Stopped from photographing MY child at an event

You have to ask why a small cricket club needs a “safeguarding officer”.

As well as alluded to above it’s a requirement if your organisation receives public money. Some local clubs won’t have unattended minors on events a parent has to be present as there are parents who regard them as cheap childcare. (See also Scouts, the number of irate parents when we asked for contact details for camp and for them to be available to collect little Johnny if he got ill/injured).

Just to add another example of why such restrictions are sometimes put in place. My sister has an adopted daughter and her daughter cannot have her photo put on social media etc for safeguarding reasons. So, you snap your kid and she is in the background or as part of a group photo and you share that image it could cause real issues as her biological parents can’t know where she is.

Likewise at the boy’s school there are a number of kids from challenging backgrounds and again some of them have safeguarding plans in place that prohibit their photos being on social media etc. When we go to his school plays and the like the school does permit photos but they it clear they must not be shared on SM. Luckily all the parents play ball but I suspect if someone did put a photo up on Facebook or wherever they would just outright ban photos.

They made it clear that they were the information officer, and what i was doing was against the law. I was breaking patient confidentiality and GDPR!

On this, I’m now wondering what’s what…
In *theory*, filming that showed someone leaving the hospital, say with a cast on, would be personally identifiable information – that Dave you know from work seemingly broke his arm. It seems like exactly the kind of thing a ‘GDPR officer’ would get involved in, rightly or wrongly; but what is the specific regulation/ law on it?

I’d assume it depends on the location and the event T&C’s?

e.g if it’s a public location then they can’t stop you from taking photos. But they can stop you from participating in the event.

You had the correct answer early on here OP.

Have you clarified whether it’s private or public property? And whether you’re likely to get caught?

Because photography is ‘art’ (sometimes a dubious classification) I’m not convinced it’s a get out of jail free card for acting weird.

I’ve only quoted this part but honestly I do largely agree with a lot of what you said in your follow up post.

There are several challenges with the situation you described, the most obvious being that photographing an undisturbed scene is very different to photographing one where your presence becomes known. That knowledge changes the scene quite distinctly. Every Henri Cartier Bresson wannabe wants to shoot ‘street’ without influencing the scene and a child caught in the moment of wonder and beauty (in response to anything, not just the sea), is one of those captures that is both beautiful and important to represent. Reflecting that kind of innocent, wondrous beauty is what helps society to become a better place.

However, the way that particular photographer went about it was indeed clumsy; it’s one thing to recognise the scene, it’s quite another to capture it in a way that is equally sensitive to the scene itself. It’s incredibly difficult to do and it’s why 95% of street photography is garbage. In the case of the guy you encountered, it sounds like the kind of ‘heuristic’ I’ve seen myself many times; a photographer who is more into kit than image making but who recognises the kind of images that are likely to be popular and so paps away clumsily, thinking that they are capturing the decisive moment with a burst of 15fps on a long lens but utterly ignorant of the negative impact they are having around them even if the subject is themselves unaware of their presence.

The reference to inner bias and prejudice is derived from just that heuristic, with the deliciously hypocritical addition of it being a man making those pictures and therefore the predatory nature of men comes into the evaluation. My approach to those kinds of scenes is far more ‘feminine’, (as opposed to ‘masculine’ so this is less about gender and more about gender traits) i.e. sensitive and agreeable rather than clumsy and disagreeable, and yet I’ve still been on the receiving end of hostility because a man with a camera photographing anywhere where there are children is usually seen as a potential threat.

And honestly I understand that heuristic – women are less likely to be child molesters than men! But let’s face it, given that the percentage of men guilty of this is vanishingly small, it’s a good example of what Daniel Khaneman called ‘system one thinking’, fast an automatic but usually inaccurate! I can live with that and it’s rarely a problem for me as a photographer because I’m far more interested in directly interacting with my subjects and making images that are as much a reflection of me as they are them.

Nevertheless, for as clumsy as his approach was, I still don’t think it was weird, at least, not weird in the sense of what he was doing, but perhaps a little weird in the sense that he was either deliberately choosing to ignore the negative impact or else was blithely unaware of it. It was not weird in the senes of the subject matter itself being inappropriate, only in the way he went about it.

At this time I am reminded of the work of Bruce Gilden, whose approach is famously to say ‘go **** yourself’ in response to challenges for his style (he knows perfectly well how disagreeable he is, he just doesn’t care) and Sally Mann, who photographed her own children in some of the most exquisitely beautiful moments I’ve ever seen and yet was still accused of some truly awful things and her children even tried to sue her in later life for the images she made and published of them.

