalist on the Web:

a journalist who presents a story primarily through the use of photographs
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn2.1

Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism (i.e., the collecting, editing, and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast) that creates images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually understood to refer only to still images, and to refer largely to serious news stories. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such as documentary photography, street photography or celebrity photography) by the qualities of: *Timeliness - the images
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photojournalist

The reason why this definition is important is in light of issues such as security and intellectual property rights. If we are to protect our ability to simply shoot planes the explanation : " i photograph planes 'cos i like it" may not be simply not valid anymore. Please refer to Bronkos thread on intellectual property issues AND the usual security hassle threads that pop every weeek.

you thoughts,please?

Eksath