What is happening with street photographers in the EU?

[slackercrurster]

Did the new privacy laws affect your street work? Or are you still going strong?

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Did the new privacy laws affect your street work? Or are you still going strong?

no change; sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness rather than permission but, still best to ask.

 

[Sirius Glass]

no change; sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness rather than permission but, still best to ask.

So what happens if someone [say a North or South American] is walking down the street and wants to take a photo of a popular sight and there are random people in the scene. Will the photographer be gunned down, Guillotined or shot, hung, drawn and quartered depending on the country where the offense occurred? Will all people from other hemispheres be giving training to avoid such punishments when the disembark in Europe minus the British Isles.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

You have to scout the scene and make your call. If you are out of your depth, best acknowledge it.

I lab I once worked for had only 1 rule: "Don't be dense."

 

[RalphLambrecht]

So what happens if someone [say a North or South American] is walking down the street and wants to take a photo of a popular sight and there are random people in the scene. Will the photographer be gunned down, Guillotined or shot, hung, drawn and quartered depending on the country where the offense occurred? Will all people from other hemispheres be giving training to avoid such punishments when the disembark in Europe minus the British Isles.

not knowing the law doesn't protect you from the law.

 

[antmar]

In Greece people wont refuse if you ask politely.

 

[CMoore]

People in the "EU" must be different.
IN the usa, 80% of my countrymen are F'ing Phone Zombies.
They point their Cell Phones randomly, and Film/Video stuff...In Public...CONSTANTLY.
Would somebody in "Berlin" really call the cops because somebody took a picture that Might Have included them.?
Did street photography actually ground to a halt where you members live.?

 

[AgX]

Street photography as typically understood (photographing people on street and publishing the photo without consent) is illegal in Germany since 1907.
It even is a crime!

Nevertheless I know of no outcry about this over the last more than hundred years...


The same time street photography never was a big issue in Germany. There even was no name for it.

 

[ced]

Here it is more of a battle with North African citizens (my experience) supposed that the camera is an evil eye...
On the other hand you can capture & make a collection of images with the subjects waving a finger or hand at you, see links and apologies for using an external source.
https://www.leicaimages.com/photo/38805
https://www.leicaimages.com/photo/39440

 

[CMoore]

Thanks for the info.
Sorry if i have been The Ugly American. I certainly have gotten used to and shaded by, the laws of where i live.
I guess it is a bit hard for me to grasp a "Western European Democracy" having laws that forbid Street Photography.....Especially in this age of Cell Phone Cameras being SO Common.
Even where i live, a person in San Francisco might frown at a guy that took "their" picture with a Nikon F2, but at the same time, they are caught up in pictures AND Video of 100 people with cell phones.
Sorry if my previous post was out of line.
My main point was dismay at enforcing "Street Photography" laws in this age of ubiquitous Cell Phone Cameras.
Thank You

.......are these guys in Germany.?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEsIPHfiX6UpomrXTrdq67Q/featured

 

[Laurent]

So what happens if someone [say a North or South American] is walking down the street and wants to take a photo of a popular sight and there are random people in the scene. Will the photographer be gunned down, Guillotined or shot, hung, drawn and quartered depending on the country where the offense occurred? Will all people from other hemispheres be giving training to avoid such punishments when the disembark in Europe minus the British Isles.

In fact, to be ecumenical, we'll do all of these in any EU country ;-)

At least in France, I don't think things have changed. Taking one's picture is not an offense, unless it violates their dignity/privacy/whatever. Trouble may occur if you want to publish and you isolate a specific person, AND this person can be recognized (in the most common sense: someone seeing the picture and the person could link them. If their best friend can recognize them from a specific gesture/pose, this does not work)

I do more and more street photography, and never had any issue. Once only, a guy walked to me while I was having a beer and wanted to see my pictures because he thought I photographed his wife. Bad luck for him, I had the Leica M4 (and no, I did not photograph his wife, even if she was somewhat attractive, but they were too obvisouly showing off to have any interest).

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Did the new privacy laws affect your street work? Or are you still going strong?

Too early to ask. One thing is made by EU bureaucrats law, another is implementing it. EU wanted Finland to calculate and describe each lake, but where are million of them in Finland.
No reports of street photog been attested and thier Flickr account closed so far. John Free went to Europe since May, run his street photography seminar and came back free.

 

[slackercrurster]

Too early to ask. One thing is made by EU bureaucrats law, another is implementing it. EU wanted Finland to calculate and describe each lake, but where are million of them in Finland.
No reports of street photog been attested and thier Flickr account closed so far. John Free went to Europe since May, run his street photography seminar and came back free.