A lot of what I wanted to say has already been said by Joe, Jude, JonV. I will question this though:

I know the law on this very well as I am a reasonably accomplished photographer
…
No one has a right to privacy in a public space period. No exceptions.

That’s not right, is it? There are public spaces where photography is unlawful. Railway station platforms is one, and a handful of others I forget now.

As well as alluded to above it’s a requirement if your organisation receives public money. Some local clubs won’t have unattended minors on events a parent has to be present as there are parents who regard them as cheap childcare. (See also Scouts, the number of irate parents when we asked for contact details for camp and for them to be available to collect little Johnny if he got ill/injured).

I was a regular Dad helper with my kids local Scout troop whilst my kids were there, it was a real eye opener to how dim-witted some parents are, some poor kids have got no chance 😀

Railway station platforms is one, and a handful of others I forget now

A lot does rest on what is defined as a public space but railway stations are privately owned by Network Rail. The obvious inference here is photographing a public space that might also be regarded as a target for terrorism. No one can stop you photographing these ares, including public buildings, not even the police, but they might arrest you on the suspicion of planning an act of terrorism. Fortunately simply making a photograph of a building is not enough grounds for suspicion to warrant an arrest.

My sister has an adopted daughter and her daughter cannot have her photo put on social media etc for safeguarding reasons.

Why would that be if she is adopted? Surely at that point the child is solely the responsibility of the adoptive parents (if she was fostered I could fully understand it, but when a child is adopted there are no longer any third-party responsibilities/input from social services are there)?

Surely at that point the child is solely the responsibility of the adoptive parents

In these cases it is because the biological parents still represent a threat to the child.

Railway station platforms is one, and a handful of others I forget now

You can take photos on / of railway stations, platforms etc, (same on London Underground), you’re just not allowed to use them commercially. If you tried to set up shop with a tripod, flashguns etc, you’d be rightly told to desist but taking photos of trains or the architecture is absolutely fine.

They might have more to say if you went round filming the location of CCTV cameras and security barriers but in general, it’s fine and permitted.

A photography mag a while ago actually supplied a lens cleaning cloth with all the rules around street photography printed on it – it was around the time of sweeping new anti-terror laws and police going around trying to confiscate cameras, get people to delete photos etc.

I’m astonished people still don’t get why kids privacy may need to be protected. It comes up on here occasionally, but comes up regularly at schools, sports clubs, Scouts etc.

At least one of my friends who have adopted have to keep their child’s new identity private, sadly, but has to be done.

In these cases it is because the biological parents still represent a threat to the child.

I understand that there may be a threat, but once adopted, I was not aware there was a *legal* position on this and the choice would be solely that of the adoptive parents. Perhaps I misunderstood the meaning of the word ‘cannot’ in the posters’ context and it means ‘it would be dangerous in our circumstances to do this’.

I was not aware there was a *legal* position on this

My understanding is that there is no legal position in any situation unless a court rules on this in conjunction with a pending case. None of the examples cited in this thread (of children’s identities needing to be protected) are legal requirements, rather they are safeguarding requirements.

I understand that there may be a threat, but once adopted, I was not aware there was a *legal* position on this and the choice would be solely that of the adoptive parents.

At risk kids are still supported by social services. There is some horrific things some kids have had to suffer. They remain very vulnerable throughout their childhood and even as adults because of these.

I’ve sat through so many child safeguarding sessions and the odd case review that it’s been absolutely disturbing. If me not taking a photo of my kids to protect a child I’m good with that. It seems to that self entitled comes from camera operators for the media. No surprises there.

^^^ Fair enough (asking as a newly ‘qualified’ foster carer but we only very briefly touched on the rights of adoptive parents during the training).

There is some horrific things some kids have had to suffer.

And yes I know this very well having seen some of the cases put to us for consideration for fostering.

My understanding is that there is no legal position in any situation unless a court rules on this in conjunction with a pending case.

Yeah. Those comments were in reply to “why is photographing children a safeguarding issue?”

It may well be perfectly legal. But as others have said, there may be a risk to those children beyond some hypothetical paedo taking photos for the bank. I have a couple of friends who were in this exact situation, they adopted two young kids who had been removed from their abusive family. The kids were relocated across the country and given new names for their own protection. Someone innocently posting photos of them into the public domain could have been a real threat to their safety.

So it would actually be preferable to say that you’re a pedo taking pics for lusting over later, rather than saying you’re a parent taking pics of your kid for the family Facebook page.