School's out for summer

Well not quite, otherwise I wouldn't have been at a school taking pictures for their new website last week!

It's odd, of all the things I've done probably the most awkward took place last week as weighed down with kit, I walked into the school reception in a small town not a million miles from Panstville (sometimes I think I need a tribe of ginger baby midget goats to carry my bag).

The day itself started off oddly, jumping on the train with a newspaper under my arm (as is now my custom when travelling on the branch's outdated rolling stock) after stowing my bike; I was confronted by an unusual sight, a 50 odd year male, flat on his back with a map of Africa spread out across his jeans, various people were dithering about and informed me that he was basically drunk as a skunk*! Being an affable type I, of course, lent a hand to get him onto the platform, unfortunately the effect of this was twofold, firstly the train was delayed making me late to meet the client; secondly I ended up stinking of BO and very cheap stale plonk (not the best way to be when en route to take pictures in a school!).
Arriving at the school on a hot day, sweating from a rather hasty bike ride (forgot it was all uphill) and stinking of eau de alcofrolic is possibly not how I wanted to make my entrance!

Anyway, back to the main point; as I walked through the school, I realised how paranoid I am of taking pictures of children, even though I had permission from the school to take the pictures and was escorted around the site by the client, I still felt a sense of fear. My attitude to jobs is that I'm there to record what I see, if I don't do that I may as well put down my cameras and give up (even more so if it's a paying job).

Even before the job paranoia had set in, discussing with the contact if we should draw up forms to say the client would have all images and I would destroy any copies I had when the job was finished. This is definitely not my usual attitude. I know that forms will need to be drawn up by the school where pupils are identifiable to get permission for them to appear on the website - because of that as many images as possible were shot in ways to make pupils unrecognisable (although some were unavoidable).

The job itself was quite a whistlestop tour of the school, stopping briefly in various departments to try and grab fleeting shots of the students at work and as time went on I felt my paranoia easing somewhat, 90% of the kids were fine and were actually quite good when it came to helping out by doing what was needed for a particular picture and most seemed to enjoy the fact that they would end up on the new website.

Regardless of that, I still feel as if I'm caught up in the hysteria surrounding photography and children that seems prevalent in this country; I know I'm not the only one. Speaking to friends who work in different photographuc areas they feel the same and quite frankly it's totally ridiculous! The feeling I experienced was akin to me about to do something I shouldn't, as if legitimate work was actually a crime!

Is there an easy way to photograph kids candidly? Fear of a parental lynch mob rampaging round the countryside complete with pitch forks and blazing torches is, as far as I'm concerned, an irrational fear (isn't that the definition of a phobia?) it is without a doubt totally ridiculous. Maybe it's just the way the country is now; public photography as a whole seems to be moving in ever decreasing circles, with restrictions (imagined or real) squashing down further on what can actually be done (ironic considering even more people are picking up cameras). My one worry is that we will lose the ability to document life within the UK, losing a chunk of history (outside of atrocious facebook pictures) that would normally act as an archive showing those exactly what life was like. I wonder what photographers from ages past would think of the restrictions, rules and paranoia surrounding photography in the modern age?

Anyway - that's enough from me, very rambling post that started somewhere and via numerous doglegs ended up in another county. Off to buy some paper bags (they wear out quickly).




* To be known as a DOT - drunk on train... a very obscure reference to something else.