Could you please not take pictures

I'm surprised I wasn't asked this THREE weeks ago when I first started going to house league soccer games.

My house is a stone throw away from a public park that has two soccer fields in it. Today a mom asked me who I was shooting for and why am I taking the pictures.

I answered her photography (especially sports photography) is my hobby, and it's for myself mainly because I want some practice. She told me she isn't comfortable of a stranger taking pictures of her kid. I told her I perfectly understand her concerns, and if she'd please let me know who her kid was, I'll gladly NOT take pics of him in action. I had to repeat myself twice before she realised I'm dead serious in that statement and that she wasn't just going to bluff me off the field.

It wasn't a nasty exchange but I'm glad someone here raised a photography laws site so I knew what I could or couldn't do.

Get her email address and offer to email her a couple of low resolution pictures so she can see what you are doing

The thought of giving her one of my moo cards actually crossed my mind.

This is one of the reasons I'm glad to be a woman in regard to photography. I take pictures around kids constantly and no one has ever even blinked an eye my way. I would hate to be constantly dodging paranoid people who always assume the worst of me.

Sex change unfortunately is not an option for me at the moment

Borbor wrote in post #6004255
Sex change unfortunately is not an option for me at the moment

How about just cross dressing?

ImRaptor wrote in post #6004266
How about just cross dressing?

I think that would hurt the OP more than help.

ImRaptor wrote in post #6004266
How about just cross dressing?

No such option either

ImRaptor wrote in post #6004266
How about just cross dressing?

I'd imagine that'll make matters worse.

Unfortunately, rights or not, the sports organization and parents in it can, and very well may, ask you to stop.

They'll do that because of all of the bad things they read and hear about.

It isn't personal, and legal or not, they have their reasons.

hortonsl62 wrote in post #6004313
Unfortunately, rights or not, the sports organization and parents in it can, and very well may, ask you to stop.

They'll do that because of all of the bad things they read and hear about.

It isn't personal, and legal or not, they have their reasons.

They may ask. You may comply. You might not, depending on how strongly you feel about it.

In any case, these threads have a bad habit of getting out of hand though, so let's just make sure it stays civil.

Had the same experience a few weeks ago at my son's soccer match. An opposition parent complained about me taking photographs. In Australia you do not have a right to prevent people taking photographs of you in a public place. All the same, the experience made me feel so bad that someone might think I was a perv I stopped taking pictures and have never been back with my camera

Pfft, why can't people think?
It's been said over and over, a photographer uses nice equipment, a pervert uses some dodge equipment and tries to hide it and looks rather suspicious. Paedophiles are my one true hate on this planet, I understand everybody needs something to give them satisfaction but children? It's wrong and gross, they deserve the death sentence.

didn't you get the memo? All men with cameras in a public place are pedophiles.

I don't understand this mentality and paranoia. The true number of pedophiles walking around is low, and most of them are behind a computer nowadays rather than shooting at the park.

It's like... can you not drive you car on the streets? There was a young guy last week who drove drunk so I'm uncomfortable with you driving within a 20 mile radius of my children too.

It's as LAME as ALL men being banned from sitting next to childen on flights by New Zealand Airlines, because of course, ALL men are potential pedophiles. Yeah, let's inject more hate and paranoia into the world. freaking STUPID is all I can say.

This is 2008. Weird folks are in the news everyday. I would never take photos of children I didn't know, or asked to take pictures of. No matter where they are. "Let not your good, be evil spoken of."