A Photographer's Rights

Hamley's Toy Store in London - You can even shoot 

inside a department store. 

If it's open to the public

you can shoot it! It only depends 

on if you

are publishing/

selling 

photos 

or if there

are subjects that have a copyright.

I came across great photography/photo blog called Soup Belly. They had a posting about knowing your rights as a photographer. (You can find the original blog posting here).

The idea is that there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about what can and can't be photographed. Perhaps taking a photograph of someone's yard from the street seems to be private because it's someone's property, but according to the article by Andrew Kantor, Your rights as a photographer,  as long as you are in a public place, you have every right to shoot those photos. It's only when you try to sell those photos you have to worry about getting permissions.

I've often questioned when out shooting... Can I "legally" take this photo? Am I trespassing? Do I have a right to be shooting that person?

I have always tried to be very careful about people's privacy. That goes for even shooting strangers in public. This is ONLY because I didn't understand the rights!

Kantor summarizes it nicely: 

"The law in the United States of America is pretty simple. You are allowed to photograph anything with the following exceptions:

• Certain military installations or operations.

• People who have a reasonable expectation of privacy. That is, people who are some place that's not easily visible to the general public, e.g., if you shoot through someone's window with a telephoto lens.That's it."

I highly recommend checking out the original article if you have any doubts as to what your rights are.

This is something that we really didn't talk much about in any of my photography classes so I found it very helpful and I hope anyone questioning will as well!

Stepping Out of the Box

I'm a graphic designer by trade, photographer by passion. I decided to have a dedicated spot where I can post all things photography and maybe a little bit of chatting about life.

Stop hiding in a box and get doing something.

I've been having trouble getting the first post started on here. I have such good intentions but it's like a writers block thing. Or like an artist staring at a blank canvas. Not to mention that I have been blessed with the gift of over analyzing everything. My main concerns are my spelling and grammar but I have to stop thinking about it and just get finish something already, garrr!

I have to remind myself to step out of my comfort zone, step outside of the box already!! 

"Don't think just do it" it has been one of my many motto's for the past few years. I don't always remember to follow the motto, but when I do it works well. It gets me to stop thinking in a circular pattern and just on to doing something. One of the biggest things I'm learning in life is that you don't have to be perfect in everything you do. Life is a continual process that is constantly changing. It will never be perfect, no matter how hard you try!

On the road of life...watch for snakes.

Speaking of doing something... 

I haven't been doing anything with my photographs other than posting them on facebook for my friends to see. I'm hoping one day to do something with them. It's a shame if all 32,000+ are just sitting on my hard drive unseen. (although not quite all of the 32,000 are good enough to be seen...or should be seen...or want to be seen)

ANYWAY! Enough chat for now. Let's move on to some of the good stuff. Oh...wait..... 

Noooo!

This cat's face is how my face looks right now. It's 1:53 in the morning, I'm finally getting the creative drive to post something...and then I just realized that any of my photos I want to share have to be uploaded to Picasa web albums. AND of course I'm out of storage space so I would have to buy more space! UGG. I think it's time for bed, good night moon.