Tips

When snow arrives, every news photographer will at some point find themselves taking photos of kids doing something snow-related, usually playing on sledges or throwing snowballs. Technically these photos are fairly easy to do, but the challenge is finding the kids!

It may help you if I explain my approach, but first, a few photos. The first one was the front page photo for last week's Christmas edition of the Strathy.

When I lived in Ross-shire I had a few parents on call who could lend me their kids for photos like these. But, being new to the Cairngorms, I needed to go out and find them "in the wild", so to speak. My first tactic was simply to drive around the village and find the first parent with a child, and ask them if they were available for a photo shoot, and could they bring along a few friends. I got very lucky as the first mother I asked told me about a group of kids that she knew were playing on sledges on a big hill at the other side of the village, so I headed over there.

There were three kids at the hill, but unfortunately no parents or other adults in sight. I left my camera in the car and went over to the nearest couple of kids, staying a good distance away from them, and called over to get their attention. I explained that I wanted to take photos of them for a newspaper but I needed to get permission from their parents, and one of them gave me his mum's phone number. When I called her, she said she didn't want me to take photos of her son without her being there, but then she said his dad would come along. Perfect. Whenever you're taking photos of kids it is a good idea to have another adult present.

Tip: When you call a child's parent to ask for permission to take photos of him/her, the first thing you should say is something like "don't worry, there's nothing wrong". You don't want them thinking it's the police or a teacher calling to say that their child has been hurt.

I quickly got permission to take photos of the other kids, and another one arrived with her mother so that was four, plenty for the pictures I had in mind. During the shoot another two arrived, which was more than I wanted, but I didn't want to exclude them so I contacted their parents too and, in the end, the big shot of all six kids worked really well, I thought.

So… is permission a big deal?

In a word, yes. Absolutely definitely positively always get permission from the parents of any child that you photograph outside of a school environment.

Yes it can be time-consuming, and yes it can mean that sometimes you can't do the shoot, but the reason it's so important is for the safety of the child.

As professional photographers, we know that we aren't taking the photos for any dodgy reason. But if kids get used to us taking photos of them without their parents knowing then we're making it easier for the local weirdo to take photos of them without permission too.

If every professional photographer makes it clear to children that people should never take photos of them without permission from their parents, then we aren't just protecting ourselves, we're protecting the children too. So do it!