Child Photography, Street Photography - The Law, the internet and the Parents

INTRODUCTION


Sometimes people are "funny" about having their photos taken - especially in public. It just seems entirely natural to be protective about one's “intellectual property" (IE a face) and how it's shared nowadays…. but are some people being a bit over-reactive /protective? What’s driving them?

This feeling seems to escalate beyond all proportion when children are involved - so really, what are people ACTUALLY afraid of happening?

Of course aside from the paranoia of 'Big Brother' watching you and conspiracy issues of government spies, terrorists, the Illuminati etc, the main issue here is the sexual pariah.

Let's face it, it's definitely a real problem and it's not going away any time soon.

So with this in mind, do you know the law regarding what a photographer can and can't do in public..... or do you just think you know the law surrounding this?

I photograph children a lot. Most of the time I know the kids and their parents personally or I am in a controlled environment like an official event. But there are times when I shoot kids in the street or at events whose parents I don't know so it's no surprise that I have been questioned, on more than one occasion by people around me as to my motives for this. IE - in this day and age, middle aged men taking pictures of random children in the street, or anywhere, can easily look suspect to an onlooker.

If you are a photographer who has done or still does this, you really need to know your stuff. You owe it to yourself so you don't go to jail, you owe it to the kids and their parents so that you don't fuel confusion and fear when you're working and last of all you owe it to all other photographers that you don't drag our art-form into unnecessary murky waters just because you've been a little thoughtless or unprepared for your shooting environment.

Below I unpack my thoughts surrounding this as a keen amateur turned professional photographer and also as a youth leader. I will clarify what the UK law of the land states and your rights as a photographer on the street, I will make an effort to lay out what to do with public images of children online and I also look at the motivation behind the need for responsible control.

Finally I also ask some questions to 'knee jerk' reacting parents. Those who are quick to confront a photographer, usually with a sense of mistrust verging on aggression, but who actually don't really understand (or have never even considered) what they're talking about or what they're really scared of!

DISCLAIMER

Please note this is a blog... I am NOT a lawyer or a police officer. The below is my opinion that I have gleaned from doing online research and talking to various people. If you are needing more than just general info, please make an effort to corroborate stuff yourself and take proper legal advice - I'm not going to be responsible for your mistakes and my text won't stand for much in a court hearing!

This cites the law in the UK (including Scotland). Please obviously understand that this is almost certainly different if you are elsewhere in the world. Also note that the law is not static, and things have a tendency to change.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE LAW TODAY

Here's the important bit that lots of people don't understand...

There are no rules to stop you photographing anyone you want to in public.

So long as you don't behave like a nuisance and provided the images are within the realms of 'decency' - especially of children.... then everything is good.

Generally speaking, you can, if you want to, go up to any child on the street and photograph them. You could even ignore any protest from a parent / passer by and you can then upload that image to the internet. Not only is this legal but you will also own this image (of another person's face) and can actually sue anyone for sharing it without permission. This is how the paparazzi behave when shooting celebrities - including children - no one arrests them and they get paid to behave like this!

If the angry parent in this example suspected you of being a pariah or just thought you were breaking the law, he or she could involve the police. But provided you hadn't acted in a suspicious or uncivilised manner during the taking of the photograph and both you and the child were in a public place, you are completely within your rights to do this and the police would have no legal grounds with you taking the shot in the first place or the subsequent publishing of the image taken even if the parent expressly wished for the shot to be deleted at the time.

This is the letter of the UK law - and you can (and should) look it up yourself. This doesn't mean you should ever resort to taking things to this level in a street side fracas with a crying and/or shouting parent and attending police officer... but just so you know where you stand from the start.

Should a confrontation like the above example happen to me, I would obviously just delete the image and move on long before things got heated - I wouldn't feel any need to cause any further fuss - but I might feel a little sad that the incident had to happen in the first place - especially if it stemmed from ignorance or unfounded fear on behalf of the parent or bystander. But hey, life goes on!

Here is some other info:

When you're NOT in public, you are under the rules and regulations of the landlord or the organisation that runs the building or event. For example, most, if not all, public swimming pools have rules against taking photos of children - especially in their swim suits. I once got stopped trying to shoot my own daughter coming down a flume at a pool. This was years ago - but the pool attendant did have a form ready for me to fill in that then allowed me to take the shot. So at least they had a system.... but the important thing to understand is that the law, as stated above doesn't necessarily count when you're on private property - even if there's nothing available in writing, you are still a guest at someone else's venue and can be ejected or even perhaps prosecuted for disobeying the rules of the owner or host.

This sort of thing will affect you in places like shopping centres and some public events like concerts or shows that are on controlled grounds. A public park, that has been gated and is ticketed (and therefore controlled) is a private event in this same way. You entering someone's space is enough to act as a legal acceptance of their site and event regulations - you are required to adhere to this.

So yes, if you (and the subject) are in a public space, then feel free to shoot away - but know this, if you are a nuisance or obstructive / hostile you can be apprehended on those grounds only and also if something doesn't look quite right to a bystander, for example you have chosen to hide in a bush to photograph partially dressed children in a play park with a long lens without proper reasons for doing this, you can obviously expect to be taken away and interviewed as to your motives.... you might not have broken a law in the first instance, but if a police officer suspects that something isn't right, they will do their job - and you will deserve everything you get for being either a paedophile or just completely stupid!

MY STORY - YOUTH PHOTOGRAPHY

I photograph children and teenagers all the time. It’s a speciality and a passion of mine.

I am a disclosed volunteer church youth leader who is vetted via the PVG (People of Vulnerable Groups) scheme and our church has a responsible "opt in" policy for the images I post - which ostensibly means that I have parental permission to post these images online. I currently have three PVG certificates - one for the church, one for our local primary school, and one for a local public event group that stages the annual village Gala Show. Each organisation you shoot for need to apply (and pay) for a PVG certificate if you are going to go near children etc. Perhaps if you are at a distance and not talking to them you could avoid this.... but it's easy to do - and then you're covered - so I say do it.

It was actually at this afore mentioned Gala Show that I was confronted by a parent recently.

I was shooting a bunch of kids who were jumping up at the camera, shouting and photo-bombing each other. Nearby this woman (who was a parent to a child who was actually not present) spied this event taking place. She had been drinking alcohol in the event's beer tent and she was also (I later found out) by nature, quite a hot headed person. She approached me with, shall we say, a sense of purpose.

