Woman Freaks Out at Photographer Over Photo Shoot in Park

A photographer shooting Christmas photos of her friend’s children in Florida were screamed at by an angry neighbor who wasn’t happy that a photo shoot was being done in the park. The profanity-laced confrontation was captured in the 1.5-minute video above.

Coral Springs Talk reports that photographer Nickolette Mottola was photographing in Coral Springs’ Orchid Park on a recent Sunday afternoon with her boyfriend Angel Ruiz. The group brought a blanket, a crate, and a small Christmas tree to use as props during the shoot.

As the group was wrapping up the shoot and leaving, a woman named Debbi DeCaro emerged from her home and began screaming at the group. Ruiz filmed the encounter and later posted it to his Facebook page.

In the video, DeCare accuses Mottola of regularly using the park for professional photo shoots.

“Every week, they were here yesterday…yesterday! Every weekend,” DeCare says in the video. “This is not your professional studio space! […] Get a studio space, you idiot!”

Mottola and Ruiz say they weren’t in the park the day before, that six other people were shooting photos in the park at that same time, and that they weren’t doing a paid photo shoot.

“This is a park for kids and children and people,” DeCaro says, whose loud profanity is arguably less kid-friendly than a Christmas photo shoot.

“We were nothing but polite,” Ruiz writes. “But that didn’t stop her from being nasty and making other kids cry.

“I don’t have on video, but she then goes to her car and holds the horn down for maybe 5 min. She was honking because there was a maternity shoot happening about 100ft away from her, when she then proceeded to spew nothing but profanity.”

“People like this make me so sad,” Mottola writes. “There’s truly no reason to ever be this awful to people minding their own business and taking photos in a PUBLIC park.”

A park ranger on duty informed the group that they weren’t doing anything wrong, Ruiz tells Coral Springs Talk, which also learned from the city that professional photo shoots in the park require a permit.

But if Mottola was doing a non-professional photo shoot for a family friend, she was legally allowed to shoot without a permit as long as she wasn’t being disruptive.

(via Coral Springs Talk via Fstoppers)