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The sticky issue of consent in street photography

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Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#71

Post by macintux »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #40
hereforphone wrote: post #23

Can I take your picture in a public space? A picture of your kids? Your kids in their bathing suits at the pool? Everyone draws the line, and at a different point. It's not boolean.

It absolutely is boolean for some people. If I'm in a public space w/o an expectation of privacy you have every right to photograph me. Same goes for my daughter, bathing-suit or street-clothes. I value the right of others to make photos in public spaces and I recognize that it applies to me as a subject.

Would you be ok with a drone someone programs to follow you every time you’re in public, taking photographs and recording everything you do?

An extreme example, but I suspect there are very few people for whom this is a Boolean issue.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#72

Post by IgorPartola »

cmaggiulli wrote: post #8

I’m willing to be swayed on this issue but to me the word “consent” implies permission, and the word permission implies some type of authority. In the case of photography in public there is no authority so no consent is needed. I personally believe that, for the most part, ethics and legality align here. I don’t think it is unethical to photograph and publish a picture of someone in public. However, I think there may…

If I understand correctly, the reason why public photography is considered protected speech is because we want citizens to be able to capture public events of interest. That is, protests, riots, cops using excessive force, or more happy events like celebrations, etc. When it comes to someone taking photos in those situations I have no problem with it.

However I really dislike the commercial street photographers as a concept. Basically instead of paying models to work for you, you go out to use random people as models and then sell your photos as art. That to me is exploitation. I understand that legally speaking it would be incredibly hard to separate the two types of street photography so it must all remain legal, but at the same time I strongly dislike the latter category, especially for the photogs who act like entitled assholes about it.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#73

Post by b3morales »

karaterobot wrote: post #55
ivanstojic wrote: post #7

I always found this issue to be confusing. There are literally hundreds of cameras tracking me every day: in the parking lot, in front of the ATM, when I buy my groceries… I have no ability to know when I’m being recorded or what happens to those recordings. Yet some people are upset if they get photographed by a human photographer in a public space. Is the only difference that the photo was taken with intent?

Is it so unbelievable? You listed hidden cameras. When you don't see a camera, and don't know you're being recorded, you don't object to it as strenuously as when a stranger points a camera at you. Even if you remember reading somewhere that cameras are in the store, you can easily forget that because you don't see them. Instead, imagine if grocery stores had employees follow customers around recording with cameras w…

It's a very good point. This whole debate is semi-consciously influenced by an semi-conscious quirk of our human brains: watching for apparent agency in the world and ascribing more weight to things that seem to have it.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#74

Post by agentdrtran »

biglost wrote: post #25

Curious about “ And asking for it afterwards almost guarantees you will be turned down. ” She seems to know most people wont approve it, so the solution is to not ask. I imagine my daughter: “Dad, i didnt ask for permission because you would say no, so i not asked for it and Im safe for being grounded.” Weird thinking

It's becuase people will assume a different intent, it sounds like a scam that way.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#75

Post by agentdrtran »

macintux wrote: post #71
EvanAnderson wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely is boolean for some people. If I'm in a public space w/o an expectation of privacy you have every right to photograph me. Same goes for my daughter, bathing-suit or street-clothes. I value the right of others to make photos in public spaces and I recognize that it applies to me as a subject.

Would you be ok with a drone someone programs to follow you every time you’re in public, taking photographs and recording everything you do? An extreme example, but I suspect there are very few people for whom this is a Boolean issue.

This stops being street photography then.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#77

Post by b3morales »

arprocter wrote: post #63
b3morales wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A little apples to oranges, but I get the feeling the same folks who are against being photographed in public are probably pro police bodycams The reasoning is not contradictory as you imply at the end; it is indeed apples and oranges. The "pro police bodycam" position is for capturing the actions of the person wearing it , protecting the camera's subject by adding accountability. The point is for the recording to…

Like most things it's a double-edged sword - would the protests last year have happened without publicly shot video of the Floyd incident? Impossible to say yes or no, but it definitely seemed pivotal

Sure, but those videos were taken deliberately for purpose A: to establish a public record of something related to official actions/accountability. I don't think they can be put under "random videographer".

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#78

Post by shadowgovt »

goldcd wrote: post #62

This made me think - and I've still not managed to produce a coherent viewpoint. Closest I can come up with is that there's some sort of asymmetric 'value' that sometimes appears from nowhere and this throws us off a bit. As people have mentioned, security cameras are filming me all the time - and I've no issue with that. My image has no value. It's one amongst billions of frames taken, that will be ultimately wiped,…

> Maybe it's like somebody mining for diamonds under my house - they've found some value in something I didn't know I had, but I now want my share.

And this is one of the harder parts of assigning value to something like this... What is a person's share when someone exploits a resource that the first party had some kind of nominal claim to (i.e. "my land," even though really you live above that 3D region of space, not within it) but zero ability / opportunity / inclination to exploit?

There's volumes and volumes of legal precedent on this topic for tangibles, let alone the increasingly-intangibles that we can monetize online.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#79

Post by dsr_ »

golemotron wrote: post #26
cmaggiulli wrote: post #8

I’m willing to be swayed on this issue but to me the word “consent” implies permission, and the word permission implies some type of authority. In the case of photography in public there is no authority so no consent is needed. I personally believe that, for the most part, ethics and legality align here. I don’t think it is unethical to photograph and publish a picture of someone in public. However, I think there may…

Yes, the law is clear on this and case law evolved back when photography was expensive and relatively uncommon. People want to reconsider now that everyone has a camera all the time and it is very easy. This is a common pattern with tech.

Nobody needed laws about automobiles before they were invented, and it took quite a few years before those laws became settled and close to universal.

(E.g. every jurisdiction will require you to drive either on the left or the right side of the road, but they differ. Nearly all the world now uses red stop signs and lights.)

Laws change in response to technological changes; this is normal. The spirit of a law is often more important than the wording, in deciding what changes to the law are appropriate.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#80

Post by em-bee »

goldcd wrote: post #62

This made me think - and I've still not managed to produce a coherent viewpoint. Closest I can come up with is that there's some sort of asymmetric 'value' that sometimes appears from nowhere and this throws us off a bit. As people have mentioned, security cameras are filming me all the time - and I've no issue with that. My image has no value. It's one amongst billions of frames taken, that will be ultimately wiped,…

i do take issue with security cameras filming me. it bothers me, because yes, maybe the images get wiped unseen, but maybe not. how secure are those cameras? who gets access to the feed?

on the other hand, if a photographer takes a photo of me, i don't care as long as the photo doesn't get published.

i take photos myself, and in general my attitude is that publishing one of my photos requires the permission of all subjects in it. when i put photos on my own website then i explicitly add a license that allows a subject in the photo to use it for their own purposes as they see fit.

so as a photographer i explicitly give control back to the subjects in the photo, because that is how i believe this should be handled.

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