Despite the blunt "excuse me, but who are you and what are you doing?" opener, the following exchange we had was polite and measured since I had my 'ducks in a row' and was able to quickly demonstrate this. She went away from our chat content that all was well and I was able to continue shooting the excited and jumping kids - the results of which can be found here.

If you're interested, here's what I had in place:

1. I had a PVG certificate set up by the event's managers. I wasn't asked to produce it! - I do however have all my certificates scanned and available on my phone stored in a Dropbox - and can therefore display and email them to whomever and whenever required.

2. As a result of the above, I obviously had permission from the event's managers to shoot freely that day. The show is public and is for the whole community - though it is called the "Children's Gala" - basically it's the kids that are the centrepiece!

3. This was a public event - worth noting though that the park we were in was a private space. So the rules of the hiring body... the Gala Committee, therefore came into place. A notice that a photographer was in attendance was attached to the fence at the entrance to the event. No one really paid much attention to this I'm thinking... and its presence was merely a courtesy / formality. But hey, it was there - I even took a photo of it for my records. Other than conversations with members of the committee prior to the event and an email trail of these chats, no other paperwork existed.

4. I did have a fluro vest with the event's details written on it (event marshal it said on the back!) ... and I should especially point out that, for that one minute that this whole confrontation thing happened, I wasn't actually wearing it. My guess is that, had I been doing so then this episode would have not occurred.

5. It's also worth noting that I had actual reasons for being there - I could demonstrate that I was not just someone who liked taking photos of children, but I actually maintain the event's online photo galleries and have done so for the three years prior. I should say though that this was actually the first year I had all this sorted... the previous three years were shot just as a parent / participant and I would have probably had to 'talk faster' if I'd been doorstepped by a concerned parent on this topic at any other time.

OFFICIAL PARENT RELEASE FORMS

Within our church and surrounding community, I know about 200 youths and I have shots of nearly all of them - these can be viewed at high resolution on both public as well as secured websites. Images exist on both locked and unlocked Instagram accounts and Facebook. I love kids, tweens and teens and I’m very proud of these shots. The kids love them too... and of course so do the parents that I speak to - I send high resolution photos to respective parents and relatives for free. Yes I'm a professional photographer, but this is a free service I provide.

As stated above, rules can change when you are photographing children on private property. Our church has its own policy - which I helped to write. It's an opt in system and we ask all parents whose children attend our youth events to sign a specific release form document which covers the seven or so years they are with us until they are 18. If the parent can't be bothered to sign, then I don't publish images of that child anywhere.

Amongst this managed church group, there is a small group of parents who have ticked the “NO” box on the form. They do not wish their kid’s faces to appear online. This is a totally respected position, and I work hard to conform and gently exclude these off limits teens from publication… even from large group shots if I can… something that is sometimes hard for me when I have to delete a great shot.

I try to avoid telling these “NO kids" that I can’t shoot them - especially since many of them don’t seem to be consulted on what their parents have or haven’t ticked. But this isn’t always easy as a few of these kids have come up to me in the past wondering why they’re not appearing in any of the galleries. I have to just come clean and state that I’m not allowed to! Like I say, there are only a few and it is (so far) a manageable situation. My guess is that, for a few of these cases, the parent has ticked 'no' without actually realising what it means. It's not my job to query them however.

It’s probably important to note that none of the kids personally have a problem with me photographing them - this is really just a parent thing.…. and, in passing, it should also be noted that, whilst this is going on, they all of course have smartphones (as do all of their friends) and are constantly taking tons of shots of themselves and each other and posting these images all over the world in often unrestricted social media sites. Not my problem of course - but, like I say, worth noting in passing.

So anyway, I respect our local parents and these rules that exist.

As I mentioned, it was me who initiated the “opt in or out” programme in the first place. I am in favour of protected kids, happy parents and of course the process also protects me as the photographer.

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

But then one day I was checking out the works of street photographers through the ages - the likes of people like Oscar Marzaroli (1933-1988) - So this famous Glaswegian photographer used to roam the streets of his city in the 1950-80s photographing anything that caught his eye - especially children and it made me wonder what would happen to me if I chose to take up the same kind of work nowadays.

I do love “fly on the wall” work and reportage photography and would feel pretty natural if I saw a scene in a park and wanted to photograph it in the same way as any street photographer would do. Yes I occasionally photograph kids in the street already... but it has always been kids I know personally or it's been when shooting specific community events as mentioned. So what would happen if I just felt like randomly shooting strangers..... children?

Well, unlike Oscar above, I would almost certainly be met with suspicion. Parents and bystanders would feel awkward that a random guy is photographing people and I would probably sense that awkwardness in advance whilst on site and feel a need to explain myself. The only people not feeling awkward in this scenario would probably be the children themselves!

Nowadays, with cameras everywhere, instead of being more gung-ho than ever with child photography, we are met by the curse of the pariah backlash. We get an automatic feeling of concern or even dread if we hear sentences that contains words like strangers - photographing - children.

So now you know the law of land and where you stand as a photographer.... and now you understand the importance and beauty of street photography such as the Marzaroli picture above - the importance and innocence of his work… so, I’ll just remind y’all of my motivation to write this blog in the first place…

• Where is the ACTUAL fear coming from? 
• Should people be concerned? 
• What should they be doing about it? 
• What should we be doing about it as photographers?

McARTHYISM, WITCH HUNTS AND APPEASING THE KNEE JERKERS

The next chapter for this story led me to research Joseph McArthy and also the Salem Witch Hunt in the US.

I read this - 

and this - 

and also this - 

and a bunch of other stuff too.

I'm not especially blessed with brevity as you can tell (sorry / not sorry for long post!) - but I'll spare you the details of my findings.

Enough to say that, each time I looked into threats concerning unseen, or unknown dangers, what seemed to accompany the mass hysteria was a lack of reason and logic.

First of all, what is the matter with “panic-people" who have all these worries and concerns about various pariah fears, but then refuse to talk about the real nuts and bolts?

Why spend you time being scared of horrible stuff if, when people want to talk about it to your face, you avoid or truncate the subject?

If you don't like paedophiles and perverts, and the fear of them is causing you to react in a certain way... then surely it makes sense not to bury your head in the sand when the subject comes up?

