The big (new) problem with taking photos on holiday

There’s a travel influencer I follow on social media, and I love his work. He’s incredibly talented, one of those people who captures details in destinations, ones you didn’t even realise were so beautiful and inspiring, until you see them presented in such skilfully rendered vignettes.

Here’s a group of fishermen on Galata Bridge in Istanbul at sunset. Here’s someone picking over fruit at a market in Napoli. Here’s rushing traffic from the back of a scooter in Bangkok. Here’s the sparkle of the Mediterranean at midday.

In the past, only a select few travel photographers had an outlet where their images could be seen by a wide audience. Now, everyone does.Credit: iStock

Gorgeous imagery. It inspires you to get out there and love the world, to experience all those things and even to try to capture some of it yourself. In short, he’s the ideal influencer, the guy you don’t even realise is shaping your future plans.

But there’s a small problem, something I’ve noticed from him, and from plenty of other people on social media too: it’s the people who feature in the photos and videos, and the issue of their consent.

Some of his subjects, obviously, can see that they are being filmed, and are very much playing their part in the process. They smile, they act, they continue doing whatever it is they were doing that caught the photographer’s attention. There’s a back and forth taking place.

Others, however, are clearly not aware that they’re being filmed. It has to be that way, in that situation, to capture the moment, to grab something candid and unadulterated and beautiful. And then it goes on social media, for millions of strange people to see.

Children can’t properly consent to their images being posted online.Credit: Alamy

And to be fair to this guy, maybe he does seek those subjects’ consent afterwards. Though he never mentions it, even when his viewers call it into question, which makes me think he probably doesn’t.

That wouldn’t be unusual. There’s long been a culture in street photography of shooting from the hip, of capturing candid images of real life and presenting them as art.

That, I guess, was OK when street photography was a niche practice limited to those who had invested in expensive camera equipment and who had a passion for capturing the world. Twenty or 30 years ago, that was only a small number of people, and they were mostly talented professionals.

Now, however, it’s everyone. Everyone has a camera in their pocket. Every traveller has a passion – or at least an interest – in capturing everything they see around them, and then quite often posting those images and those videos to public social media accounts for the world to see.

This is a purely ethical concern, one among many now for travellers

That influencer I follow might ask his subjects for their consent to post, but the hundreds of thousands of travellers who try to copy his work don’t. You can see this with your own eyes as you travel around now, tourists with their phones out, pointing them in people’s faces, filming and snapping and then tucking the phone back in their pocket and moving on.

Some of the people you see captured on your social media feed have not consented to their image being used. Others, meanwhile, can’t consent, because they’re children, and this is an even bigger problem.

Children can’t properly consent to their images being posted online, for their likeness to be used to attract clicks and followers for other people. They’re not old enough to understand what they’re doing, even if they are asked and they do say yes.

And yet almost every traveller you see who goes to a developing nation, in particular, will almost invariably post a photo of themselves with smiling local children. These children are presented essentially as tourist attractions, as an experience to boast about. I’ve been guilty of this in the past, too.

Those who travel to other parts of the world do a version of the same. That influencer I follow – whose name I won’t publish because it’s not fair that he cops a backlash for a problem that’s so widespread – posts images of kids as well. These are beautiful, thoughtful images that say something about people and place. But they’re also images of children who can’t possibly consent to their use.

There’s quite often no legal basis for these concerns of mine. You aren’t breaking the law when you take photos in public places when you travel. You aren’t breaking the law when you post those images on social media.

And as with so many practices in modern-day tourism, it wouldn’t be much of a problem if it wasn’t so common. But the sheer weight of numbers in travel these days means that small problems become large problems very quickly.

This is a purely ethical concern, one among many now for travellers, one of a myriad we can choose to either worry about or ignore, depending on your viewpoint. Environmental issues, overtourism, power imbalances… maybe, you think, it’s too much. You can’t stretch yourself so far, worry about so much.

Maybe that beautiful image is just a beautiful image and can’t we all just leave it at that.

But I think we can do better.