Photography Issues

[Joseph Wakeley, III]

Working at a university facility, I get a lot of students either requesting or just showing up to take pictures. I have patrons that feel that they have a right to privacy and students that disagree. I am interested to here what other do with this or similar issues. Any advice or thoughts about this issue would be great. Thanks

[William L. Shuman]

I simply would use this approach... You can not sit down at someone else's table and start eating their food without their permission. Therefore, if you are at my pool, you can not take pictures of anyone without their permission. There is a right to privacy to everything inside the pool fence, which eliminates the photo ops from the fence also!!! If they want to freely go and take pictures somewhere, direct them to the nearest public beach.

[Joseph Wakeley, III]

Thanks for your thoughts. I was thinking the same thing when I asked for all to have permission before taking pictures at our facility. This line of thinking got me into the middle of this discussion at our university. I have been told by the Arts Department that because it is a public space, regulating photography is not acceptable. Apparently we all have the right to take pictures in any public space, at any time, for any reason. Eliminating photography from the pool fence or windows is actually a protected action, according our our Arts Department - A Free Speech / Expression issue. At issue here is what should be considered public and private and whose rights are greater - Privacy of the patron or Rights of the Photographer. As you can see, not everyone sees it like we do. Which makes developing a policy a little harder than I expected.

[Cory]

Public bathrooms are public spaces as well, but we don't allow photography in them due to relative states of undress, etc. Now it's not as if you're going to have someone arrested if they're taking pictures, but if they have any sense of common courtesy and are concerned about making people feel uncomfortable, they should ask for permission beforehand.

BTW - In situations such as this that i've dealth with in the past i've typically said "as the manager of this facility, this is my decision. If you would like to debate it, we will need to involve the expertise of our law department who can make the final decision." In my experience, most people won't bother w/ the effort. If they do go through with it, you'll have an expert opinion and an authority to defer customer complaints to other than yourself.