Families, eh? When I was taking photographs on the beach at sunset last night, a mummy, daddy and 2 kids appeared; older boy, younger girl. There was stone-throwing and raucousness as you’d expect and I tried to tune it out. Then there was a loud girlie squeal and I just had to look. The lad had picked his sister up around the waist and appeared to be about to throw her bodily into the path of an oncoming wave. That’s when my title line happened. The slightly bored yet exasperated sounding mother said quite loudly:
“Don’t Throw Your Sister Into The Water, Sam”
If only I had a picture of it. But unfortunately, at the precise moment when I wanted to take a picture of the situation, daddy looked directly at me and I thought I’d better not. Legally, I had every right to snap the situation but I chose not to. I wasn’t infringing their privacy as it was on a public beach but I got “the fear” anyway. There is something very wrong with the fact that I am worried about being called a paedophile for taking a photograph of children playing on the beach.
I’m an amateur photographer and I take photographs. The media have whipped up a storm over Stranger Danger and now everyone is a threat. The biggest threat to children is a member of their own family: 80% of cases are by a family member, 19% by someone known to the child and only 1% of child abuse is by strangers (these are official government statistics). People don’t like to think about that rather unpleasant truth. This media storm creation diverts attention from important issues and onto less important ones, for no other purpose than the selling of newspapers. Whatever happened to decent journalism?
The family being discussed were to the left of me when I took the picture above. Click on it to make it bigger.
Cheers, Tom.
19/05/08 @ 09:32