Sign of the times - EU definition of street photography

Paul.

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HO hum the usual euro babble then.
Regards Paul.
 

pentaxuser

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Easy. A quick wide angle shot of my local market involving maybe 40 people. Then the use of the police to rope off the area and detain all 40 who are then interviewed individually by myself and asked to sign. This exercise to be repeated maybe twice a day until I have 40 who agree and who subsequently of course don't change their minds.

Better still, the police can take all the photos instead. It would save a lot of fuss. In fact the whole competition may as well be sponsored by the police/authorities. Well they would in a totalitarian state so why not here.

It's getting to be like the old joke. Soviet bloc guide who has given an excellent service to the tourists says: "Ladies and gentlemen I must leave you now as I am to be shot". The tourists' faces all fall and they are aghast. The guide seeks to reassure them by adding: Please do not worry, it isn't for anything serious!

I look forward to the organisers having to announce that in this competition no prizes have been awarded as there were no entries.


pentaxuser
 

DannL

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Any street photographer with a positive outgoing personality and the most basic of interpersonal skills could work within the restrictions of the contest and achieve results.

Edit: replace "Any street photographer" above, with "Anybody".
 
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Michel Hardy-Vallée

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DannL said:
Any street photographer with a positive outgoing personality and the most basic of interpersonal skills could work within the restrictions of the contest and achieve results.
Click to expand...

It's a pain in the neck to ask for model releases, but it can be worthwhile.


(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Except that you won't be shooting à la HCB.
 

arigram

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Freaking european fascists.
Its ok for them to record us in their cameras and microphones but oh no, citizens of democracies cannot possibly exercise their artistic and journalistic rights without proper authorization.
Such laws if taken seriously will kill photography. Bureaucracy is as deadly as
straight prohibition.
Pretty soon all we will able to photograph will be flowers in our homes.
 
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DannL

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Oh please. It's just a signature on a piece of paper. It's just a photo contest. :rolleyes:
 

arigram

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DannL said:
Oh please. It's just a signature on a piece of paper. It's just a photo contest. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Oh, really?
Do you think that the decades of photography outside of a studio have been done by giving out papers to sign to people that occupy a scene before its photographed?
Do you go out photographing people in their natural environment or do you gather them in packs in your studio and go through paperwork before you snap a photo?
In an age that every street corner has a camera, every man, woman and child on the street carries a photo-able cell phone snapping each other constantly, TV peep shows that show people going through their lives are watched in mass, do you think its reasonable for an artist to ruin his photography because of useless paperwork?
How do you come by the conclusion that street photography is possible when combined with bureaucracy?
 

BobbyR

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As Gary Kasparov said in the Wall Street Journal five or so years ago---My country is slowly adapting the best of yours, but your country is rapidly adapting the worst of mine.

Socialism the cancer that keeps on taking.
Bobby
 

snowblind

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Would anyone like it if someone they never heard of posted a video of them on YouTube?

I'm not recognisable (to the general public) but I would hope to be asked for permission too if a picture of me was to be included in an exhibition or competition. At least, that is, if I was the main subject. If I could only be seen somewhere in the background I wouldn't be too bothered.

It's easy to see why someone who is recognisable might be bothered if they were *anywhere* in the shot so I don't find the competition organisers' requirement surprising or offensive in any way -- they could be sued if they didn't.
 

arigram

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Be sure to carry the required paperwork with you.
As much as the law is concerned, it is not illegal to make photographs of people in public even if they can be recognized.

Street photography with paperwork is impossible.
The ones who actually know of photography understand that.
And some of us actually make a living out of photography, its not just a silly pastime along with collecting stamps.
 

DannL

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I don't see entering a contest (for those who can) and getting signatures on a release form as having much potential for putting the damper on one's career as a photographer. Unless that career was already questionable. If it has the potential of destroying a career, then "by all means" skip the signatures. But then I'm not sure if the entries would be accepted by the commission, based on the guidelines that I read regarding this particular contest.

Compose the shot with willing subjects. Get their signatures on a form. Enter the photograph in the contest, and win the damn prize. Which part of that sounds difficult?
 
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Paul.

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I belive what arigram is refering to is the wider contex, where street photographers will have to get permition from random strangers if they are recognisable in the shot before it can be used.

In the UK it is legal to photograph anything visable from a public place though there are some enforcment agencies who do not seem to know this.

If this euro babble became law here in UK I would expect to be asked to sign a model release every time I walked past a CCTV camera.

Regards Paul.
 

pentaxuser

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BobbyR said:
Socialism the cancer that keeps on taking.
Bobby
Click to expand...