I understand it is a monetary damage thing or are criminal penalties also involved?

 

[MattKing]

In Canada, Quebec also has more restrictive rules.
If you want to publish a photo which includes a recognizable image of a person in a public place, you will need a release if you don't want to risk paying damages.
And "publish" has a fairly wide definition.
It all flows from the Quebec legislation that deals with rights to, among other things, personal privacy.

 

[pentaxuser]

Here it is more of a battle with North African citizens (my experience) supposed that the camera is an evil eye...

I took a number of pictures of Egyptians in general scenes when on holiday on the Nile and never noticed a problem. The evil eye as the cause of their gesture is, I take it, an assumption on your part. Both might have felt you had singled them out for no reason they could work out. This might have been especially the case with the man sitting at a table. Unless I was part of an obvious scene of interest and if a camera had suddenly been pointed at my wife and I, I might have felt it was an unnecessary intrusion, especially if the photographer was close.

It is the old story. What you are doing may be taking lots of pictures of a market scene in an innocent way but this may not be way the subject interprets your actions

pentaxuser

 

[AgX]

I understand it is a monetary damage thing or are criminal penalties also involved?

Both, concerning publishing. In Germany since 1907 it is a criminal offense too, even to be sentenced with jail. But in both cases the person being photographed has to ask for legal action. However, cases ending at criminal court do not come to my mind...

Recently added legislation has widened restrictions, even the criminal offense.

In the current situation the problem is that there are meanwhile laws based at least at two fields. The above old law still was included in the legislation on intellectual property, whereas recent laws are embedded in the sector of privacy/data protection. This can lead to opposing legal situations. Time and court decision will provide more.

But as I said above there was no outcry by photographers in the last 100 years... And above that the legal situation on this and on intellectual property (see freedom of panaroma) was and still is different within EU and no one bothered with that either...

The problem is less legislation but awareness/hysteria of the people within the last years. (Though I already had problems in the 70s.)

 

[Sirius Glass]

So what happens if someone [say a North or South American] is walking down the street and wants to take a photo of a popular sight and there are random people in the scene. Will the photographer be gunned down, Guillotined or shot, hung, drawn and quartered depending on the country where the offense occurred? Will all people from other hemispheres be giving training to avoid such punishments when the disembark in Europe minus the British Isles.

not knowing the law doesn't protect you from the law.

That is why I am raising the question about giving them the training.

 

[Sirius Glass]

People in the "EU" must be different.
IN the usa, 80% of my countrymen are F'ing Phone Zombies.
They point their Cell Phones randomly, and Film/Video stuff...In Public...CONSTANTLY.
Would somebody in "Berlin" really call the cops because somebody took a picture that Might Have included them.?
Did street photography actually ground to a halt where you members live.?

In Europe their noses are glued to their phones too. At the Orangerie they never looked at the paintings of the lily ponds they were looking at their phone and posing the selfies with their arm out like they had made the paintings.

 

[AgX]

That is why I am raising the question about giving them the training.

Most EU photographers do not even know about their very own legislation. I hardly expect them to know of that in the resting 27 member states.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I understand it is a monetary damage thing or are criminal penalties also involved?

I watched Microsoft seminar about it back in April, but I can't remember.

 

[jtk]

IMO it's unfair to damn citizens of any country for snapping with smartphones. IMO it's worse when alleged "artists" snap with long lenses.

 

[Ces1um]

So if I go to France and take a photo of the eiffel tower that happens to get a few people in it I'll run afoul of the law? If I grab a photo of buckingham palace and someone walks in front of my camera out come the billy clubs? Someone is going to have to explain why these rules are put in place.

 

[AgX]

Architecture is intellectual property and thus there is an image right to the architect.

Luckily many countries' parliaments were so wise to exclude that from anything seen from public space. Including Germany, where even photography of details is not restricted, in contrast to respective people-photography.

But of course, as with any legal matter, there are exceptions. Otherwise life would be too easy...


Concerning the guy passing the (free for publication) building, here in Germany it depends whether that guy is essential to that photo or not. A matter of evaluation...

 

[Sirius Glass]

So if I go to France and take a photo of the eiffel tower that happens to get a few people in it I'll run afoul of the law? If I grab a photo of buckingham palace and someone walks in front of my camera out come the billy clubs? Someone is going to have to explain why these rules are put in place.

If you take photographs of the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace, after the ceremony the Palace Guards will come out and beat your brains out with their rifle butts. They would not waste bullets on you. Oh, they are leaving the EU, scratch that comment.

 

[MattKing]

It isn't the architecture of the Eiffel tower that is subject to the protections afforded to intellectual property rights, it is the much more recently added lighting scheme.