This part of my blog deals head on with 'knee jerkers' who like to cause all kinds of paranoid fuelled, party pooper problems - but then refuse to actually address the issues at the heart of the situation.

• Don't you think that fear is a huge driver for people?
• What's the media's role in this?
• Is there someone somewhere that is prepared to stand up in all this and actually nail this openly? 
• Has the pervert robbed us of the past freedom of candid street photography of children?
• Can we steal it back?

LET'S TALK ABOUT PERVERTS

So now let's look at what you are actually protecting at grass roots level…. Please excuse my direct approach here but we parents are all trying to stop images of our children from being used as sexual gratification by a twisted "perv".

We all know that pervs exist, we know that they surf the web and we know that there are millions of images of children for them to access. I guess we just don't want them "getting off" on pictures of OUR kids. 

And just so I don’t only harp on about hysterical parental fearmongery - here is an article that I discovered (published on 11th November 2014) that talks of what is happening in the real world. If this link expires, I’ve got an offline copy. It basically reports on a girls' school in Northern Ireland that had, what appears to be an open website containing images of the girls. These shots were seemingly taken by the girls themselves but were not provocative / nude or x rated. In other words they were normal pictures of young girls having fun on a standard school website. According to the article some “bare skin and underwear were exposed” on occasion.

These school girl images were then (unbeknown to the girls and the school) downloaded and then uploaded to a pornography site (hosted in Israel somewhere) and were displayed with comments from members etc that were obviously sexually inappropriate. Here’s a quote from the report:

BBC Spotlight NI showed the images to the former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), Jim Gamble. 

"Whoever is collecting these images and putting them within the context of this site has a real problem and, in my opinion, an extremely deviant sexual interest in children," he said.

"If I was to find this on someone's computer that they were uploading it, and I was still in the police, they would be arrested that day."

Mr Gamble also highlighted the potential dangers that could have been caused by the images being shared beyond the website.

"If you are saying to me do I think some of these images will end up in paedophile collections, then the answer to that is of course I do, yes," he said.

HOW TO REACT TO THIS?

So after reading the above you might go to the fear-place labelled “It’ll be my kids next”.

You’ll say things like:

"I want the pictures of my kids completely removed from everything on line. Now!"

And perhaps you'd be right..... but if you have teenage kids in the west... and they have a smart phone... there is a very high chance that their image is already online right now... so what are your control measures going to be?

Knee jerk reactions exist to correct wrongs. They are often irrational, but that doesn't mean we throw out the whole idea of a lockdown response.

I would say that it is totally right and logical to remove the images of the girls from this particular site the moment this happened. What other corner is there to fight in this example and what could possibly benefit anyone by leaving the images up online? I doubt anyone considered this for a second before hitting delete.

The issue with the above situation isn't really that the images were there, it's perhaps more that the service wasn't really monitored, it was certainly abused and then the story went public.

Publishing this sad story might fuel the fear, but it probably also helped to track the perpetrators and it of course brought the school webmaster in check too.

It was around this time that I locked our church youth gallery page with a password. It made me sad to do it..... but it felt like the right thing to do. Did I knee jerk too?

THE ROOT OF THE FEAR - LET'S NAME IT.

But, again, uneasy as this story makes you feel, please consider…. what is the ACTUAL risk here? 

It's obviously sad, creepy, perverted.... whatever, but if a person downloads an image of your own child for the wrong reasons, how does this actually affect you or them in the end?

You might say totally logical things like “I don’t like it”, but you still don’t nail it just by issuing an emotional response.

So let me speak for you in your absence!

It's a violation. But not a direct one. It's a third party event where only the image of someone is involved.

So it's violation by proxy... And you and those in the photographs perhaps don't feel violated since (at least until the news breaks) you remain unaware that it's happened at all. Any actual physical assault or act involving you or your children is simply non-existent.

Does this make you feel better? Probably not. This scenario is perhaps especially bad when say a private act of a pornographically motivated download becomes a re-uploaded porn site image for all as it was in the above news story.

So anyway I'm naming it, and you're perhaps squirming a little..... and meanwhile I'm still uploading pictures of other people's children to an unsecured site. Why am I doing this?

Well, I'll get to the positives in a minute.... but first of all, one of my reasons comes from a militant side of me. Brothers and sisters, we are at war with the pariah!

BE A PARTY POOPER - AND LET THE PARIAH WIN

By removing images of your kids from the web, what good do you really do? Are you just another “panic-person”? Have you just been another sucker to the mass-lockdown fear-mongery reaction? The Oscar Marzaroli days are over. The very art of street photography as we know is blemished or at last curtailed. The pariah wins.

One of my big bug-bears with behavioural perception is the paranoid response "I don't feel this way, but what if someone else does?" In other words, people asking me to remove or protect images for placating reasons only. Someone perceives that someone else might perhaps get the wrong end of the stick.... so just to be safe.....

You know, I've always been a "how it is" person and I never feel good about altering activity in the name of safety just because of concerns over second hand perception. It just feels like cowardice to me. The pariah wins again.

Now let's look at the message this LOCK DOWN AND PROTECT action looks like to the children and teenagers themselves.

What do you think the overall feeling is for them when you start closing, deleting and locking everything?

Yes this a world full of lurking and unknown horrors that we all need to be prepared for, but it’s also a world of joy and beauty. We teach our children to wear seatbelts, we don't stop them travelling in cars. If we have an area of freedom, creativity and expression that is just shut down, then sadly the pariah wins one more time.

ANOTHER WAY TO SEE THIS

Since fear is the driver here - and also since so often part of that fear is based on not really knowing what actually happens to an uploaded picture online once you've posted it, you need to look at the odds - and of course previous cases... so you can ascertain the chances and the shape of possible ramifications. The bad things that might occur because you were either ignorant or just too relaxed at the time of the original upload.

Let's say your child texts you to say that they've just gone for a walk along a cliff face. You're miles away and are totally unable to intervene.

Your fear is that they might venture to the edge and fall. But if you're not there, you don't actually know how close to edge they are. Perhaps your child is taking great precaution and is sticking to the path... going no where near the wrong side of the barrier. They were safe the whole time and they loved every minute - being outside with their friends with a beautiful view.

You have no way of knowing this, so you project various worst case scenarios in your head and then breathe a sigh of relief when they come home safe and sound. Your worries were in vain. This is a fear based on the unknown.

