Document the order and identity of order giver, either in writing or video, comply and then sue later. It’s the courts’ job to know and interpret the law.
This sounds great in theory, but
- you get no photo out of this at the end of the day
- it is possible that you will have to appear in court
- and pay for the legal costs (at least until you recover them, depending on jurisdiction)
Here are my tips for street photography:
- Use a small, inconspicuous camera body, and especially lens. Micro 4/3 is ideal and it is not a coincidence that a lot of street photographers favor it. A full-frame megazoom on the other hand will attract a lot of attention.
- Don’t carry gear (backpacks etc) that screams “photographer”. Plain vanilla weather beaten backpack is best.
- If you can, shoot from the waist, using the LCD. Raising your camera to eye level is conspicuous.
- Don’t aim the lens at people close by. You can still get a shot with a modest wide angle lens (24mm eq) aiming it 10-15 degrees to either side and no one will care.
- Sit down at a outdoor cafe. Shooting will be indistinguishable from just reviewing photos. Shutters won’t be heard in a typical city.
- A modest tele lens (70-150mm) is your friend.
- If people look at you, smile. This will make them smile, leading to a better shot, and will diminish the chance of a conflict.
- Ask for permission if you want to take a portrait. Surprisingly many people say yes, both in developed and developing countries.
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Alan Schaller (well worth a sub) mentions in his recent video that in France any citizen captured in a street photo has royalty rights over the picture (if I remember correctly). Don’t make your money shot a crowd scene!
FWIW, you only need a release form for pics of people taken on public land in the UK if you’re making money with the photo. But as someone already said, more and more public land is being sold to developers who create private space allowing the public in but imposing their own rules
I don’t do street photography for these very reasons. But I was in Charleston South Carolina a couple of months ago, which is a historical city filled with tourists with cameras, and some guy got upset and was literally in my face because he thought I took his photo when I was only taking a picture of a street sign.
I held out my iPhone and he demanded I that I page back. Fortunately he wasn’t in the scene as I was taking the picture. When he was satisfied that he wasn’t in the shot he stormed off. It was an odd encounter, and one that I don’t want to have again.
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He is wrong… otherwise you couldn’t even put pictures in newspapers.
See https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F32103
(nothing on that site mention royalties…)
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Ah, thanks! Today’s lesson is, never take legal advice from a YouTube video
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Also, think whether what someone claims makes any sense at all. So many learnings in one day
In fact here are two very distinct set of rules, one for taking pictures and one for publishing them. The URL above is only about the publication. But the rules about taking pictures are much more lax. In practice, unless you are “invading intimacy”, any picture you take from public space is OK
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The whole thing with when you can use photos can be very complex. If the architect or artists of something it might actually fall under copyright law. case in point:
Similarly you are not allowed to use e.g. pictures of the Hollywood sign.
Personally I find asking people for consent on keeping the photos is polite. if they say no, just delete the photo and move on. asking upfront might be even better but might destroy the candid moment. Sometimes even asking first and then waiting a while for a candid moment to come again is an easy solution.
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I understand that the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel wants you to think this, but ultimately this is something that is decided in court. In most legal systems, a modification of an existing work has to be substantial to quality for copyright. Whether simply putting lights on a structure does this is an open question. Also, if they want to sue a foreigner, they might end up going to court in another country that takes a dim view (pun intended) of this copyright claim.
This just sounds like scare tactics. (Of course, I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice; if you want to publish an album with the Eiffel tower at night, talk to a lawyer. Conversely, don’t take legal advice from people or companies that have their own agenda).
Of course this was very effective as a social media campaign, now a lot of tourists experience the frisson of doing something wicked when they snap a hackneyed photo of the tower using their mobile phones.
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This one is also being blown out of proportion. Here is a text which shows that things are a lot more reasonable in practice.
In any case, taking the shot is not illegal. Selling them as souvenirs without the author of the lighting getting a cut isn’t illegal either, it just exposes you to a lawsuit by said author.
