In a world where threats of litigation seem to come before saying "hello," we find that even hobby web sites like ours are not immune to this harsh reality of modern times.

Thank goodness we didn't order the Hot Coffee...

SOAPBOX: ONE BAD APPLE
by Allen Huffman (aka, John-Paul), ATF Staff Writer

I had to do some digging to find out where I'd last left my soapbox. It was at work, as I should have guessed, right where I left it near the water cooler. I tend to have alot of conversations about Microsoft, stereotypes, commercial jingles, and just about anything else that causes people who stop near the water cooler to stop and vent. Now that I have located my soapbox I shall take a few moments to step up on it and express my personal opinions to the world in this article.

Notice: This article contains the personal opinions of myself, Allen Huffman. If you are not in the mood to read my opinions, please skip this article. If you are not interested in non renaissance festival discussions, please skip this article. If you don't like pointless rants and consider them to be one of the largest wastes of bandwidth on the internet, please skip this article. If you do read the article and feel like you have some comments, I will provide a link to our message board where you can post any responses you may have. Even better, put up your own site and I can provide a link to it so the world can read your opinions. You'll have to get your own soapbox, though. This one's mine...

One Saturday Morning...

It's Saturday, April 21st, and Lindsy informs me that she's received a letter from someone she knows concerning one of the photos on our site. "theres a picture I would like you to remove if at all possible" he stated. He added a description and a comment that, while the photo in question was "funny as hell" it was decided that the second person in the photo did not want people to see it. That's got to be one hell of a picture, I thought. Considering the displays rennies put on after hours, there was no telling what it could be. "and even though it looks bad ... our respective S.O.'s get a big kick out of it" he continued.

Since our process of generating these photo albums is no simple matter, Lindsy responded with "As for the photo, there's not a lot I can do about it being up there. Once it's on the site, it's gone through a huge thumbnailing process in a program we use and to take out one photo would mean that we'd have to redo the whole section, which would take quite a bit of time that we don't really have right now. I'm really sorry about this. I'll see what I can do when we have some downtime, though." You see, Lindsy doesn't manage the photo archive. In fact, the archive is now so large we don't even have a local copy of it at home. I have it backed up to several CDs and on and saved on another system I keep at work. The program we use to build the content portion of this website, Dreamweaver, doesn't even know those files exist.

I was curious at this point as to why Lindsy was the one contacted instead of me (or the specific photos@atthefaire_REMOVE_THIS.com e-mail address mentioned on each picture in our archive). Perhaps it was just because she knew the person writing, or the simple fact that everyone knows Willa (er, that's another rant I'll save for another article). A response to her response was soon received:

"I really dont want this to become a pissing contest. But She is quite upset about the picture, 1 because of what her in laws might say and 2. because her permission wasnt asked to put it on your site. Frankly neither was I, and although I am a little more understanding, she however is quite upset and threatening to call her lawyer. I expect you will be recieving an email from her soon. Just thought I would give you a heads up."

Now I really had to see what this picture was! I soon had joined in the discussion trying to get to the bottom of things. Why was this suddenly an issue after nearly 20,000 pictures have been taken and placed on my website galleries? I explained that I've only previously encountered issues with my photos in the following situations:

1. I took a picture of a lady I knew at the Southern Illinois Renaissance Festival in 1999. She was tired after a long day and didn't want her picture taken so she flipped me off. I happily snapped the picture anyway, and it ended up on my site. Upon seeing it, she wrote me and asked me (nicely I might add) to remove it since it didn't quite make her look very nice. I was happy to oblige and I edited the picture, blocking out her image (and the finger in question). This picture is still in the archive ;-) if you feel like exploring...
2. Upon exiting from one of the Iowa Renaissance Festival and Harvest Faires (when it was still held at the state fairgrounds), I took the picture of a group of who posed for me by the stocks. They then asked me not to show anyone the picture since, apparently, two of them were there together and they shouldn't have been. No problem, though I still wonder why they posed for a picture—none of them ever contacted me to get their own personal copy, though today we do know one of those who was in this photo.
3. After the Heartland Wenches invaded the Kansas City Renaissance Festival in 1999, we were contacted to remove one of the individual photos in our library. I was at the event to help take pictures for their web site including a group shot and individual member pictures. One of the wenches decided she didn't like her picture and wanted it taken off. (I still don't understand this as I thought she looked quite lovely...ah, wenches...) We took it down during our next update.

And that, my friends, has been it. I've been taking pictures and placing them online since I first acquired a digital camera in 1996. Apparently I've managed to cross some new lines this time. I thought about the Saturday night after hours party where wenches were deep throating bananas and pickles. I thought about the woman who was undressing in front of the group (to change her shirt, silly, not intentionally to give a free peep show). I thought about some of the people that were under 18 and trying to pretend they were 21. I wondered if this picture was connected to any of those activities.