But in this story, there is at least a present danger.... that of falling off the cliff. Your fear was unfounded but not pointless. Cliffs are very binary things. You stay on them then you come to no harm. You fall off them and you die. At least there was a cliff there to fear! People are naturally weary of children and cliffs. The cliff walk was also a finite danger. Once your child returned, the danger ceased.

In the photography / pariah analogy you not only have the worry of your child's safety - something you can basically conjure up whenever you're out of control of a situation or away from your child... but you have to invent the chances of a cliff being there too. And you have to shape the nature of the cliff to various totally unknown dangers most of which are just guesswork based on illogical worry. This also doesn't end until you delete your Facebook account and remove your whole family from the internet.

Tell the child they can't go for the cliff walk simply because of what YOU fear might happen, is something that parents do all the time. When they can't control things, they have a tendency to lock them down. Now I'm no child psychologist, but I AM a parent, and I have learned many times that kids are normally smarter than us parents give them credit for, and they have a good sense of self preservation. Once you equip a child with the parameters of what good judgement and decision making looks like, you will, at some point, have to let them go and do these things themselves.

If not, when they see you freaking out at every step, then one of two things can easily happen.

1). They become paranoid fear mongerers themselves. They know you don't trust them, and now they don't trust themselves. Congratulations, you've just inhibited your child's ability to revel in joy and the good things in the world.

2). Your constant "no you can't.... be careful" mantra just creates a distance from your child as they grow up. Now as teenagers they have stopped listening to your constant worry and are now actually doing crazier things than they would have normally done in rebellion to your pampering fears - fears that were more about you than they are about what's best for your child.

Putting parental techniques and cliff walks to the side, I simply want to say that I love what I do. Here's the positive bit.

I LOVE SHOOTING KIDS

The photos I take of children are beautiful - I look at many of them and smile at how lovely some of these kids are. Over the years I'm watching them all grow up and have families of their own.

I take photos of children because I'm a youth leader who serves with a passion and I'm a very keen amateur photographer. I would be devastated if people thought I had any other motives beyond this.

So, whilst I celebrate the pictures I take, the technology that allows me to share them…. and whilst I also design, utilise and respect appropriate use of these images, I also sigh with disappointment that we live in the world where these security measures are necessary. I want to protect my teens - but I don’t want to lockdown everything and let the bad guys win. it just feels wrong. My images are of lovely young people with clothes on!

I love the emotions of the moment, I love the memories, I love to serve the parents (most of whom could never take as good a shot as I can!) I love to share the pictures for enjoyment and perhaps, occasionally a bit of validation of my skill, I love the art form of photography and I get to take and look at pictures of all kinds of people because of who they are and what they mean to me. I also love the public nature of the shots. I don’t always want to lock things behind a password. I certainly don’t want to restrict access if it’s simply on behalf of appeasing the panic 'knee jerkers' only.

I intend to keep doing this - and my only goal is legitimate and innocent pleasure for all parties concerned. To use Christian terminology, I rebuke the pariah and the fear he's created. I fly in the face of the joy he quashed using fear in the media.

I reclaim the right to enjoy photographing all kinds of people - and to love looking at these pictures with all the true and real values that the art form exists for. My wish is for parents to drop their fears and to dive in to this beautiful, visual and online world. Don’t panic without knowledge!

If I show a parent a shot of their child and they are more concerned with its distribution than its beauty, then I will humbly concede and delete any shot that upsets them for whatever reason - I won't actively try to persuade them against any perceived or rational fear…. but I'll be sad at the loss and I'll wonder at how scared the parent is…. and whether the fear is in itself enslaving and without reason.

So these are my current thoughts on the matter.

To the panic-person I say turn off your knee jerk.... turn on your brain.... Capture the beautiful moments of your children as they grow and, with a good balance of obvious political, rational sensitivity, and informed care, make positive decisions about how these images are distributed.

Do you want your children to hide and quake or live and fly?

My photographs are the embodiment of youth and joy. I for one am honoured to capture these moments for everyone involved and since there is justified motivation for the creative service I provide and since I handle and distribute the results responsibly, I feel this is something worth protecting for as long as I can.

COLLECTIVE DENIAL OF MASS WRONGDOING

How stupid are we as a race? 
How illogical can we behave? 
Are we cleverer and more aware now than we used to be? 
Have we learned life’s most important lessons? 

When people in the future read about us in history books, fifty years from now, enlightened though we are, will they still laugh at our behaviour as we laugh at some of the beliefs of those from ancient cultures?

Let’s laugh at some people…

Ancient Egyptians spent a great deal of time preparing for death believing that their bodies needed pyramids etc in order to physically get in to an afterlife - grave robbers kind of exposed at least the physical side to their errors in their spiritual belief. Fortunately for our available real estate nowadays, graveyards don’t take up as much space as they did back then. Silly Egyptians!

MASS DENIAL IN RECENT TIMES

In Hitler’s Reich, it became easy for millions of people to believe that Jews were an inferior race. There were of course plenty that didn’t and plenty that were just forced into the behaviours of the resulting actions - but there was an expanding number of people, driven by the evil few, who truly believed that Jews were despised lesser humans. People whose wrong opinions were shaped and fuelled by a mass collective denial of reality. Many of those in Germany that survived the war, who jumped on the anti-Semitic bandwagon during Hitler’s tenure, would have had to deal with their misguided opinions in later years as the paradigm shifted. Surely not all the people that believed this in 1939 or thereabouts started off hating and requiring the subsequent extermination of Jews. It took a mass indoctrination of altered and prejudiced belief.

In case you think that this was too long ago, or that it was more of a forced and controlled behaviour rather than an actual belief. In case you are of the opinion that people are much more socially and morally aware nowadays, then look to the political / racial stance of South Africa as recent as the 1990s. Yes, it’s crazy to believe… but it’s actually true - in my adult life, I witnessed an intelligent government of a developed country impose a national system of apartheid on millions of people. Black people were inferior, second rate citizens… and even though the racism that dominated this core belief was defined, legitimately destroyed and ruled out of every other country in the world, it continued to be official policy in South Africa until 1994.

WHAT ABOUT NOW?

So these are my first two examples of collective denial and how intelligent people like us can, with the right manipulation around us, fall into an existence which, when viewed in history in years to come, will appear utterly illogical. How could we have been so stupid? We are not talking about an ancient culture of primitive beings - this is us NOW.

