to be a tad uncomfortable about this woman taking photos of my DS?

[AveryJessup]

This morning my playgroup had a group 'play date' at the park and I took DS (2.5) along. One of the mothers there had some professional-grade camera equipment with her and was taking lots of photos of her daughter, or at least that's what I thought.

As I was talking to her, I noticed she was actually zooming in her camera on my son and taking his photo. He wasn't playing with her DD or anything, just him on his own. I felt a bit uncomfortable about that so I asked her 'oh are you taking photos to share on [group site]?' and she said 'no, it's just my daughter has a lot of playdates coming up so I'm making sure I get a lot of practice with the camera' . I noticed later that she was doing this with a few of the other kids too, just photographing them on their own, not playing with her DD or in a group shot or anything.

DH thinks I should have challenged her on this and told her that I wasn't comfortable with her taking photos of my son without asking me first but I wasn't sure because there's no law against it, after all. It's not something I would ever do, however. She is an acquaintance and we see each other now and again. Her DD is a lovely little girl but this woman can be a little intense and weird. I was hesitant to challenge her for that reason too as she has fallen out with some of the mothers in the group before.

It's not that I think she has any nefarious purposes in taking photos of other people's kids. I just think it's a bit weird. I would always ask before I take a picture of another person's child and would offer to share the photo with them. To me it's odd to take photos of other people's kids just for yourself.

So AIBU? Or is photographing other people's kids without asking them using a zoom lens and expensive camera at a play date weird?

(We're in the US by the way, hence American terminology, reference to law of the state we're in etc.)

I didn't explicitly disagree with your point, I wondered how you felt about other reproductions of your good self and/or children in other media (spoken word, written word, artistic recreation) and whether you considered those as similarly intrusive or invading your privacy.

It's conversation

"it's the idea that someone is focusing on me and what I'm doing, without informing me that they are watching me, and then capturing that on film without telling me, to look at me or my DC again in private, showing it to others perhaps, and taking away my right to privacy"

and

"while other people might notice me in passing it's very different to picking me out of a crowd, fixing a lens on me and then taking my photo to use as you want without having the decency to check that I'm OK with that"

I'll leave you to decide if the points I raised in my previous posts as the specific reasons for not wanting my photo taken (or that of my DCs) without my permission can be applied in any way to the spoken word, written word, or artistic recreation.

So just photos?