WE SPOKE to Nick Dunmur, the legal advisor of the Association of Photographers (AOP), for some general advice regarding street photography. ‘To be clear from the start, there are no laws in the UK preventing anyone from photographing anything, or indeed anyone else (note: including children), in a public place. The issues start with, firstly, defining and understanding what exactly is a “public place” and secondly from the use of the resulting photographs. One cannot take photographs of things for criminal or terrorist purposes, for example, and one should not use an image of an individual to advertise a product or service without proper permission from that individual (often called a “model release”).
‘So, to reiterate, as long as the photographer is on public land or in a public space,…