Now that we are in this mindset, let’s stop and think a minute longer. If us clever and aware people have fooled ourselves to this outrageous level in the recent past, what are we currently doing that we are unaware of? Is everything okay now with you? This is a post modern, secular, pluralistic, developed society. Informed, connected and enabled. Surely now, more than ever, you can identify collective stupidity at the colossal kind of level and deal with it before it even begins.

But how uneasy would you feel if I told you now that you were actually living a life in ridiculous denial - at the same level as those in recent history that we all so vehemently abhor?

But you see, that’s what denial is. It simply means that something is happening that you don’t want to face up to - so you just block it out. 

TELL ME MORE!

Here is another modern day example of a denial.  

How many environmentalists did you know in the 1970s? Not many. It wasn’t a term I heard used in domestic context until about 1989. An environmentalist used to be a mysterious white coat profession. It was what some distant earth scientists did in laboratories. We normal people were onlookers rather than participants. You might read about an environmentalist sometimes - and some study they published. Though we understood a collective responsibility for the future, it felt too far away and too wishy washy a concept for something to actually respond to at a domestic level. Before around 1989, whilst adopting this hands off approach, we all simultaneously believed these “truths”:

1. that oil would eventually run out
2. that we are fully reliant on oil
3. our thirst for oil is a backbone to our banking system and is often the main cause of modern wars
4. that the burning of it is irreparably destroying the planet
5. that we would need to find something else to replace it with as a resource

Twenty four years later, I look at these statements and I see that we have since learned that we are all environmentally aware and responsible and our children are educated in all the areas that are designed to address these issues. 

I do of course understand that the reason we all still burn oil every day despite these truths is only partial denial. We know we’re killing ourselves with this system, but we have no viable way we can all reverse our “progress” and de-industrialise together. People are too different, too selfish - endemic in the human condition of short sightedness - and the overall reach of the problem is manifest in 99.9% of the world’s population. We believe the next generation will find a way out that will solve the problem - quality life will continue somehow. This is not an emergency. Our grandchildren will be fine. If we thought otherwise then we would all turn off our central heating, electricity and leave our cars in the driveway. Or would we? Can you spot a measure of collective denial? Are you worried? What are you going to do? Is a procrastinator the same as a denier? Is the fact that you feel helpless as a single individual a real excuse?

NOW HERE IS THE BEST EXAMPLE OF OUR MASS DENIAL… BE AFRAID!

You think it’s understandable to buy your iPhone from a UK distributer. But the product that ends up in your hand actually owes its patronage to an impressively international array of countries, places and supporting organisations. Apple is an American company that uses people, products and resources from around the world in order to design, build, distribute and support your phone. You do of course already know this.

You are totally used to buying Christmas crackers that are made in China. You think nothing of buying shampoo on Amazon which actually got imported from Thailand. Even the thought of getting New Zealand lamb is not too ridiculous for you to consider. 

The burning of fossil fuels and the cost of doing so certainly permits and steers this international behaviour, but think again….. why use a workforce in China? Because they have a lower standard of living than we do. It’s cheaper to use poor people to build luxury items….. to build anything at all in fact…. and let me remind you, you do already know this.

So, if you are aware of the current economic set up, how sustainable does it look to you? - I’m not a social scientist, I’m not an economist, I’m not a international businessman or a politician, but I can see that we no longer tend to make our cheap plastic products in Japan or Taiwan. That’s because they now have a higher standard of living in these countries than they did in the initial post war boom of industry.

Manufacturers using the system of cheap labour have to keep moving their factories around to find people poor enough to work for “buttons”. Every time industry settles in a cheap district, the standard of living starts to gently increase. I’m sure that wages are kept as low as they dare, and there will doubtless be systems in place to try and stop an air of betterment and hope amongst the workers to contain growth and expectation. But as soon as someone gets better, faster, more productive, perhaps they are offered incentives over those less so. Just like in the western world, the system of capitalism creates higher standards of living and ups the cost of doing so.

Meanwhile, the world’s population has increased to seven billion people.

Collective denial sits in the middle of this, and no one appears to be challenging this status quo. Why not?

Throughout all history, what happens when something gets overcooked is a natural correction. For the human race, the way to level out the peaks comes from our old friends - War, disease and famine. These three things have a very good reputation for redressing population spikes.

So all you need to do in order to ensure a melt down, is dramatically increase the world’s population and suck hard on all the earth’s resources whilst keeping one group of people artificially high in luxuries supported by those who are kept artificially low in order to make it affordable.

Anyone looking at this in these simple terms would derive that this is an untenable system that is heading at breakneck speed to an inevitable and apocalyptically huge collapse. Yet we all sit in it and do nothing. If there’s one thing us humans are exceptional at - it's self destruction.... whilst of course simultaneously pretending it isn’t happening.

HOW TO FIX IT?

We need to redress the selfishness. We need to stop investing in the Far East. We need to build a new banking system that is sustainable within our home markets, peoples and systems. We need to stop burning fossil fuels and we need to reverse our betterment obsession where “easier is better”. We need to all become farmers again and we need to gently reduce the world’s population by using a conscience led variant of the Chinese “one child” rule.

Knocking a few billion people off the planet by careful control (IE using birth control) would stop an epidemic adjustment that will doubtlessly occur in a far more dramatic way if we were to just leave our societies to their natural conclusions.

BUT…

But you and I both know this is too idealist. It will never happen. Despite the fact that we are clever and although we have the skills to learn from the past, this is not one of these things that we will ever be able to control.

Collective denial kicks in and we await the inevitable. A meltdown of epidemic and majestic proportions. If civilisation survives - those that look back in years to come will see the foolhardy way we approached the impending meltdown. They will shake their heads at our stupidity. We’ll be dead…. which is probably for the best! 

Repost or Ur dad will die!

A small selection of crap I collected in under a week from my honourable IG buddies

So here's my rant on why I have little respect for chain mail / spam / superstitious stuff... this blog is mainly for my 100 or so lovely teenagers whom I occasionally look after in my capacity as a volunteer youth leader.

VALIDATING AND EXAMINING THE DATA WITHIN

There are thousands of these things online. Let's pick the latest one that annoyed me on Instagram the other day.... "Repost if u luv your dad or we will die in his sleep".

So is there going to be a colossal paternal mortality epidemic in the next few days? 

