i came across an interesting thread… Any tips on taking photos of strangers?

i mean, for the most part someone was just asking for tips on taking photos of strangers.. however, someone posted:

~lostheart: Hmmm, I wouldn’t want to have my picture taken by a stranger out on the street. Period. I even try to get the owners permission if I take shots of an abandoned house! Late one night I was up because of a pee and a sip of water and noticed a bunch of folks outside my house taking photos of it. So I went out in my boxer shorts to check what their business was to take these photos (we had a lot of burglaries in the area and I’m being alerted) and they couldn’t tell me so I grabbed the cam and deleted them…nobody said anything…I guess the aluminum baseball bat was too intimidating. See, the point I am trying to make here is some people do not like it and don’t care if you are 15 or 55 and give you hell for that. I’d be really careful if I was you…but I guess that this only applies if you focus on ONE person instead of taking shots at crowds.

to which i had some response to:

~sxtxixtxcxh: well, by you being in public, people have the right to photograph you. and your house: unless they snuck on the property to take the picture, YOU were the transgessor here, destroying their property. not to mention the thinly vieled threats of physical violence… true, getting permission would keep things smooth, but you had no right to destroy the photos if they were taken from public property. nor do you have the right to privacy in public. sure, you can hide, duck, whatever but you can’t delete photo because you don’t want your photograph taken when you go out in public.

of course, this guy then brings up that he’s caught a bastard using a telephoto lens to take photos at a beach of a girl when her mother undressed her.

first of all, what idiot undresses their daughter at a public beach… especially without making sure the coast is clear? i mean, the argument is did the “photographer” have the right to photograph the girl being as she was in a public place? no. there are child pornography laws against that. and there are public decency laws against undressing the girl in public. not to mention common fucking sense.

then he argues: is it right for a photographer to take pictures of girls on the street for his personal enjoyment at home? it might not be “right” per say, but it IS legal.

someone posted this in response to it all:

~FallisPhoto: According to the Supreme Court, if you are on public property, or are in an area that is viewable from public property, you do not have a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” This means that people can take your photo. Even if you don’t want them to. Now the photo can NOT be used for commercial purposes without a signed release if it shows your face and you are the focal point of the photo, but for non-commercial purposes they were within their rights as long as they were standing on public property. Exceptions to this would be if you were wearing something with an identifiable and copyrighted artwork (that’s why they blur out the T-shirt logos on reality TV shows), or if the photo was taken with the intent to libel or humiliate you. Thus photos of you standing there in your boxer shorts MIGHT not be usable. On the other hand, since you were menacing someone with a baseball bat they WOULD be usable — boxer shorts or not — as evidence of assault with a deadly weapon. You could very well be in prison now. As for the guy who takes photos of ladies: yes, that is legal, as long as he doesn’t try to sell the photos to “Girls Gone Wild” or post them on the web. If he does, he needs a signed release. There are special protections under the law for children though. I’ve never even heard of an angry mob attacking someone for taking photos on the street. Might happen in someplace like Iraq if the photographer was taking nude photos in public, but they’d be more likely to attack the model, and we’re not there. I offer the example of Spencer Tunik. He’s been arrested a few times, but was aq As for the guy who was almost arrested for taking photos of a bridge, in the current atmosphere, national security interests have eroded some of our rights. Nevertheless, if it had gone to court I think the photographer would not be the one who came off badly. I’d have to know more about this though.

i mean, think about it: you’re in public, don’t expect privacy. don’t want your photo taken? don’t go out in public. how retarded is it to expect privacy in public? i mean, for the most part, people ARE respectful of other’s privacy so it’s not as big of an issue. but expecting the right to privacy while in public is absurd.

regardless of the law, however, if i catch anyone taking photos of my girl while she was in a state of undress, rest assured the photos will no longer exist with a high probability of the camera no longer being functional and high hopes that the “photographer”, too, will cease to be able to masquerade as a respectable human. (not to imply the law allows those photographs, which they most definitely do not, but i was refering to laws protecting the bastard from getting beat to all fuck and back)