- Face children away from the camera.
- Eliminate identifying markers.
- Set boundaries when talking about family.
Privacy, particularly when talking about children, is extremely important to me. When I take photos, I try not to have children in the frame. If they are, they should be faced away from the camera or far enough away from the camera to protect privacy. Not everyone adheres to these rules, but I try to be careful with children.
If I can’t Photoshop someone out of the photo, I’ll go back to the location early in the morning for a less blemished photo. When using Photoshop, I remove identifying markers.
Examples of Identifying Markers:
- Street Signs
- House numbers
- Children in front of a house
- Names on backpacks
- A child’s face
- Anything that links a child to a specific location
Family Privacy
When I post about my family, I consider 2 questions:
1. Will my children be angry?
I imagine my children going through the blog during their awkward teenage years. If I think they’ll be angry that I talked about it, the topic is off-limits.
2. Is this a universal topic?
If my kids read the blog, I want them to understand that I’m discussing the issue from a parental perspective, not as an attack on them.
When I discuss parenting issues, it’s never about my child specifically; it’s about my reaction to the things my children have done. I discuss things at a higher general level rather than talking making my posts about my children in particular.
Occasionally, I refer to my son as destructo-boy. When he smacked our flat-panel, 42-inch television and broke it, I posted about it on the blog and submitted a photo to shitmykidsruined.com. He was only 2 and didn’t understand, but a lot of my friends have had similar experiences.
I don’t want him to be horrified as a middle-schooler and hurt that those things had been said about him.
In short, to protect the privacy of children, I take out all identifying markers of them in photographs. When considering the privacy of my family, I avoid anything that would cause embarrassment or hurt to my children when they grow older.
