Over the course of a year I take photos of hundreds of people for my various publications. To me taking photos of people fall into three categories.
1/ Individual photographs of one or more people taken with their permission and knowledge that the photograph is being taken (e.g cheque presentations, group photos to illustrate a feature etc).
2/ More casual photos taken with permission of those present (eg photos taken of groups at events and where the group knows photos are being taken).
3/ Photographs that include members of the public that haven't given express permission for their photos to be taken.
It is number three that causes problems. With category one and two you can ask if there is anybody who doesn't want their photograph taken but with category three that's impossible.
Everybody will have photographs that fall into category three. Pictures taken on holiday or at events where literally tens of people are included but you can't ask every one of them if they mind having their photos taken. I suspect that I'm unwittingly on hundreds of photos taken every summer, as you all will be.
Let's take Cromer as an example. I may want to take some photographs looking onto the famous pier. I may well want to take some angles I haven't shot before. Most people take photos of the pier from the pier approach. I have decided to take them the other way from the end of the pier looking backwards. My reason for taking these is to get photos of the pier and not people. But inevitably I will capture photographs of people at the outside cafes, people eating fish and chips, people walking along and people just sitting and enjoying the sunshine (if there is any).
It's an impossibility to ask all these people if they object to being in my photo and it's impossible avoiding photographing them.
Occasionally when I'm taking photos for my publications I will be asked not to include certain people. In the case of adults this is very easy as they just stay out of the shots. With children it's more difficult. A young girl or boy who sees other children being photographed will want to be included but there may be a whole host of reasons why they shouldn't be included. I will be approached and asked not to take photos of a specific child.
I have to say that this is a rare occurrence. I would say that 97% of parents are happy to have their children included and in fact some actively encourage it like at last year's Remembrance event in our local churchyard when a mother was very keen to have her son's picture taken laying a wreath and asked me if I had got the shot. Unfortunately I hadn't but we were able to mock-up a photo which became one of my favourite of the year and which I featured on the front page of my two publications.
An unusual situation arose a few years ago when I was asked to take a photograph off my website because an individual had decided they no longer wanted it to be there. For nine years our village had an annual summer two mile round the houses race. It was technically a race but, like the London Marathon, also included fun runners, many of whom wore fancy dress. At the end of the event I got a shot of all those taking part at the finish line. It provided a very colourful picture for the publications. Every person photographed knew where the images would be used and, by being in the picture, gave permission.
On one particular year it featured a young lad in fancy dress. Many years later he sent me an email asking for it to be taken off the website because he no longer wanted people to view the image. Obviously, having grown up, the image was causing him some embarrassment.
The answer I gave him was a refusal on the grounds that he had given permission at the time and that permission was for the image to be used in perpetuity. He couldn't subsequently ask for the image to be pulled on the grounds that he no longer liked it. In addition the image was a record of a particular day and a particular event and had already appeared in printed form. It was an interesting request but not one I could ever agree to.
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What shall we talk about now?
I love coming across Norfolk stories that I'm unaware of and the next is one I should have known about.
Does the name Newhaven Court mean anything to anyone? Let me enlighten you. Recently a book was published on Newhaven Court and I put in a request for the e-book version from Norfolk Libraries in order to read it on my Kindle. The book was already taken out and so I placed a hold.
I received an e-mail yesterday to say my hold had expired and the book had been passed to another reader. I put another hold on it and hopefully will receive it in a couple of weeks and have it for 21 days. I was able to read a sample chapter, however, and it seems to be extremely well written. I'm slightly disappointed that I received an e-mail to tell me my hold had expired but not an email earlier to inform me the book was ready for download. I should have kept a closer watch on things but hey ho.
Newhaven Court was a massive pile (I think that's the word) built on the cliffs of Cromer and overlooking the North Sea. It was a haunt of the rich and famous who came there to be with the owners. Oscar Wilde, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, artists and poets all found their way to Newhaven.
Eventually it was turned into a hotel and then in the 1960s disaster struck when the place burnt down. It wasn't re-built and today other houses have been built on the area.
Despite working and living in Cromer I had never heard of Newhaven Court. Now for me it's in the same category as the wonderful story of the luxury hotel built a few miles along the coast at Weybourne which I have mentioned in past blogs. I worked in Cromer around 1974 and so you would have thought that Newhaven Court would have come up in conversation. But no.
There are so many stories about North Norfolk and I intend this summer delving into just some of them for these blogs. So I'm sure you will hear more about Newhaven Court in the coming months.
Incidentally on a visit to Cromer as a boy Winston Churchill didn't like the place. Apologies that once again I am repeating something from an earlier blog but you can always skip this bit if you don't like it.
There's a quote on the promenade from Churchill: "I'm not enjoying myself very much," he moaned.
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Occasionally when I want a little bit of entertainment I tune in to a You Tube channel put together by an American musician whose name escapes me at the moment. He lists his top tens - top ten 60s songs, top ten rock 'n roll songs, that kind of thing.
He also does top ten guitar intros, top 10 classically inspired songs etc. One I watched yesterday was his top 10 keyboard intros. That's songs that featured any keyboards from the piano through to organs etc. Have a guess what number one was. I will give you two clues today and the answer tomorrow - clue one - it's a British band and comes from the 1960s. Clue two- It was played at our wedding ceremony.
Tomorrow I'll also tell you how a number of old copies of the Radio Times made an appearance in Wymondham and also about a really good new you tube channel with a very local slant.