What if people don’t have Instagram? - Will their dads die because they didn’t read this message of woe?

Are we talking about millions / billions of Dads around the world? 

What if you repost one day, but then don’t repost the same thing another day in the future - does that mean he’s gonna die in his sleep as soon as you stop reposting? 

You know, let's be honest, the conditions aren’t really laid out properly here. 

Perhaps superstitious chain mail has some unwritten rules that you should just really intrinsically know whereby you have to read it first for it to be true - and until then it isn’t true…. but then, as you repost it, you potentially kill millions of other people’s dads as your friends get to enjoy your poorly screenshotted, appallingly cropped, badly spelled, disinteresting square of nonsense you have put on your IG feed as you repost with an accompanying message / hashtag to the effect of "I know it’s fake but #justtobesafe”.

YOU EITHER DO, OR YOU DON'T BELIEVE THIS

Look, I’m going to really rant now - so sorry in advance but - if you know it’s fake WHY DID YOU REPOST? - You either know it’s fake or you don’t. You don’t admit that you “know it’s fake” and then repost it anyway!! - Make your mind up! Listen to yourself!

And let’s just unpack the concept of superstition here. Is it just perhaps remotely possible that some utterly thick, boring, uncreative muppet of a slime-person originally compiled this useless patch of weary text and put it up on line because they don’t actually have a life? - Like this is the most exciting thing they’ve ever done?

SO NOW YOU ARE THE PROPAGATOR

And if so, look what YOU'RE doing….you are not only actually playing into the hands of a total moron but also you are of course encouraging the propagation of yet more threatening bad luck spam as more lunatics jump on this blind consciousness bandwagon - another fail of a superstitious chain-challenge concocted by yet another brainless dweeb - and round it goes again as you send this stuff to the people you ironically care about the most in Instagram world. Or FB, Twitter… Tumblr... whatever…..

Listen, this is important….. As soon as you repost a spam message, you are THE RESPONSIBLE REPRESENTATIVE of this message - you are not just a simple link in a chain, to use old English, you “stand" for it. You are an ambassador to the claims within. IT BECOMES YOURS. You are not just passing something over that doesn’t affect you.. it DOES affect you - you have validated the statement within by passing it on. You inflict it on everyone else and so I BLAME YOU!!!! - 

Don’t you dare say that someone else sent it - so you’re immune. My friend, please listen, you are just as much to blame as the first person who dredged this detestable pulp from their infantile and throbbing excuse for a brain.

HARMLESS, DANGEROUS, POINTLESS OR ANNOYING?

If you pass on a spam message, you become a spammer - of course you do! - Yes I understand that spam is a fact of life, and perhaps really isn’t worth getting upset about…. but look again, what about messages that deliver horrific threats which include statements like “You dad will die in his sleep unless you repost this” - 

What kind of morbid scaremongerer feels the need to contribute such a statement to the world? 
What joy is there to be had for the original author... or anyone? 
Is this funny on any level at all? 
How is it remotely entertaining?
How much of a traitor have you just been to yourself and the true elements within the spiritual world the moment you agree to participate in this?

Superstition has existed for thousands of years - I accept that it is endemic in all cultures. I also accept that it is an inevitable that we all play into its hands at one time or another. I am sure that I have diced with avoiding cracks in a pavement in the past.

So yeah, I get it…. but, when I see a post like this, my heart always sinks. I pity the depths of mankind. I see an example of the poorest and most pathetic excuse for a superstitious pseudo-curse being unleashed on the internet with it’s unsubstantiated and impossible claims requiring a validation from the otherwise discerning masses.

FOR WE LIKE SHEEP

I then see everyone blindly play ball and pass it on….. obviously mainly children or young teens…. but still - how old do you have to be before you hate this crap? And how young do you have to be to suckered into believing it? - I would argue that it is logical, straightforward and all-round easy peasy to never get involved in the first place. There's no need to go through a period of believing it like Santa and the Tooth Fairy.

It's not just mindless... it's horrible because intelligent people are forced to give it the time it doesn't deserve as they scroll through your feed.

I'm no fan of spam, I have slight regard for superstition, I'm unimpressed by poor effort and even bad spelling / grammar - but I loathe, beyond anything else a dumbed down mass of zombies complying to something that doesn’t deserve even noticing - let alone obeying.

Do I make myself clear?

Photographers, Amateur Photographers and Funtime Shooters

Okay, you know this, I actually love photography. It's true, I'm a bit of a photography geek. And because I am perhaps overly passionate about the art, Anya has now forbidden me to talk about photography - and I do occasionally notice that those of you who are too polite to tell me to shut up do sometimes have a tendency to glaze over when I start to rabbit on.

So it appears I am one of those new converts turned zealot. An enthusiast. But I didn't really start this properly until I bought my Sony NEX5n with a couple of expensive lenses when out for a walk in Cardiff in January of 2012.

So, in case you didn't know it, I am now an amateur photographer. 

Before this revelation happened to me though I liked to take good pictures. I had a bunch of different cameras over the years. My previous was a Canon G11 (it's an amateur photographer's kind of camera). Despite this though, I was still really kidding myself. I never took the camera out of program mode. I was not an amateur photographer. I was simply a Person Who Likes to Take Photos... My catchy name for this new breed of person is a "Funtime Shooter". Perhaps I just totally made that up!

But this day in Cardiff changed all that. I now love photography. I shoot RAW and manual. It's a hobby... a new one... and I feel really passionate about it.

The strange thing is though that I keep bumping into people who think they are amateur photographers too. They aren't. They are Funtime Shooters. Obviously I am allowing myself to be opinionated to summarise thus but, let me tell you, the difference is easy to spot. Amateur photographers (APs) know about the art form - they understand exposure. You don't have to be geeky to be an AP (but it helps!) you don't have to be arty (again it helps) but you do need to know about what you are using and doing. 

A Funtime Shooter simply shoots in program mode, or on their phone camera etc and likes to share their results. There's actually nothing wrong with this behaviour - But it's NOT amateur photography. 

One of the reasons I wrote this blog is because I now see millions of Funtime Shooters everywhere - they are just bursting out of Facebook, Instagram... go to a rock concert and what do you see? People filming and photographing the guy on stage almost habitually. It's an epidemic.

