See El Barbudo's post.

And see my post that I illustrated with pictures that were taken, if not from 'behind the curtains', but certainly candidly, of an adult and of a child.

You are entirely welcome to explain why one is okay and the other is "different".

All the more reason not to be taking pictures of kids then and simply getting on the phone and reporting the vandalism to police.



Which I agree with.

This was my opening point: [iFirst of all. Even if this guy had a previous conviction for offences against kids it still doesn't give people any right whatsoever to murder him. But IMO way too many people in Britain would be celebrating his death if the newspapers were reporting of genuine suspicions of him being a paedophile.[/i

I caught the discussion about this on the Jeremy Vine show yesterday and there is no need for a witch hunt based on what I heard. The [ipolice[/i behaviour was appallingly bad and blame is definitely at their door.

Having hauled him in, found there was nothing wrong they just sent him home. When he contacted them about further harassment they told him to simply not go out! Offices have been suspended pending an inquiry and quite right that they have been.

As to taking photos of kids there was also a caller to the show who related a very similar scenario. There was scaffolding up at rented houses next door and kids were repeatedly climbing on it. Fearful of them getting injured the woman of the household first tried telling them not to do it then started taking photos when they ignored her saying she was going to show them to the police and owners of the properties. This was at the suggestion of a neighbour by the way. After doing this numerous times she got fed up and sent her husband out to take the photos. Trouble was it was girls doing the climbing this time and with 20 minutes the police were at the door asking why a man was taking photos of girls. IIRC they had been called by these people already about the kids climbing the scaffolding previously and had not attended.

The couple were immediately fearful of the damage to her husband's reputation.

Also when you say you wouldn't take photos but would just tell the kids off there are several problems with that. First of all you may be intimidating enough and confident enough to do so. Many aren't especially older people. I'd also say these days with the advent of digital cameras and phones with cameras people see it as routine to take photos of just about everything. It's almost second nature to some to take a photo of virtually anything so it doesn't surprise me people would document vandalism to their property or photograph such behaviour as described above.

The solution seems fairly obvious to me. If anyone is reported for taking photos and it turns out to be for a genuine reason then its the duty of those checking them out to make sure that not only are the people involved exonerated but they they publicise this at the merest hint of a backlash. A call to the police from someone facing this issue should be treated as seriously as they clearly treat calls informing them of the photos being taken in the first place. Would this involve a heck of a lot of work going round an entire neighbourhood door to door making sure everyone was on-side? Of course but if we want [ithe luxury of paranoia[/i that is the price you have to pay and is why given they didn't do this, the police clearly failed on the case in point where the chap was murdered.

The age difference really is irrelevant. In your first attempt at this point I could see what you possibly meant by if it was the difference between obviously intentional vandalism of or just being in the vicinity of the flowers, but I really don't see what difference it should make if the youths (also, youths is what the piece says. That usually implies teens, FWIW) were 15 or 8. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever to how likely somebody is to be a paedophile in what from available evidence is an isolated incident.

I'm tempted to suggest that, until such time as photography is outlawed, anyone reporting somebody for taking photographs should be bloody well laughed at.

So a guy sitting in a park and taking photographs of teen and pre teen girls is okay?

In this paranoid era, probably not, a couple of decades ago not many would have noticed.

On the other hand this imaginary bloke of yours could be taking pictures of the landscape, or trees, or the cloud formations, or trying out his new zoom lens or wide angle lens, or just practicing his hobby, or he may just think that pictures of children playing in a park make very good compositions.

As I mentioned previously, we look at pictures of children playing in parks from the 1960s now and regard them with nostalgia and would certainly count them as being a valuable social commentary and worth archiving.

Why does your imaginary bloke sitting in a park taking pictures of girls (and why do you pick just girls as an example) trouble you so ?

Why not?

And why not a woman taking pictures of lads? And all the points Jerry has made above.

You've already made up your mind that anyone taking pictures of people in public spaces is obviously dodgy. – or at least if they fit your profiling.

And you still haven't answered my earlier question about the two pictures that I posted.

Just like no one noticed Jimmy Saville was screwing everything he could get his hands on.

I'm 40. When I was in primary school a kid from our school was murdered about half a mile from our house. It was post Sutcliffe (my dad was questioned my cops down south simply because he was a truck driver with a northern accent). It was post Brady and Hindley.

