Hiding in Plain View

Written by eklastic

Since 2018 the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) has been in force in the EU and ever since it has been illegal to photograph people without their knowledge and written consent. It’s still possible to take pictures of people if they are not the focal point of the photo. I try to comply by photographing without showing faces.

Alternatively, I cheat by showing children from a few years back. They will have changed enough not be recognised.

Monochrome Madness

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14 thoughts on “Hiding in Plain View”

    1. In the EU you can take pictures of people in public if you don’t focus on them. Let’s say you take a picture of the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin. There are always people around, you cannot take a photo without people. No problem. But if you zoom in on two people in front of the Tor, sort of singling them out, than it is not allowed. Asking is strictly not enough but who goes around with forms for subjects?

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      1. Seriously, my dad used to carry forms. But he taught photography in a college for a time. He told me 40 years ago that I should always have them on me. If he were alive today, he’d probably ask the birds for claw prints.

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  3. A great result from your practical work-around. Recently I tried a shot of German nursery school children in a wood playing, far too distant even for their own mothers to recognise them. But the full force of the teachers’ wrath descended on me. Lesson learnt!

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    1. Thanks. And yes, schools, nursery schools, and sports clubs are particularly strict about “no photos”. When the international (according to the curriculum, not according to the admin) school I was working at produced a brochure for parents considering the school for their kids, they did not use pictures of current students but rather stock photos, or photos taken with child models.

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      1. Whereas my 5 year old granddaughter, with plenty of her school-mates, is on a billboard for all to see outside her school, advertising it as an All Round Good Place to receive primary education. Up here, in a much less ethnically diverse area, any child visibly from a minority group is a dead cert for his/her school’s publicity efforts.

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      2. That brings back memories. We were vacationing in the north of Germany – blond hair, blue eyes country. Before the influx of refugees in bigger numbers, that was still in the 1990s. Our sons went to a day event where they made a shield, got a wooden sword, and learned how to playfight safely with the sword. At the end of the day they were knighted. And guess whose picture appeared in the local newspaper?

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  4. I think a lot of people forget about the laws and copyright and things like that. Here in Australia no one has the right to privacy when they are out., but there are laws about where you can take photos and where you can’t. Most of us take them anywhere until we are told not to, then you have to stop. Interesting points Elke. I also agree about the kids, they should have changed quite a bit now. Great set of images.

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    1. When it was first introduced in 2018, many photographers panicked. Since then people have arranged themselves with it. But I had a couple of awkward situations where I was aggressively accosted by people. Ironically I didn’t photograph them at all, they were never in my frame, not even close.

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