And a lot of these people are using pretty decent cameras nowadays - and fanatically using them every day.... a pretty new phenomenon. Before phones were fitted with cameras, and especially before digital photography, a typical family would have one, maybe two cameras, and they would live in a drawer in the house.... coming out only for holidays and Christmas etc.

People like this know next to nothing about photography and also... this is an important bit... they don't care either! - So long as the iPhone can grab the image and Instagram can put a filter on it, then this is really all that matters to these people. I don't judge them. Why would I? These people love photographs, they take photographs, some of the pictures are really great and some of the cameras are very good but these people are just NOT photographers.

Maybe you are considering upping your game. Perhaps you'd like to be an AP. I would certainly encourage this since the hobby is there for the taking. But it isn't for everyone. There's no shame in being a Funtime Shooter - but you just need to know that, if you are, most of the pictures you take could certainly be better and therefore the enjoyment from looking at them afterwards could easily be doubled or trebled with very little effort. If the idea of this leaves you cold..... the mention of the word "effort"..... then just keep doing what you're doing. Be a Funtime Shooter - and be proud.

I am an amateur photographer. I have immersed myself into the art form. I buy magazines about cameras and I read photography blogs. I care about EVERYTHING - and because of this, I thought I would now tell you everything. 

So, though you didn't ask for it, here's the art to photography in Spike's 10 point nutshell summary.

1. spend as much money as you can on the right camera for you.

Expensive cameras take better pictures than cheap ones. But you have to do your research. Some cameras will suit you and your style better than others and you can get this quite painfully wrong. 

For example, I have seen a lot of people invest in a DSLR camera because they wanted to upgrade from point n shoot and, as a result, they leave their camera indoors because they can't be bothered carrying a lumpy box around. So that's a fail right there. I won't write any more about which camera you should buy here though because this part of the subject just goes on forever. And it changes all the time. 

I have been in the market for a new camera for about one and half years, while I wait to find the money. During this time I have changed my mind quite drastically several times over what I actually want.... nay NEED!

In case you're interested I went from Nikon D7000 then D7100 and then D800E then back down to the D7100 and just last week, I am now considering throwing this Nikon fantasy away and getting the new Sony A7...... I wanted the A7R - but, then I went back to the A7. A few days ago, whilst brushing my teeth, I suddenly went back to the D7000... and so on. All this virtual shopping is exciting and maddening. I can no longer be sure what I might do should I ever get the funds required. But my emotional decisions are based on the full range of features and services that each camera offers. It's a HUGE arena. I could probably advise you quite accurately if you wanted to speak to me about it - at least this year (2014) anyway. Once a couple of months pass, and you don't keep abreast of the changes in available hardware, you quickly lose touch. (*Updated note: I just bought the Nikon D7100)

The main two reasons I have become so adept in this area are 1). I'm a fanatic (as previously mentioned) but 2). My financial constraints have caused a very lengthy R&D period. I have estimated I should be spending £1600-£2500 on the camera body for my next acquisition. Then about twice that for a standard accompanying lens collection. It's not a cheap hobby! Obviously you can enjoy amateur photography within tighter financial constraints than this.... but I think you get my point. To summarise, do a ton of proper research and spend a wad of cash!

2. Go to the places where you can take good pictures. 

It's a little obvious this one, but actually it's surprising how many people get this wrong. People are different. Some love portraits, some like architecture, some go for landscapes, and others prefer macro work. You need to go where the photos move you. I love portrait work and I love reportage work, I think people are the most interesting things to shoot. I'm really not THAT interested in photographing sunsets. If you don't go to the places where there is stuff happening that you like to shoot - then you won't have any good pictures. It sounds ridiculous, but some people don't work this out. And you know what else? - Why not actually carry your camera around with you? I try to take mine everywhere. If you're failing in this area then you are not a photographer. You're a Funtime Shooter. Like I said before, just keep doing what you're doing - why are you even reading this? iPhone cameras are really good nowadays. Just do that.

3. Be passionate about your work. 

If you are half hearted, then you are only really a Funtime Shooter even if you've got the right kit. I met a professional, or semi-professional photographer at a night club recently. He was a little geeky. He had a great camera with some cool accessories. He was doing portrait shots inside the club, and I considered the equipment he had brought with him was totally suited for the task. 

He was interested in photography. He was able geek out with me at the bar for a while and it was clear that he knew his techie stuff. He then went round photographing people. But he didn't work with the people to get good results and he wasn't into doing fly on the wall reportage either. He didn't have a passion that extended beyond his previously mentioned qualities. He took one photo of each group of people, then I never saw him shoot anything else for the rest of the night. After the event, the images he took appeared nowhere. As far as I know, even the guy who hired him never got to see the end results. If this had been me, I would have taken 20 or so shots of each and every person in the room, with tons of burst shots for variety, safety and to invite some luck.

For an evening's commission like that with 120 people or so present, I would have easily had 350 -1000 shots - all taken RAW, all individually sifted, graded then uploaded. I would have made sure that everyone could access them too. They would all be filed and backed up. That's how a passionate photographer rolls! This guy had the knowledge, he had the kit, he even charges for his services - but deep down, he's really a Funtime Shooter.... Okay, I'll admit he must surely be a photographer if he normally charges for his services - but you get my drift, I wasn't impressed.

Passion in your work. When you have it - it kind of sticks out. If you love photography then here's an idea.... why not show it?!

4. Learn your camera. 

Learn everything it does. Read the manual... You can agree to leave bits of it alone when you know where it is and roughly what it does. There are always menus and functions you won't need, but at least work out what they are supposed to do. Some cameras have really deep and bonkers menus by the way!  - But put your camera on a tripod and shoot the same picture over and over again changing the settings incrementally and then check back the results monitoring the exposure levels and the depth of field quirks of each lens you own. Take hundreds of photos and, when you review a bad one, take a note of what settings you used and then recreate the shot again with altered parameters to see the differences. Try really hard to stop shooting in auto and program modes. I often shoot fully manual and I have customised all my buttons and menus so that I can make really fast changes as I shoot. Where possible, when in the field, fire off a number of shots at different over and under exposed settings so that you can see what works best when you get home. Get a huge memory card. If you're shooting people, like I do most of the time, don't be scared to take hundreds of shots in an hour. Get really quick at filtering the shots when you get home. Get a fast computer and learn your keyboard shortcuts to speed through this process. Use Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture. These apps can be expensive, but essential for workflow. It helps to learn about 10-15% of Adobe Photoshop (or a couple of other good image editing apps) on top of this. I watched... and still watch, loads of YouTube tutorials for all of this - which leads me on to the next point....

