Street Photography in the EU

[Les Olson]

Les and Ron: behave. Both of you. This is a public forum.

He calls it street photography, but there are no streets, just young womens' bodies.  It is sexual harassment, it has to stop, and that means photographers taking a stand.

So, please, look at Ron's Flickr stream. If you think it is all fine, and there is no occasion for solidarity with his victims, I apologise for the disruption and will bow out.

[CS]

He calls it street photography, but there are no streets, just young womens' bodies.  It is sexual harassment, it has to stop, and that means photographers taking a stand.

So, please, look at Ron's Flickr stream. If you think it is all fine, and there is no occasion for solidarity with his victims, I apologise for the disruption and will bow out.

I strongly disagree with your comments. You have an obvious bias, and you're attempting to deny Ron's ability to photograph as he pleases merely because you don't like it. That's selfish in the extreme.

[Ron Scubadiver]

Thank you Carl.  This isn't the first time I have had to put up with this kind of behavior.  Someone is having trouble with definitions.  This sort of attack is one of the reasons why I publish using a screen name.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Can the sidetracking and personal agendas please now stop !!!

More and the Admins have no choice than lock and/or delete the entire thread.

This is a final warning

[Ron Scubadiver]

Looks like it is May 25th in Europe.  I have a tingling sensation.  My skin is turning orange, like a pumpkin.

I just received this privacy policy from FotoFest:

 http://home.fotofest.org/accessibility-privacy.aspx

It seems simple enough, although they say no data will be transferred to third parties.  Smugmug sent out it's new TOS to flickr users.  It's more understandable than most and no where as bad as it was years ago.  There are restrictions on privacy and publicity rights, but that doesn't ban street photography in general.

Some of the blogs I have read recommend that if one published street photography with a EU connection, don't supply and identifying information.  That's not just the name of the subject, but location and time as well.  I can't say if that will work.

It's happy hour in the USA.

[Ann]

Street Photography is not something which I do very often (usually only when travelling abroad) but I have found that if someone objects to being photographed I respect their wishes and turn my lens on someone else.

Then I show the results to the people around me and the funny thing is that the one who was so anxious to not join in the fun now wants me to photograph her after all. (The reluctant ones always seem to be female!)

Long ago, I used to travel with colour Polaroids for ice-breaking but now the rear LCD on the Nikon seems to do the job.

[Airy]

Greetings from Ljubljana, capital city of Slovenia, a European country. We have nice weather, up to 23°C with occasional showers. Streets are full of local inhabitants rather than tourists.

When not busy with our final conference, I spent some time wandering around and taking photos like an average tourist, on the street and in churches. Nobody cared, not even the mom of the little girl, and some even appreciated, such as this Romanian cimbalom player with whom I had a long conversation in various languages, in the middle of the shooting session.

The problem is that US citizens (and I'm not targeting Ron or anybody else in this particular case) live in a litigating culture where one professional out of 250 is a lawyer. To be compared with Japan, where the ratio is 1:6000 (if memory serves well - I read these figures a long time ago). Europe must lie somewhere inbetween. So the same piece of law that may appear as a threat to publishing photographers in the US may after all be a reasonable piece of privacy protection in the EU. Context is different.

[Erik Lund]

Admin comment;

We don't allow anyone to 'hide' behind made up screen names here on NikonGear.

If you are not using your full name as your Screen Name, then please put your full name in the Signature box. Thanks 

http://nikongear.net/revival/index.php/topic,229.0.html

[Ron Scubadiver]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/chicago-tribune-la-times-go-dark-in-europe-after-gdpr-fail-2018-05-25

[Ilkka Nissilä]

I wonder how many Europeans read LA Times or Chicago Tribune.   

[Olivier]

Very well put, Airy.
Enjoy Slovenia, it is a wonderful country that manages to combine modern life with a delightful "Old Europe" feel.

[Ron Scubadiver]

I wonder how many Europeans read LA Times or Chicago Tribune.   

I read the Financial Times and the Economist.

My conclusion is the GDPR was written with intentional vagueness when it comes to publishing an ordinary photograph of a recognizable person.  It really boils down to whether the "manifestly public" exception applies.  One could say (I believe incorrectly) that while a person's face is manifestly public, a photo of it is not.  The regulation could have been specific on this point, but they chose not to be.  This is the best I can say as a lawyer and I would not trust a non lawyer's ideas on this complex topic.

My secondary conclusion is it is not worth expressing one's opinion on the internet.  I have to deal with nonsense like someone arguing the US does not have a tradition of free speech.  That's wrong. It's a fact, not my opinion.  I feel that I have been the victim of a heckler's veto.

I have been accused of sexual harassment.  What I do does not fit the definition which requires some connection to the workplace.  Perhaps 1% of my photos are of people working, usually in outdoor cafe's and almost all of them are in on it.   This accusation libel as a matter of fairness.  It's also another example of someone making it up as they go along.

What I can say is over the years some people have gone to a lot of effort to silence me.  One Canadian became obsessed to the point that he literally spent hours at it and opened multiple accounts in another forum to aid in his task.

[Birna Rørslett]

The Admins' sentiments on this or other topics are not open to question and suffice it to state they have had no influence on the moderation actions being conducted in this thread. Or elsewhere on NG, for that matter. We just ask people to behave according to Forum Guide Lines.

[Ron Scubadiver]

The Admins' sentiments on this or other topics are not open to question and suffice it to state they have had no influence on the moderation actions being conducted in this thread. Or elsewhere on NG, for that matter. We just ask people to behave according to Forum Guide Lines.

I will accept that, and edited appropriately, but still believe you should remove the reference to sexual harassment.  It is a serious charge and not applicable by definition.  Alternatively, convince Les to remove it.  If he wants to say the photos are lousy or anything else, that's just an opinion.

At any rate, it sure doesn't make NG look good.

[Ilkka Nissilä]

I read the Financial Times and the Economist.

Yes, but those deal with global topics whereas at least the names of LA Times and Chicago Tribune suggest they are likely to be interesting mainly to those with an interest in the affairs of those regions.

My conclusion is the GDPR was written with intentional vagueness

Yes, exactly. They wanted to give individual member countries freedom to set the balance between privacy and other rights in national legislation. This is because individual countries have different cultures and priorities. The European Union is not a federation and there are forces in play which want a looser union or separation of their countries from the union, which is happening with the UK. If the EU tries to place too much unification effort on its members it may result in disintegration and going back in time in some ways.

Currently it is not clear how e.g. the hired photographer of an event (hired by the organizers to document the event for publicity) can accommodate GDPR with regards to recognizable members of the audience in the images. They could be in the thousands and it is not practical to ask for everyone's permission to use the photos. In the case of past events should we contact everyone who is recognizable in such photos and inform them of their rights? I doubt that. Two comments have been made: first, the need to inform depends on risk to the people whose information is stored: if there is no especial risk to them, then there is not a need to inform. Secondly, it has been suggested that if there is a legitimate need to store the information, then it should be ok. But ultimately we will find out when the national augmenting legislation is in place and then how the first cases regarding photography and GDPR turn out. I think the focus of GDPR is on the likes of Facebook etc. and not on event or street photographers. I think there is no need to be in panic mode as some have gone into.