Photography, Etiquette, Art and People

The first rule of taking pictures of people is to ask the group you’re photographing if it’s okay to take their pictures. Anyone says, no, and then you have to make sure you don’t take shots of anything with them in it, or you don’t take shots of the activity they’re involved in. Some people just hate being photographed.

Second thing: if you want to submit your photographs to stock photo sites such as Dreamstime of iStock or whoever, you’re going to need a model release from every recognisable person in, or likely to be in the photographs you take. This means that if, like me, you’re not sure if you’ll be mixing the odd opportunistic ‘face’ or ‘character’ shot in with your group shots, you should get the folk to sign up early. It also means you should probably get a model release for each person prior to the activity as you never know if you will want to use the shot a few years down the track—when that person might no longer be found.

The last thing is to be generous. If you take photos at a club, provide the club with copies they can use free of charge. If you take photographs of a person, provide the person with copies of the shots that include them. After all, without them generously allowing you to take pictures, the pictures wouldn’t exist.

If you’re taking pictures of art or crafts, be sure you get the name of the artist—it’s also nice to be able to put their picture beside the picture of their artwork.

Finally, some of us take photographs as reference material. The important thing to remember with this is that you still need a model release to upload art work based on those ‘modelling’ in your photograph to stock photo sites. Even if you have no immediate intention of doing commercial work, it’s best to have the model release form recorded, in case you change your mind later.

People are awesome - most of the time - and it's nice to treat them well.