@172driver its not where you film from but what you film. Although you need a permit and Police permission to put a tripod up or provide an obstruction on the streets of London. To facilitate such things many cities like New York, Toronto Paris and London have departments within city hall to deal with this.
Aerial photography relies mainly on air law and or privacy laws. For instance there are many houses belonging to Arab shieks, a prince or two and a few Russian oliagarchs in an area south of London. Film one of them an publish and see how quickly you will end up before the courts on various charges.
@Peter every BBC shoot has a production assistant armed with a stack of waiver forms which they frantically pass out to everyone who might just happen to get in shot. They need them too. There have or were many cases of people turning up on television and losing their job because they were supposed to be somewhere else and suing the BBC for compensation. Back, IIRC in the 70’s judges ruled in both the UK and USA that whilst a photograph was the copyright of the photographer or of the person who comissioned and paid for the photograph, unless another agreement was in place, a persons face was their copyright and was also subject to agreement. Hence the waiver forms or the face blurring. It might go a bit far sometimes but the lawyers are covering their backsides and that means producers and editors do too.
I was talking in general about things you are not supposed to photograph and the minefield is can pose.
I admit that faces have nothing to do, generally with aerial photography so that was a bit off topic. I thought it might serve as an extreme example of where things can go wrong. But I spent 40 years getting permissions, paying people, agreeing with NAAs etc about where we could film and what we could film from the air quite apart from negotiating low flying photography, landing in national parks etc. For me it was the face thing that got me thinking, is it all worth it? Especially as the rules in various countries tightened. But returning on topic.
On an aerial shoot in Mexico for a well known car company, there was the problem of not knowing whether I should be dealing with the NAA, the local government or one the cartels (would they really shoot us out of the air if we strayed a little into their territory.
Filming above the Arizona desert needed both FAA and military agreement with more areas than you might think, off limits.
Try splitting editorial vs commercial usage in the courts. Get 2 lawyers together and they don’t see a solution, only how much they can make from the situation.
Peter wrote:
This is quite funny – a top secret military airport in Albania. I got these pics 2 days ago:
What are they? Mig-19?
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the Barbara Streisand fiasco. The California Coast Project set out to photograph the entire California coast – it was a wealthy (ex-Cisco) guy and his wife, she flying the R44, he takings pics. They were (probably still are) all available on a website.
Barbara Streisand objected to her house in Malibu being photographed and the photo being disseminated. She sued for cease and desist. The immediate consequence was that the number of views of the picture of her house went up form 10/day to 5000/day (or something like that).
The guy had deep pockets and strong principles. It went to court. The judge threw out the case in ten minutes, calling it the most ridiculous case he’d ever come across.
johnh wrote:
Barbara Streisand objected to her house in Malibu being photographed and the photo being disseminated. She sued for cease and desist. The immediate consequence was that the number of views of the picture of her house went up form 10/day to 5000/day (or something like that).
The Streisand effect.
@Johnh but you failed to mention that the project did not include Vandenberg Airforce Base or that it was only thrown out of court because of the SLAPP laws whereby the project claimed that Streisand’s law suit was tantamount to intimidation. This case could really have made the lawyers a great deal of money and could easily have gone the other way in 10 minutes.
The problem is the one that @Ibra as original poster has identified, is how does a private pilot going about a bit of pleasure travel and photography know what they can and cannot photograph from the air.
IMO they can’t and so for me I would say if its for the family album or maybe(?) If shared with friends on FB then you are okay, for the reasons that if you are obeying airspace rules then how on earth would anyone know? and if they did know or suspect is it worth doing anything about it.
If such photographs are published, especially if it is for commercial gain, again there is the question of how far the objector is prepared to take it and how much you are prepared to spend to defend it.
gallois wrote:
If such photographs are published, especially if it is for commercial gain, again there is the question of how far the objector is prepared to take it and how much you are prepared to spend to defend it.
Again, this is a question of national law. In Sweden I doubt a case such as Streisand’s would even have reached a court.
Peter wrote:
This is quite funny – a top secret military airport in Albania. I got these pics 2 days ago:
So top secret that you can find pretty much the same pictures on google earth (including the very same configuration of planes as in the 2 smaller pictures…)
Ibra wrote:
That was my feeling as long as you keep the pictures along your “cats picture collection” no one will come after you,
As long as nobody sees you shooting the picture and you really keep them from yourself, nobody can actually come after you – the times where once in a while the lab has called law enforcement because they found illegal pictures have gone and as long as Apple does not screen your private collection, there is no opportunity that this gets known.