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Yes, there is unfortunately a lot of confused (and confusing) and poorly researched advice on the subject. When I looked into it some years ago, many articles didn’t even specify if they were talking about commercial or non-commercial photography - which is a rather important distinction, since the rules are very different.
In France, if it’s non-commercial, you can take photos of pretty much anyone and anything, as long as it’s in public where there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy. Basically the courts consider that if you’re in public, you have implicitly consented.
Publishing is a bit more tricky, but essentially as long as the subject is not a minor and the photo doesn’t prejudice them, you can publish in a non-commercial capacity without prior consent. There’s also the bit about copyrighted works such as buildings and sculptures.
I suppose that much of the confusion stems from the fact that the law says basically nothing on the subject, and it’s almost entirely down to jurisprudence.
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My son is head of security at a large out of town shopping centre (UK) He tells me that because there is unrestricted public acces it is public space (you don’t pay in & don’t need to ask fot entry). He often gets Youtubers taking video’s and generaly trying to upset security. They also have a full time police presence on site. They cannot stop people filming or taking pictures unless they are causing a nuisance.
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This is interesting. I guess it still wouldn’t be worth getting into a standoff but worth confirming in case of problems. Thanks
I suspect allowing phones but not a hand held cameras would also be discrimination. People with phones & small videoing equipment regularly commercially blog with images & video. Interestingly on YouTube you can see bloggers taking video’s at police stations (from outside). They take video’s & pictures of cars, people, buildings, policemen and police women even through the surrounding fencing. Some police officers take offence, they let their ego get in the way of the law, invoking terrorism law to detain and search (they’ve paid out thousands in illegal arrest claims). You will notice the cameras everywhere which surveil us, even recognise us. The UK police authority is right now asking government for access to 50 million passport photographs for use in recognising us. Who would have thought a topic here on pixls would get political.
Hi, I agree. Also does a building have copyright protection? And of course copyright has a finite length of time. There are many facsimiles of the Eiffel Tower around the world. Re images in general, our own government, (UK), reduced the time period and diluted image copyright law. An image should be clearly marked as copyrighted, if not it could be free game. An example are images on the net, copyright is usually in the meta info (file info) of the image but many companies when publishing images to the net don’t realise said info is removed by the hosting company to reduce file size (data). The government says images not identified as copyright do not have copyright
(this is my understanding)
I think it’s the lights run by some company rather than the building (?) but reality is that it would have to be decided by a court (as someone probably already said above) and so it’s extremely unlikely that would happen and if it did that the court wouldn’t throw it out. Sorry, I can’t be bothered to find the sources of any of this info so consider it misinformation/BS, meantime
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Japan might be an interesting case because, as I understand it and after a little bit of direct experience, the police have enormous latitude and can lock you up for years without charge so you really don’t want to get on the wrong side of the lawman (I won’t even say the law because i don’t always think it’s a matter of strict legality). This American seller of vintage camera gear in Tokyo posted this unusual side rant/explanation on his YouTube channel about a live streamer being locked up that I think is a reasonably fair summing up. I found it interesting even though I’d never heard of the case
P.S. I’m not endorsing any views in this vid and certainly would oppose anything like Japan’s attitude to the rule of law in my own country.
The narrator does rightly bang on for quite a bit about the good things in Tokyo and Japan at the start but I think that’s partly because of the implicitly negative things (from a liberal democratic perspective) that he says about the criminal justice system later on. Aaaanyway
Recently we went to Las Vegas for a few days. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to take photos anywhere without anybody harassing me. Including inside various casinos, though I made efforts to avoid recording gamblers.
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Taking account of the speed at which technology is developing, it won’t be too long before we’ll all have cameras built into our eyeballs; eyeryone will have to wear special 'photo-blocking ’ glasses whenever we go to the cinema, a public washroom, or Area 51. 