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  • 1.  Taking pictures of child visitors

    Posted 12-17-2014 10:24 AM
    Hello all,

    We are a natural history museum that does a lot of science education programs - both in local schools and in our museum. I am wondering if you can tell me about how your museum handles getting photos of children who visit or participate in educational programs for promotional purposes (website, marketing, appeals, etc.).

    Currently, we have a pretty formal system for our in-school programs. Parents of all the kids in the class are given a release form and then we only take pictures of the kids whose parents sign the forms. I'm just wondering if there's an easier, more general way to go about doing this, especially when kids come for a casual museum visit or when schools groups come and visit. We want to have a great pool of pictures to choose from for our promotional efforts, but it takes a lot of foresight and time to get individual parents to sign releases. We want to have a good pool of up-to-date pictures to use but at the same time want to follow the laws and rights of our visitors.

    Can anyone share how their museums handle this, or point me to a good legal resource that outlines what we have to do to be able to take/use pictures of children in our promotional materials? 

    Thanks,
    Cara

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    Cara Scharf
    Program and Communications Manager
    Wagner Free Institute of Science
    Philadelphia PA
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  • 2.  RE: Taking pictures of child visitors

    Posted 12-18-2014 01:13 PM
    Cara,

    We have a general policy that is on our website and posted in the museum: 
    "Please Touch Museum (PTM) routinely takes images and video for use by new media as well as in marketing and promotional materials and on PTM's web and social media platforms. Please be advised that promotional images, video and audio may be captured during your visit to Please Touch Museum. Entrance to the museum constitutes acceptance of this policy. If your likeness cannot be used for Please Touch Museum promotional purposes, please alert the admissions desk staff upon arrival."

    If someone wants to opt-out of this and not have their kids in photos, they are given a "NO PHOTO" sticker that is put on the back of the child that is large enough for a staff member to see/know that they should not be included in any photos.

    Stacey

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    Stacey Swigart
    Please Touch Museum
    Philadelphia PA
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Taking pictures of child visitors

    Posted 12-19-2014 02:24 PM
    Inquiring of Stacey's response from Please Touch Museum: Stacey, was that blanket policy something that was developed and/or reviewed with your legal adviser? I'm assuming most of us have these time-intensive policies to get adult guardian pre-approval to film minors because we're concerned about any legal ramifications of not doing so. With social media, having images to share of visitor engagement is so important in helping us raise awareness of our programs and mission, but it also makes the issue of filming/photographing even more complex. A blanket policy would be ideal for this...

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    Janet Asaro
    Director of Marketing & PR
    Anchorage Museum
    Anchorage AK
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Taking pictures of child visitors

    Posted 12-20-2014 07:01 AM
    We operate along the same lines as the Please Touch Museum - pictures/video taken by museum staff on site may be used for social media, news media and/or marketing/promotions.  When receiving groups, we do remind them of the practice as part of our welcome and are able to identify anyone who wants to opt out then. The sticker is a GREAT idea and I will be recommending we incorporate that in the future.

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    Susan Day
    Education and Communications Consultant
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE:Taking pictures of child visitors

    Posted 12-21-2014 05:54 AM

    To be honest, I'm not sure how it was created. We do actually also have a more formal policy that requires parent releases, but this works well for those quick social media pics/posts for FB, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

    I can talk to the department that developed it, if you're interested. Please email me and I will get back to you...I won't be back in my office until next week. sswigart@pleasetouchmuseum.org
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    Stacey Swigart
    Please Touch Museum
    Philadelphia PA
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Taking pictures of child visitors

    Posted 12-22-2014 05:04 PM
    My 2 cents: I am an attorney in Houston and I teach a workshop on Museum, Gallery and Exhibition Law at the Glassell School of Art with the Museum of Fine Arts-Houston. Do not take this is not legal advice. I'd like to give a quick non-legal opinion, and advise you to speak with your legal advisers. Anytime you are taking a picture of a minor that may be used in your marketing/advertising campaigns online, you should get a release from the child's parent or legal guardian. Just posting a sign that says something to the effect that everyone who enters our museum can be photographed and the photograph can be used for anything we want to use it for, and if you don't want to be photographed, put this sticker on the back of your shirt, in my mind, is not sufficient. Can you get away with it/is it good enough? Probably. But, as technology moves by leaps and bounds, you have to consider numerous factors. Most photographs that appear online have embedded "metadata" information. This can include information such as the location and time of day the photograph was taken. Face recognition software is becoming common-place and powerful. I was told that one future that Google-Glass envisioned was that the wearer could walk down the street and when they see someone, the software program could instantly divulge everything about that person available on the internet. In an extreme case, predators or people that are interested in stealing your child's identity could mine data from photographs and get information such as the name, age, and address of children that appeared online. The other issue is the consent for photographs from people that cannot give consent. It is quickly becoming impossible to protect your privacy and private information about your life. Many companies have developed a significant presence on social media sites- it's good for business. As you should know, Facebook (and all the other social networking sites) sell their information to mega-marketing companies. You spend time looking at skiing trips, or tell a friend on Facebook that you want to go skiing in Colorado and within a few minutes, popup ads appear for trip specials in Aspen or Breckenridge. There is no way to know how the information will be used 10 years from now. In addition, some of the young children whose pictures appear online today may not want that information out there when the are teenagers. As you can tell, this issue is a potential disaster for some people. So, do not take this as legal advice, but I think it is important to be sure you have legal advice for what you want to do.
    Stephan Wexler, MD, MLA, MBA, JD
    Entertainment Law and Intellectual Property

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    Stephan Wexler JD
    Houston TX
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    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Taking pictures of child visitors

    Posted 12-18-2014 02:46 PM

    I'm afraid we actually have the more labor intensive process in place - no blanket acceptance just for visiting or participating. With school visitations, we email the photo release and rely on the teachers to collect them from parents so it is a little less labor for staff. With our own classes, we collect the individual forms for each child and they child is not allowed to participate in the program without the paperwork completed (photo permission or not).
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    Dawn Salerno
    Director of Education
    Mystic Arts Center
    Mystic CT
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    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: Taking pictures of child visitors

    Posted 12-19-2014 10:32 AM
    We also go through the labor intensive process of collecting release forms from parents, usually as part of the the sign-up process for camps and other smaller events.  We have avoided recording whole school groups, as separating approved children is more work than it's worth.

    We have also solicited the children of staff members (and their friends) to stage specific events that we want to photograph and use in productions/promotions.  This gives us the ability to set up shots, direct the 'talent' and control the environment.  I know it's not 100% genuine, but it has proven to be the best use of our time.

    MATT

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    Matthew Wooten
    Planetarium Producer
    Milwaukee Public Museum
    Milwaukee WI
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  • 9.  RE: Taking pictures of child visitors

    Posted 01-06-2015 01:10 PM
    Our policy here, is to get release forms, when the group leader reserves, prior to when children/student groups visit. We ask those children that cannot participate to be clustered together at the time of visit. It does take some time, but we make it the responsibility of the family or group, this way it can't be held against us for not making every effort to adhere to the parent's or person who doesn't wish to be or have their child(ren) included in social media. Even if they're is a news camera or photographer present we still ask. Based on past experience, this has been a life saver. Let's face it, family situations change and paranoia of social media exploitation has become priority for some. I would say for out location, 95% have no problem having their 15 minutes of fame, but we try to respect the other 5%. 

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    Rochelle Coslow-Robinson
    Exhibit Programs Director
    AACA Museum - Antique Auto Club of America
    Hershey PA
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    Original Message