After a few long e-mails back and forth, I was sent the photo file name on Sunday evening. I looked at the photo and recalled seeing it before. This batch of images was posted last year shortly after the invasion weekend. I did recall seeing the guy with the black and red cloak standing there with an odd look on his face. He had a "tail" hanging down in front, about waist height, and I had assumed he was yet another clever rogue who thought it would be funny to have a furry member dangling down (all that was missing was a blue ribbon tied around it). As it turns out, the tail was actually hanging down the backside of a lady's skirt, and she was under the cloak with her arms around him simply trying to stay warm on this cold day. She was completely hidden except for the bottom part of her red dress.

I had to send an e-mail back and eat a little crow since I'd just spent a great amount of time convincing him that Lindsy had nothing to do with the pictures. As it turned out, this picture was taken on Sunday with my old camera and I had left the previous day. Indeed this was a photo taken by Lindsy. Ah, well then, that explains why she was written instead of me, I guess.

But why the problem with this image? You can only see one person in the picture, and it's hardly anything bad. In fact, you would never know who was hiding under the cloak unless someone told you who it was and then you'd have to take their word for it.

My first reaction, being the open guy that I am, was to post a serious message about the situation and put a link to the photo in question. This was not mean to be "childish" (as I was accused of being) but, rather, to let everyone see what was the source of the problem. An educated audience will hopefully be less likely to e-mail in asking "what's going on?" over and over. The responses were interesting. Most who saw the photo thought the lady who didn't want to be seen was in the top right hand corner of the image, away from the visible man in the cloak. No, that was most likely just a dress hanging on display. Others thought the "side" of a dress seen in the lower right was her but again that was most likely just another piece of garb on display at the merchant in the background. I'm not sure if anyone actually realize was someone under the robe though once it is pointed out it does become visible.

By this time I'd already disabled most of the photo archive. The only sections that were left were ones that contained images I was using as examples of previous "issues" like this, including one of a Scotsman who flashed me. We edited his manliness out by adding in a flatteringly large blue ribbon. (Wybreg Village Fall 2000, if you feel like exploring once the photos return...)

On Monday I received the first actual letter from the lady in the picture. Up to this point I didn't even know if she really existed since I was only going by second hand reports. She thought me pointing out the disputed images was childish. I wrote her back and, as of Thursday May 3, I have not heard anything further. The photo archives are still down as I sit here finishing this article in a restaurant bar in Phoenix, Arizona, and I stop and wonder:

Am I actually being sued?

Did I actually do anything wrong?

Have I actually hurt someone with my photo library?

Folks, there is enough intentional hurt in this world that we can't stop (but we can help). If my photos end up causing grief, maybe the internet will still survive without them (yes, it will). But is this incident the one that should bring and end to over five years of photo journalism? I don't know, but I can make some statements:

• First, this photo does not contain anything identifiable of the woman who has a complaint. Seeing someone's arm is far from identifiable, and a picture of a "red dress with a fox tail" would certainly never be a form of ID. The only way anyone would even know the woman was in the picture was if she specifically pointed it out to them and they accepted her words.
• Second, photos taken in public places fall into a large gray area legally. We are all inevitably in someone else's picture when we are at vacation or tourist spots. Billy has a birthday at the park and Mom takes his picture while you and I were playing Frisbee in the background. This picture is sent to family members or even posted on a personal web page and thus our faces are seen by many strangers. It happens all the time and you certainly don't expect anyone to ban the taking of pictures at public parks. The ATM machine you drove by also recorded your image, and we are logged and tracked and filed constantly by security cameras. If they tried to record us in our home this would be a crime, but out in the open is another story.
• Third, as either a "personal web site" or "media site" we are simply doing the same thing newspapers and TV news programs to all the time. Just a week after this started we attended a public flogging for a politician here in Des Moines. Sauboo the War Troll was brought in to do the honors in downtown Des Moines and several news crews and reporters were on hand to document the event. The people in the audience had their faces in newspapers and on TV with no "model release form" needed. AtTheFaire.com's own John-Paul and Mistress Willa were even seen directly in one of the interviews on Channel 13 news, yet they didn't have to get any special legal clearance for us to be there. A reporter from CitiView (a weekly Des Moines newspaper) even stopped to interview Willa and took her picture for inclusion in next week's issue. Again, this was without any need for securing image rights.

As you can see, public areas appear all the time in newspapers and on television. When you are at a football game and the camera pans across the stands or zooms in on some guy with a purple wig on, do they need to contact those folks for permission? No. The nature of the business of public spaces is that you may very well be involved in such activities. If you go to a festival in garb, haven't you been photographed by someone you didn't know? Did that surprise you, or did you expect to be part of the show ("on stage") by attending in costume?

Just some things to think about. If any legal actually really does come from this, we will post all the details on this site. I'm not quite sure that's going to make her any less "visible" though.

Oh, and if you have a problem with a photo on our site, why not write us directly and make a nice request? And please have a good reason for it and not just "that bodice makes me look flat chested" or whatever.

-- Allen