Boy, where do I start.
First-off, WalMart and companies like that, you need to mind your own business. You were hired to process pictures--process them, that's it. Mind your own business. You weren't hired to pass off any judgment on how someone should parent their children, if you can't do that then join CPS and take down your store sign.
Second--I hate excessive lawsuits, and I actually tend to support WalMart in general, with regards to understanding capitalism and that they're not evil just for being big and successful. However, WalMart is wrong, and I absolutely support this couple suing them.
Third, to all parents--keep taking photos as you wish to, period. Don't let idiots like an incompetent clerk at a discount store photo lab and an overly aggressive city/police department that thinks it has any business poking their nose into a parent's private life--don't let any of this intimidate you. Maybe an online lab like AdoramaPix or MPix won't be that way; if that's the case, give them your business, and let the likes of WalMart know why. If that doesn't work for you, get a 4x6 printer; with a little shopping around, you can pull-off 10c prints of the 4x6 size. I've done this successfully with my HP Photosmart 325.
Fourth--and this goes out to everybody, the world is not any crazier than it was 25 years ago. You've let the media, America's Most Wanted, To Catch a Predator, and other parents calling you a pervert for having a camera at a public lake define for you that the world has somehow totally become a cesspool for the 3Ps (perverts, pornographers, and pedophiles) in a way like it has never been before. Nonsense. Evil existed long before digital cameras, even before the first-ever cameras of the 1800's. If it was okay for a parent to photograph their children post bathtime 30 years ago, it's no different now in terms of right-wrong. If it was sick then, it's sick now; if it was okay then, it's okay now. It's just fear paralyzing people and turning them into idiots.
Fifth, and this goes to
BRJR and others of their kind of thinking--parents don't have to meet with your approval for how to parent their children. If it were up to me, short of REAL abuse (like starving or beating to death) they wouldn't have to answer to some nosey-busy-body governmental agency or police department for how to parent their child either. I don't want or need your advice--or CPS' either--on what is appropriate for MY child, and I stress that--
my child . Not yours, not the government's, but
mine (and my wife's). That does not mean that our children are property (like photography equipment), but they are left up to US how to raise, not you, not Barack Obama, and sure as heck not CPS or the state of Arizona.
The short way of putting that goes like this--they say with rights come responsibilities. Well the reverse is also true--with responsibilities come rights. When someone is, say, coach of a college basketball, then unless they're abusing players they get to choose who plays for them, what all the rules are, what the style of play the overall team is, and they don't have to answer to anyone about any of it--again, so long as they're not abusive. It would be ascinine for someone to be held responsible for the success of their team but not allowed to make any decisions about who can play for them, what the structure of play is going to be, the rules, any of that.
Parenting is the same way, but people in society so often want to have it both ways--make the parents responsible for everything but not allow them any authority as the leaders of their home. Balogney. As parents we are responsible for so much of our children's welfare and so forth, it is natural that with those responsibilities comes the RIGHTS to parent them as we please. I may not agree with, say, a mother that lets a child sleep in the same bedroom with her, especially if she's married--that is so unfair to her husband who needs quality time with his wife that he can't possibly get with children in the room--but much more important to me is the understanding that, even if I don't agree with those choices, that is THEIR family and it is
none of my blanking business to tell them how to raise their children.
This isn't Cuba, this isn't North Korea or China--as much as some people think it is or even want it to be. If you want to tell the world how to parent chlidren, make your own children and parent them your way. The rest of the world could give a flying "ef--you--see--kay" about your feelings on their parenting style.
I photograph my own children how I please, and nobody--not the government, not friends, and sure as heck not WalMart--has any moral or (as far as I'm concerned) legal right to tell me what they approve of. It's my child, my business--no one else's. Period.
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LRH
http://www.pbase.com/larrytucaz
{
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