I suppose it may depend on how you define socialism. Some would say, rightly in my opinion, that the path taken in the Soviet bloc had little in common with socialism unless socialism's definition is authoritarianism which I'd define as the imposition of rules for their own sake which gives power to the rulemakers without any corresponding benefit to the society on which the rules are imposed. A monopoly supplier in the free enterprise system can impose such rules and in the worse case scenario can exert control over its unwilling customers in just as ruthless a fashion as in a "socialist" system. Imagine for just a moment the scenario where Esso controls all the country's or world's supply of fuel oil, the XYZ company controls all the water etc.

Our problem is that the "system" left to its own devices has a tendency to favour the rulemakers who may believe they always know what's best for the rest of us and very soon, left unchallenged, impose increasingly unjustified rules on the rest of us. The more we acquiesce and find ways of managing round such unjustified rules as at least one APUGer has suggested we do, the worse the situation gets.

We'd like to think that reasonableness, weighing up the pros and cons of any rule to be imposed, transparency and accountability etc will win the day.

Our history seems to show that this benign vision of the rulemakers behaviour is seriously flawed.

The kind of protest I was suggesting by a "nil entry" for the competition is merely a version of the successful action that occurred in the U.K. recently over the ruling caucus' approach to the abolition of the 10p tax band.

A revolt by some MPs and looming defeat for the government won the day but it was a close run thing and subsequently a revolt by the people in our local elections may( has is too optimistic a word) just have caused a genuine re-think to begin by people who always know best and may have become more unaccountable than they actually believe they are. The metamorphosis is quite insidious, both for the rule makers and rule receivers.

If you are a rulemaker then people who question the rules can be very tiresome and usually need to be told what is good for them eventually with vigorous enforcement if necessary.

2nd political joke: Campers are welcomed by the commandant at the Butlins version of a holiday camp in a totalitarian society.

" Welcome one and all to our wonderful camp with wonderful amenities where I guarantee everyone will have a wonderful time provided everyone does as he is told!

pentaxuser
 

AutumnJazz

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Slighty off topic...But let's say I'm in NYC, I take a picture of people going about their lives. Would I need a model release if I printed it and put it up in a gallery? What if a magazine published it?

(I'm not familure with any laws against photography in the US...)
 

Sean

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pretty sure this is not an issue in NZ whatsoever, but who knows 5yrs from now..
 

Marco B

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Actually, I wonder why this is not simply a * photo competition *???

Why does it explicitely include the possibility "that their image may be used on promotional booklets and on posters across Europe"... it sounds to me like a cheap way for this EU organization to get hold of whole bunch of EU citizens pictures for advertisements, instead of a straight forward photo competition with a social background.

If there was just an single exhibition of these pictures and a price awarded to the winning photographer, no one would bother.

In addition, the whole concept of these model releases is also hypocritical looking at all those pictures being made in 3th world or non european countries... Willl every National Geographic or other social magazine photogapher in the past century have asked for model releases of the people being photographed in for example the streets of Delhi???? I doubt it... and a lot of these pictures did end up on cards, books, calenders... not always straight forward journalistic purposes.

Half the planet is still analphabetic too... a list with crosses would be interesting as an entrance for this competition as a protest... that's the thing we should really be worrying about as the EU.
 
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Ian Grant

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Marco, that was my point earlier, this isn't run of the mill street photography, it has absolutely nothing to do with EU regulations.

It's all about commercial use of the images entered into the competition, hence the need for model releases.

Ian
 
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OP

David H. Bebbington

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moose10101 said:
What law? When did photo contest rules become law?

Don't like the rules? Don't enter the contest.
Click to expand...

Because the organizer of this contest is the European Union, a multi-national quasi-governmental body comparable but not identical to the US Federal Government, and the rules incorporate a statement by this body of its (presumably official) view of what is required in order to conduct street photography and publish the results on a legally sound basis.
 
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Michel Hardy-Vallée

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We fought the Law and the Law Won

"Street photography" defined as the PUBLICATION of discreet snapshooting of total strangers on the street without their explicit consent, is ALREADY illegal in Québec.

You can take all the pictures you want, but you can't publish them without a model release. End of story. Supreme Court Judgement.

So if you guys want a dead horse to beat, Bienvenue au Québec.
 

DanielOB

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"You can take all the pictures you want, but you can't publish them without a model release. End of story. Supreme Court Judgement."
Are you sure? Have you ever see TV and 500 people in the snap? Have you ever saw a papery with a hordes of people in one single snap? Do you think that photographer had an army of assistants to run after anyone in the shot...
 

Michel Hardy-Vallée

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Yes I am sure, in the context of what we call "street photography."

However, there's a thing called "Public Interest" which is the exception to the rule. As long as your pictures serve the public interest, as do news pictures/video, you are free from asking permission.

The full Supreme Court judgement is available here:
Dead Link Removed

It's quite a fascinating read.
 
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