Ian Jelf wrote:

In message , Chris Tolley
writes
Jeremy Double wrote:

allan tracy wrote:
On Feb 21, 7:37 pm, somersetchris wrote:
Guy at Waterloo attacked for taking pictures

There's a photograph of the attacker in the post and police are
looking for people who can help identify him.

http://london-underground.blogspot.c...eeking-tube-ph...

Pretty dubious reason for taking pictures though the photographer
sounds like a complete t**t.

It is anyone's right to take photos in a public place...

"Light the blue touch paper and retire"

It's still basically true, though.

I'd be more comfortable if it were expressed as a double negative: in a
public place, there is generally no right for others to stop people
taking photographs. I don't believe there *is* a right to take
photographs, and can't imagine which legislation I would have to look at
to find it, but I think the statement above is pretty much on the mark.

Similarly, some people get pleasure from taking pictures in public
places (probably hoping to be the next Cartier-Bresson). I don't see
that it's anyone else's business to approve or disapprove of it.

There are plenty of things that people do for pleasure that are frowned
on in public or when they involve others as unwilling participants.
Photography may sometimes be one of them. That's just how it is.

One problem is that people seem to increasingly think that there are
restrictions on photography that do not in fact exist.

Human rights legislation may be close to conferring some nearby rights.
I don't think that the mere taking of a photograph is the problem, but
there are many things that might be done with the photograph afterwards
that are definitely dodgy. Joe Busdriver below may have picked some of
that up and not properly understood it.

I had a spectacular incident some time again with a Travel West Midlands
bus driver threatening me and swearing at me because I'd photographed a
bus he was driving. He claimed that it was now against the law to
photograph someone and - ignorant thug that he was - I'm sure he
sincerely believed that to be the case.

Someone on a bus website (Oxfordshire, maybe?) agreed to deliberately
obscure photos of drivers before publishing the photos to the website
after being challenged by a bus driver. The photographer was under no
obligation to do this but I bet the bus driver was sure in his mind that
he was within his rights.

I can see circumstances where he may have been right. Certainly I
sometimes obscure people's faces when posting my train pictures.

There has arisen a belief in this country that new laws have come into
place protecting what I might term "the copyright of their face", which
simply isn't true.

Not as such, no. I wonder if anyone has trademarked their face. And if
so, what they do about the ravages of time.

The victim in this case won't be the first person to suffer for being in
the right.......

If you think of right and wrong as a see-saw, the photographer in this
case may have been nearer the middle than the right end. There's a bit
of the story missing, as in what happened after the photographer said
that he couldn't delete the image because it wasn't a digital camera,
and before the assault took place.

Mebbe it's a minority view, but I can't help feeling that there's
something potentially undesirable or seedy about people just taking
random photos of passers-by. There may be some perfectly innocent arty
reasons at one end of that see-saw, but the other end includes paparazzi
and deliberate invasions of privacy. Some years ago, I was a bit
surprised when someone approached me at Paddington and actually asked if
he could take my picture (I was wearing mirrored sunglasses, and he
wanted to capture the reflection of the roof) but I'm aware from time to
time that there are people taking photos of me, some of whom seem to be
doing openly, while others seem to be trying to pretend they aren't.

As for me, I'm much happier photographing trains.

--
http://gallery120232.fotopic.net/p10589951.html
(37 411 at Bath Spa, 14 Sep 1998)