We have 2 other teachers besides myself (all frmer professional photographers- now just a hobby or occassional relapse) that take pix at PTA or school functions, neither has anyone officially taking pictures.
As for use of.. according to copyright law, even though many school require consent release forms. Photos are considered artistic or intellectual (creative) items.
By law you dont need a release form to use someones picture for a web, newsletter, yearbook due to the artistic license (trying to change from legaleaze to plain english- hopefully this makes sense)
As long as your not using the pix for commercial uses, the release form is really just a cover your butt, release school indemnity, courteous way of informing people what you're doing with their pix
<font size=""1""><font color="#"black"">Liberalism is not an affilation its a curable disease. </font></font><br /><br><font color="#"gray"">~Wisdom of Shawnshuefus</font><br /><br><font color="#"blue""><font size=""1"">The punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in government, is...
I take pictures at all of our PTO events and quite a few school events.If I can't do it I ask another mom. I have a digital camera and pay for the ink and photo paper.
As far as release, at the beginning of the school year families have to sign releases to get pictures on the web site or in the newspaper. Some sign one but not the other, whenever there are pictures that need approval the principal and school secretary okays which ones, sometimes it could be a child in the background who you can't use.
This year we have been really good about putting picturs in the local newspapers and on our web page we have some. Although it is harder to get approval on web releases. Alot of times the principal has used our pictures in the school newsletter.
We also keep a scrapbook for each year that we display at open house, block party, kindegarten orientation and screening. We also have taken pictures and now have a power point presentation that we showed the kindergarten parents last year.
Pictures of volunteers go on our volunteer wall and this past month our lobby bulletin board showcased our grandparent luncheon pictures. the kids get a kick out of it so I think that is something we will start doing more of!
Hopes this helps!
[ 06-09-2005, 12:22 PM: Message edited by: pals ]
"When you stop learning you stop growing."
When I asked about who we couldn't take pictures of I was told that the parents that didn't want the students pictures taken was for the newspaper. They were fine with pictures being taken for the yearbook. So I would think that we couldn't put the pictures on the website.
Our group decided to look for a specific person who would be willing to take photos at all events and to add a "job" on our Room Parent sign up sheets for someone in each class to take pictures at their class's parties, field trips, etc. When you're in charge of an event it's hard to get around and take pictures too, so we thought this would allow us to get more photos to use on our school website, in our display cases and yearbook, and even in our PTOtoday Parent Group of the Year application. We haven't found that someone yet, but we're all asking around.
At each event we had this year, a board member was in charge of taking photos. We have used them on our bulletin board, in gifts for staff, and our using them to compile a PTO yearbook. We also send duplicates to parents as thank you's for volunteering. We count it as an operational expense.
The photos are highly valuable to us... looking back on all of the great things we've done this past school year has helped us get motivated for next year!
