Street Photography and People's Privacy

posted Thursday, 24 July 2008, 23:08 (+0800), by Martin

In November 2007, while attending the Red Bull Air Race qualifying in Perth with a friend, I took a a number of photos of some of the many police officers who were in attendance in the crowd. Along with photos of the various Red Bull aeroplanes, I also published a photo of two police officers in my Red Bull photo gallery.

Several weeks ago, I received the following email, which referenced the image of the two police officers:

Subject:
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:06:26 +0800
From: (name removed) <(email removed) @ hotmail.com>
To: <mpot (at) martybugs.net>

Hi there.

Recently my friend was browsing through your internet page and noticed a photo on the following address ; martybugs.net/gallery/photos/(imagename removed)

It was forwarded to me as he was concerned.

This photo is one of my self and my partner I full police uniform from last years red bull airrace.

With all due respect, could you please remove this photo, as my permission was not given to have the photo taken, nor was permission given to have it placed on the internet.

I would appreciate a reply when you have conpleted this task.

(name removed).

However, under Australian law (and similarly in almost all other countries), a photographer does not need permission to take photos of people in a public place, and nor is permission required to publish these photos.

There's plenty of useful information on the internet about photographers' rights, as well as plenty of stories about security guards and police who do not understand photographers' rights.
Here's a recent story about a guy who was called a pervert, and told to stop taking photos, when he was just trying to take photos of his own children on a slide in a park!

For Australian photographers, here's some very useful resources:

I'd recommend printing out one or both of the PDFs listed above, and keeping a copy in your camera bag. You'll then have a useful reference handy if anyone ever attempts to stop you from taking photos in a public place.

Getting back to the email I had received, requesting me to remove an image from my photo gallery... I promptly responded, indicating that under Australian law, I didn't need permission to take the photo, or to publish the photo.
However, out of respect for the police officer's privacy, I offered to remove the photo from my website if they could provide some further proof of their identity.
They had sent the email from a hotmail address, and I had no way of verifying that the person sending the email was really the person in that photo.

I asked that they confirm their identity either by providing their surname or their service number, as both were legible on the police officer's badge in the full resolution image, but were not legible in the reduced size images on my website.

The police officer responded by emailing their service number, and I promptly confirmed that it indeed matched the service number shown on the police officer in the photo. The photo was then removed from my gallery, and I emailed the police officer, informing them that the photo had been removed, but also confirmed that I was only doing so out of respect for their privacy, but was under no legal obligation to do so.

There's plenty of useful information available on this topic. Earlier this month, Scott Kelby interviewed Attorney Ed Greenberg to discuss copyright, model releases, and shooting in public (focussing on US laws).
Earlier this week, Shawn Duffy blogged about "Portraits in a Strange Land", where he provides some very useful information on taking photos in public in other countries. It's based on his recent experiences in India and Palestine, and is a worthwhile read for anyone intending to travel with a camera. (sduffyphotography.com no longer exists, and I haven't found the post elsewhere)

Have you had a good, bad or ugly experience taking photos of strangers in public?

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