I’ve been asked many times if street photography is legal, and the answer is absolutely. Unless you live in a dictatorship. The question is where you draw the ethical line. What kind of photos are just too much?
Many people find it intimidating to just go out on the street and take photos of strangers and that’s perfectly understandable. It’s just weird but that’s exactly what makes it special. As with a lot of things, though, a street photographer shouldn’t forget his ethics. It’s ok if you just want to show life as it is out on the streets but it’s a whole other story of you want to ridicule someone or show them in a negative light. That’s not ok. Me, personally, I never take photos of beggars or people with a disability.
It happens every now and then that someone doesn’t want their picture taken and they politely ask (sometimes not so politely) to have it deleted. In this case what I do is simply explain that I’m not a journalist, that the photo will probably only be seen by a handful of other photographers on social media and that I’ve taken it because I either like the way they look or how the light hits the spot where they were. Once they find out that I mean no harm, they usually just wish me a nice day. If they insist on me deleting it, I do but so far the very few times I’ve been asked to delete a shot it was never a keeper.
This one time, I was on my way to Turkey for work and I had to change buses in Istanbul. I had a few hours to spend on the station. The sun was rising so the light was perfect. I walked around the waiting rooms at this massive station and when I was entering one of them I saw that the exit is backlit and there was a Turkish flag in the background which was making for an awesome shot. As I walked in I took a test shot just to make sure the exposure’s right (DSLR’s…). What I didn’t even notice was that at this moment there was someone standing in front of me who wasn’t too happy about being on camera. He was very rude about it and wanted me to delete it, which I already had done after seeing it was poorly exposed which I told him but he didn’t believe. He asked to see my photos which, I was against when he said he’s a police officer. In any other case I would’ve simply kept explaining that the photo didn’t exist anymore and that it was just a test shot, AND that I meant no harm. That guy was a total asshole, though. That’s why I told him that I am also a police officer (which I’m of course not) and he has to leave me mind my own business. That’s when he showed me his police badge… He finally realized that the photo didn’t exist anymore after I showed him the time stamp on the ones I have on my camera and went his way. Just seconds after, though, I took one of the best shots from this trip, which you can see down below.
Now, the law is pretty clear about photos. You can take photos of anything and everything, unless the person in the picture tells you not to, or a police officer does that (there are some weird laws with some tourist attractions but that’s a whole other topic). So yes, legally there are no issues whatsoever with street photography. It’s all a question of ethics.
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