5. Learn new stuff - get better!

Read about what people do and check out other people's photos. It's a hobby with an arc. It never stops. Enjoy this.

6. Take things personally - and, at the same time, do the opposite! - 

Allow me to explain this one.... When you take a shot you are proud of, show it to people. Be proud of your work and ask people's opinions. Especially people you trust to be congruent. Anya is very honest with me. I often get warts and all appraisals from my wife! - 

You are emotionally connected to your work. You're an artist. It's impossible to be disconnected from your heart in your work. But here's the next bit. Don't let your pride or your hurts cover up realities and don't take it too seriously. 

Be prepared to be bad. If you are insecure (like far too many photographers I've met) you might be in denial and too protective of your work to be objective. Be prepared to present what you think is a good picture and actually have someone rubbish it. 

Be ready to re-evaluate when people don't like your shot. Don't look at it for a few days, then come back to it later - you will notice that your time away allows you to re-consider. Don't be discouraged - your own standards should be going up. Pictures you took last year, that you really liked.... look at them again now..... are you still as impressed or have you moved on a little? 

Never forget that, especially when shooting people or fast moving moments of some sort or other, that luck plays a major role in a successful photographer’s life. Good photographers and bad photographers both get lucky - don’t make the mistake of thinking your great photo is always and fully down to how good you are. Enjoy your lucky photos - but the better you get, the luckier you are likely to be.

Disconnect your core-self from your work so that you have a place to put your failings - grow up! - Don’t wear your successes to make some sort of point about you as a person. But don’t lose the passion behind your work either. Self confidence is a strange animal - it needs to be connected and simultaneously disconnected to your outer self at all times! For some reason, a lot of photographers get insecure and lie to themselves. Don't be one of these people. Yes be a geek, but don't be a nerd!

7. What technically to look for specifically?

The focus, DoF, noise / general exposure.... Look how light is entering the frame - the reflections, the shadows - were these deliberate or just circumstantial? Did you have the ISO too high or low? Is the focus soft because you moved or because your shutter speed was too slow for the subject... a bit of both? Were you shooting against the sun? Should you have used an off camera fill flash? Look at your framing - were you aware of the surrounding elements to rack them up properly?

What about the emotion behind the shot? - Is there a message or a feeling you were trying to create? Did you succeed? Look at the contrast, white balance and the grading etc - how did you approach editing afterwards? Take a note of the aperture setting you used - memorise it against other factors to guess it better next time. Consider what it would have been like a couple of stops each way. Are you shooting RAW? If not, why not? - Could you make the picture a little better in post? - Why haven't you done it yet? - It's not finished! Why upload and share something that could have been 50% better? - What resolution have you uploaded it at? Who have you shared it with? Perhaps you need to secure it for privacy.... Perhaps it would be better in black and white. Perhaps you could crop it better to put your subject better in the frame. Perhaps you should take the noise filter off again to see if it better focuses the foreground. What monitor are you calibrating the end results on for colour? Does it look okay on an iPhone? Have you backed it up? Have you entered appropriate EXIF METADATA info, face recognition and search field data? 

Have you deleted the out-takes? Why do people connect their cameras to their computers and click “upload all images to Facebook”?!!! 

How much of the shot was skill and how much did you rely on luck? I consider and do all these things for every shot I take pretty much. I consider the art of photography includes all of these elements. For someone to stop short here, I don't really think they have a proper passion that successfully covers the subject to really do it justice. This is often the problem with so called photographers - they have a lean towards the artistic, or the technical, or just one kind of skill subset - but they don't pack the whole punch. If you really believe that you don't need to do post production or you don't need to share or backup your work then hey.... perhaps you're still a passionate photographer, but I'm afraid I would find it hard to understand you. Why design and build a house if you’re not going to live in it? Perhaps you're one of these weird artist types.. in which case, fair enough! - But if you're not weird, I would suggest you do all of the above - why wouldn't you?

8. Be brave and confident when shooting people. 

Do your best to relax them of course, but I am constantly amazed by people who just take one shot of someone or photograph a person from behind because they didn't want to move around or interrupt them to get an arranged shot. Don't let them go until you've taken a whole heap of different shots. Talk to them as you shoot, tell them what you're trying to do. Make sure they like you. Try not to sound wired or flustered - even when you're trying to remember all the settings you are changing - it's hard for me still this one! - Try to help them forget self awareness... When you see that they are getting bored or agitated in the same pose, leave them alone and come back to them later if you can.

Persevere with people. A lot of photographers take numerous shots of sunsets because they don't engage with people. Watch how many times you revisit a picture over the years. Are you a "shoot it, fix it, share it then forget it” person? - Does your sunset, or tree, or cat or whatever really rock your world? Is it where your heart is? - I am really excited about shooting people especially... but I know I'm awkward sometimes, and I know I don't relax people as much as some. To get the results I need from a person, they need to be putty in my hands - I'm still working on this. Beating the social and psychological attitude behind the lens is a major part of this art form. Challenge yourself..... if you like looking at photos of people more than sunsets then deal with your problems and take more pictures of people. Perhaps change to reportage with a longer lens and shoot strangers….. with appropriate diligence of course, or perhaps alter the surroundings of the ubiquitous portrait. Do fun stuff. Break out of contrived habits. Play with someone you know well and ask them to muck around with you as your test model. Discuss the process before you even get the camera out so your subjects are on side with you. Look at shots that other people have taken... ones you love.... why are you not doing that? What's stopping you?

Don't spend too long checking your shots in camera - you're wasting shoot time, and the screen on the back won't often tell you for sure whether you've just got the money shot. Wait till you get home. 

9. Always have the right accessories and props. 

Spare camera batteries, lenses, filters, tripod, flashes, reflectors, lens cloth - whatever you need. Whatever lets you down on a shoot - buy two for next time and leave them fully charged and colour coded by the door! Always put your lens cap in the same place. Get a routine.

10. Find a nerdy friend to share all this with.

It helps to share thoughts, swap stories and geek out with like minded souls. Don’t be ashamed if you’re a little nuts!

Don't bore your wife.... she will leave you - or kill you.... one of those!