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Tag Archives: privacy
Photography, the Law and Privacy, Again
Yet again the law governing photography in the USA has been tested, this time landing in favour of the photographer. This was particularly interesting as it was not just a privacy issue but one of religious rights also.
A New York court ruled this week that a photographer who took pictures of subjects on the street without their knowledge and then made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling those images did not have to get the permission of his subjects because the intention of the work was art, not commerce. The ruling reaffirms that people in public spaces cannot assume any privacy privilege, even if, as in this case, the subject was an orthodox jew, who regard portraits as graven images and disgraces the man in his community.
Source: blog.photoblogs.org
As a photographer I enjoy taking pictures of people, scenes seem more alive with people in them, but I do not see it as a “right”. I wasn’t aware of this particular religious belief but I feel like I would prefer to be sensitive to it rather than inflame the issue by selling the photograph (marketability of my photography aside!).
Should we be able to take and sell photographs of people just because it is in the name of art? Does this cross over into rulings around photographing children?
Technorati Tags: digital, photography, law, privacy
Posted in Legal Issues, Ethics, Model Releases, News and Commentary, Photography Business, Press Freedom
Also tagged digital, law, photos, public places, selling
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Photographer Ethics
What do you get when you combine near-ubiquitous digital camera ownership (through mobile phones) and a tabloid media thirsty for “candid” photographs of celebrity and news events?
There are two answers, the first might be of interest to you, and your bank balance, the second serves as a warning of where this might end.
Scoopt is a service set up to sell amateur snaps to the press. And they have some success. You can sell a camera phone pic to a newspaper for hundreds, perhaps a thousand pounds. A lucky snapper got $2000 for capturing David Cameron grocery shopping on the day he became opposition leader.
The problem is some things really ought not appear in papers. Now, due to this phenomenon pictures are being made available and the media doesn’t seem to want to turn them down. For example a depressed woman’s suicide, in early January, made the front pages.
In the past, pictures like this would never have come into editors’ hands except in the remote chance that one of their photographers happened to be passing at the precise second of drama, the kind of coincidence that tends to happen only in comic strips involving Spiderman and his photographer alter ego, Peter Parker.
But, in 2006, we are all snappers. And we all have the wherewithal to take clean, printable pictures with our mobiles, then send them instantaneously to a news organisation. As it happens, the shots of the hotel suicide were taken by one Jon Bushell, a bystander in the small crowd that had gathered on the pavement.
He snapped away and dispatched his exclusive in significantly less time than it would have taken to write out the cheque in reward for his endeavours.
Source: Telegraph
There have to be limits. We know the media rarely have self control in these matters, the newspaper buying public do not give them any reason to have. It is up to citizen-snappers to make the “take it or don’t take it” decision, but with a few hundred on offer how many will? A situation only likely to descend further into the depths I imagine.
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Flickr, Freaks and Fantasy Families
99% of the pictures of my daughter I post are made only visible to family and friends. People tell me I am paranoid but stuff like this keeps happening and it can only happen so often before I think “why take the risk?”
Wayne at Utata
Some strange person has taken his family photographs and used them as her own, constructing a fantasy family life and casting Wayne as her husband. Seriously.
I used to blog and post pictures about my family all the time until I started getting .. inappropriate .. comments made. Nothing too scary or threatening but some people got a little to familiar.
Darren Rouse, a popular blogger, had a stalker turn up at his house and make threats. Consider Flickrs new mapping feature, how easy are we making it for freaks to track us down?
It seems to me it is just not safe to make your private life too public. Sure post pictures and blog, but draw the line somewhere. The internet has a long memory and stuff is so easily copied, re-mixed, manipulated and re-posted. It is no good wishing in the future you hadn’t divulged stuff, then it is too late. You can take stuff down but you can’t delete from peoples hard disks.
People say to me “I have been blogging for years and nothing like this has ever happened to me”. I hope for your sake it never does but your past experience is no guarantee of what will happen in the future. It only takes one nutter to spoil it for you, best be fully aware of what you are doing now.
Technorati Tags: privacy, risks, blogging, photography, news, flickr