I don't recognise those times as innocent times. The difference between then and now is the instant availability of digital cameras which mean that virtually anyone could have access to pictures. Back in the 80s the pictures would have needed to have been developed. I'm pretty much certain than anyone going to Boots to develop a roll of pictures of random kids that seem to have been taken without their knowledge would have been talking to a cop about those pictures. But I doubt it would have happened often simply because no one would have dared taking those pics to Boots to develop.



If AP is taking his pictures of his favourite clouds then that is going to be quite evident. And if someone thinks he's taking pictures of their kids they can just get him to show him the cloud pictures.



And I'd say that most of the pictures that were taken were done with the knowledge and permission of the people involved. Just because someone is in a public place doesn't give you the right to make them your photographic subject.



It was just an example that quickly sprung to mind.

I also think a bloke walking down a high street and taking pics of random people without their permission would also be challenged. But if he was taking pics of kids he'd be challenged 10 times quicker.

Not necessarily, you don't have to be pointing your camera directly upwards in order to take photos of the sky - and what about landscapes ?



You'd probably be wrong then.

I can't remember the name of the bloke but in recent years there was an archive of photos taken in Leeds in the 1960s by a French photographer who went on to become quite famous, the Leeds photos were done while he was studying here, all of his photos were of a photo-journalism style where he just wanted to document the terraced streets and the people who lived there, he simply wandered around taking photos of whatever and whoever took his fancy, didn't ask for permission because he didn;t speak much English and he certainly didn't get anyone to sign a disclaimer - was he a pervert ?

If I remember his name I'll post a link.


If a person is on a public place. lets say wandering down Briggate in Leeds on a Saturday afternoon, and you are in Briggate taking photos of, lets say Harvey Nicholls, and that person is walking out of Harvey Nichs at the same time as you press your shutter, then should you instantly rush across and apologise and get them to sign a disclaimer, or show them the photo and promise to delete it, or just think "bollax, that cow just ruined my photo of the Burmantofts terracotta frieze on that beautiful building"

Then, as expected, you're talking crap.

I suggest you acquaint yourself with Henri Cartier Bresson, the father of street photography, then you might actually begin to understand what candid photography can gain.

"My child is at football, do you fancy him or something?"

Mind, I'm fascinated by LGJM's determined efforts to claim that "youngsters" (as per reports of this case) in reality means children under the age of 10.

I suppose it's crucial to attempting to smear the victim of this horrific crime.

A few weeks back my girlfriend and I decided to walk into Pudsey park to eat a sandwich that we'd bought from Greggs. It was a nice, sunny day. Kids were playing on the slides, parents were pushing swings, Helen and I were chatting away.

I can't remember the exact subject but I decided to Google something and so got my phone out. Helen quickly told me to put it away in case "someone thinks you're photographing their kids." The thought had never occurred to me before. There's been many an occasion in the past where I've sat in parks during my lunch break, pottering with my phone to pass the time. I'm 32 years old, a little over weight, no kids of my own, typical IT nerd character - I probably fit the profile of a nonce for many a paranoid parent. Have there been people ushering their kids away from my corner of the park and I've just not realised? Could I have become the victim of mob rule simply because I decided to have a look at RLfans in the sunshine?

I've had this conversation with people at work recently (it came about because one of them had bought a GPS tracking bracelet [it looked a lot like an offender's tag for her daughter which I found rather unpleasant and Orwellian) and the consensus was simply "you don't understand because you don't have kids."

Get your workmate a copy of Paranoid Parenting for Xmas?
Mind you, ''she won't understand because she has kids.''

[urlhttp://www.frankfuredi.com/index.php/site/article/272/[/url

It's simple.
Taking photographs in public is fine, the key point being "in public", there is no privacy "in public" (harassment is different).
Taking photos of fully-clothed kids in a normal public situation is a perfectly valid subject, where's the problem?

In answer to Jose ... I have a print photo of my daughter from 30 years ago back when she was three, stark naked, before a bath to wash off all the juice stains from her face, hands, arms, legs etc from the blackberries we'd been picking.
Covered in the stuff she was and it made a rather endearing photo.
If Jose had been working at Boots back then he'd have phoned the Police ... but, and here's the point, NO-ONE DID ... and I wouldn't have expected them to either.

I have a picture of myself, aged about 18 months (must be a daguerrotype

), naked except for a sun hat, with genitals clearly visible, sitting cross-legged on the Scarborough sand.
I have no idea who took the picture ... ooh what if it was a paedo and I've been harmed by it ever since? Ridiculous.
Or, worse, what if a paedophile got a copy while it was being developed .... oooh, I'm defiled. Also ridiculous.

