Photographing Children at Historic Sites: get permission first

Typically if you are taking photographs of people at your Site, as long as your subjects don’t have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” (that is, they’re not somewhere they’d never expect a camera to be), it’s okay to photograph them. If there are children involved, however, you’ll want to be much more sensitive. Parents are becoming increasingly concerned over the use of their children’s images and want to protect their privacy and prevent commercial exploitation. If you are using photographs of children at a National Trust Historic Site, we recommend you obtain permission in advance from the child’s parents or guardians using the “Child and student photography release form“. This form was created for Decatur House so modify it for your particular needs (our thanks to Anita Canovas in our legal department for her assistance; if you are a Stewardship Site, I’ll be happy to create a form for you upon request). If you are using photographs of tours, school programs, events, and activities that include recognizable images of children (persons under 18) in publications, Web sites, exhibits, promotional materials, or other ways that are distributed to the public, we strongly recommend you review them first to ensure you have permission from their parent or guardian. And you probably want to avoid including their full names in photo captions, using at most the first name and initial of the last name.

If you’d to learn more about the issues on photographing children and “model releases”, check out these news stories and Web resources:

• Lawmakers [in Missouri] consider banning sex offenders photographing children
• FourThirds Photo Forum on Photographing Children You Don’t Know in the UK
• “Online Photos Not as Private As District Mother Assumed” in the Washington Post and the corresponding forum discussion on Flickr.
• Why You Need Releases from the American Society of Media Photographers
• Frequently asked Questions about Privacy and Libel from the American Society of Media Photographers
• The Model Release at Dan Heller Photography
• Arizona State University’s policies regarding photography has a section on Model Releases that outlines their standards for photographing persons under 18.
• Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) doesn’t specially relate to photographing children, but it does remind us of the need to be careful when creating content on the Web for children under 13 (because it often features images of young children).

If you have questions or comments, please post them here so we can post responses publicly and for future reference.