The problem is in the mind of the person who thinks there is a problem.



And there have been cases of people being reported for exactly this – and another I remember where Boots (IIRC) refused to print photos a woman had taken of the 'rude' frescos at Pompeii.

Fuckwittery, prudery and paranoia.

Many years ago my daughter was a very good diver and trained at Shipley. She had a flaw in her technique, minor having said that. Her very good coach tried to explain it to her, it didn't work. I took a video of her and she totally got it when she saw it. The following week there were signs up prohibiting filming.

Oh, now that is really ridiculous, the copyright must have run out centuries ago.

On a not-unrelated note, we went to the [iLife and Death in Pompeii & Herculaneum[/i exhibition at the British Museum a few weeks ago.

Everyone had had to book for a set time, but it was still packed.

One of the exhibits was a sculpture of [iPan and the Goat[/i, which was discovered in the 1750s in Herculaneum.

It features the half man-half goat god Pan shagging a goat. Actually, it's more like 'making love to', because the tenderness is part of the fun.

It spent 200-plus years in one of the 'Secret Museums', where only nice, white, respectable, middle-class (and above) men could see it by appointment.

So there it was and there was I, knowing that history and determined to see it.

It was in a small side room, with a little warning on the wall at the entrance.

But amazingly, it was the only part of the exhibition where you didn't have to queue to see an exhibit. Nobody was near it.

In fact, everyone in the little room was standing as far away from it as possible, pretending to look only at the entirely non-rude exhibits behind windows on all sides, but all the while casting glances at it.

Me being me, I rushed in, with tb not far behind, going: 'wow' – it is absolutely exquisite.

Then, behind us, we heard a very plummy male voice.

"Oh dear," it said.

Then a female plummy voice responded.

"Oh dear, oh dear."

Pause.

"Well, shall we have a look – quickly?"

Worth the admission fee alone.

Similar situation with my daughter and her high-jump technique. She had a lazy left leg but once she'd seen the video, she corrected it herself. Similarly too, I was requested not to take video footage, even though the only person in-shot was my own daughter.

Here is a still picture from Odsal

Horrific, isn't it? An unsuspecting child, aged maybe 10 or 11, and all the rest of the violated, unsuspecting public too.

But it gets worse. Much worse. Because it is not a single image, no, it is a still from a video available on the [url=http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/videos/stadium-legends-odsal-filmYorkshire Film Archive[/url page



In fact, there are countless thousands of men, women and children appearing in this film. I know, it is utterly disgusting. And not a single disclaimer form. Just think what untold damage such shameful anonymous filming in public must have caused.

Or rather, LGJM is spouting the usual claptrap.

If you do not want your children to be viewed by other humans in a public place then do not take them out in public. A "paedo" taking away a surreptitious image of your child to view later is the sort of irrational and paranoid "fear" that is so typical of 21st century dumbed down knee-jerk moral humbug and hypocrisy. It is hardly any different to your child being viewed "live" by the same "paedo", and in any case, the incidence of small and even covert video and still cameras is now so rife, really, trying to "protect" your child from having a blatant photo taken by someone who "might be" a paedo is really pi.s.sing in the wind, isn't it, as you might be totally surrounded by hundreds of paedos with buttonhole or bag cameras all recording every move your child makes. Indeed wouldn't this be the likely preferred MO of a paedo?

Some people really do need to get a slap, and be brought back into reality. If you sat them down and spent some time asking them to rationalise their "fears", and explaining why they are pointless as well as baseless, then eventually the penny might drop but the fashion is instead to feed the paranoia and encourage witch-hunts and vigilantism.

And of course the same children in the same city centre walking the same streets are constantly being recorded from all angles by innumerable video cameras anyway.

Awful I accept, but why do I keep having thoughts of the ex-NOTW editor every time I see this thread title?

Because the media has a responsibility in the issue as a whole, and Brooks was the one who decided to use her rag to 'out' who she decided were paedophiles, thus causing the Paulsgrove riots, where it was used as a cover for score settling, and at least contributed to the sort of climate where vigilante nuts drove a paediatrician from her home because a) they were too fücking thick to understand the difference between 'paedophile' and 'paediatrician', and b) because they 'thought' that they had the right to take the law into their own hands.

As did the nasty little pieces of shït who committed this crime.





If anyone's interested, [url=http://thevoluptuousmanifesto.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/a-real-horror-story-for-halloween.htmlsome wider thoughts[/url.