My Commitment to Your Privacy

I’m committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. I’ll ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when you complete my contact form. This is only really so I know your name and can email you back. I ask for your phone number too, and the reason for this is so that I can text you to let you know the email from me is likely hiding in the junk or spam mail folder. I pinky promise not to sell it for cold hard cash if you eventually decide not to book me.

What I Collect (Information I Hold)

I may collect and process information you provide by completing forms on my website and information you supply in email correspondence.

I may collect the following information:

Name
Email address
Mobile number
Your home address (This is for the contract)
The address where you’re getting ready at on the morning of the wedding.
Whether you’re having flying saucers on your sweet cart or not.
Names of key family members (I use this for group photos)
Whether your dog will be attending and details of his / her outfit

What I do With This Information

Assuming I’m having a good year and don’t have to resort to selling it on the dark web (JOKING!) then it sits quietly in my email inbox. If you go ahead and book me to photograph your awesome wedding or elopement, this data is also added to some slick studio management software called Studio Ninja.

An Aussie dude called Chris runs Studio Ninja. It’s an Australian company, so the data that I collect from you may be transferred to and stored at a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. I will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

I also print out this data and pop it in an A4 ring binder which lives on a shelf in my office, just so that in the unlikely event that Studio Ninja breaks, I still know who you are and ~~how much money you owe me~~ when your wedding is and the venue etc. When I go on holiday, I move the folder from the shelf to a locked cabinet. My apartment is protected by a police monitored alarm.

Studio Ninja also has an app, so your information is accessible from my iPhone. I do have touch ID enabled, and have increased this level of security further by linking it up with one of my toes instead of a finger. This way, if I am mugged and beaten unconscious, your data should still be safe. 😉 The app also requires a password.

If you complete my contact form in a bid to try and sell me something, rest assured it goes straight in the bin.

Privacy & Individuals Rights

The GDPR includes the following rights for individuals:

The right to be informed
The right of access (You’re welcome to pop in for a coffee & a Scottish snack during office hours)
A right to rectification
The right to erasure (If you ask me to delete every copy of your wedding photos, I will need to receive this request from both parties and there’s a cooling off period of 3 months)
Right to restrict processing
The right to data portability
A right to object
The right not to be subject to automated decision-making including profiling. (Rest assured I use my camera on manual, no automatic decisions are made outside of my brain).

Right to Erasure

With GDPR, everyone has the right to Erasure. link=”https://youtu.be/LdON8l5er2o”

Lawful Processing of Data

I only process data in relation to enquiries and booking conversations with clients. The processes and systems I have in place are designed with your privacy in mind.

Access Requests

If you would like to access the data I have on you, you can request this in writing via email, or pop into the studio at a pre-agreed time. I won’t charge you for it, even though I print everything out on a luxurious and surprisingly tactile 120 gsm paper.

Consent

Here’s the lowdown on what ‘consent’ means with GDPR:

GDPR definition: “any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her”

When you book me to photograph your wedding, you’ll receive a few emails between the booking date and the wedding date. The purpose of these emails is to gather information to help me provide you with an awesome service. One of these emails will be about consent, and this will give you the opportunity to select how your photos are used by me after the wedding date.

Consent & Guest Photos

Throughout the wedding day, I will aim to get photos of all of your guests. During the main family and friends photos, I will work on the assumption that everyone is happy for me to photograph them. I verbally seek permission of the parents/guardians of any children I’m photographing on the wedding day about photo use

When it comes to other guests e.g. evening reception guests, I work on the basis of ‘assumed consent’ for documentary coverage. I will verbally ask for consent from the people I intend to photograph in any organised or posed photograph. If they decline, I will take steps to omit them from the backgrounds of other photos where possible. As a result, you may notice one or two people missing from the final photo selection. If they say yes, I will take this as ‘express consent’. Even if the guest in question just downed a load of shots and is blatantly drunk. With GDPR, consent can be withdrawn later without reason. So, if a guest recovers from a hangover and remembers they pulled a sickie at work to attend your wedding day, then they can rest assured I will not post a photo on Facebook of them throwing shapes on the dancefloor with their tie around their head. They just need to get in touch and let me know. A text is fine.

Photo Removal

You and your guests do have a right NOT to be featured on my website. I will work on the assumption that your guests are ok with me featuring photos that make them look fabulous. If I photograph part of your wedding story that involves, say, a guest drunk and asleep under a table, or an usher who accidentally gets naked on a truck bonnet (Happened in summer 2015. He claimed it was for his charity calendar. This turned out to be a fib), then I would like to reassure you that I will not post this online or use it for marketing purposes.

If any of your guests contact me and request that their photo is removed, I will remove the whole photo. I feel adding a blur effect or putting a black box over their face may deter from the overall aesthetic.

Promotional Emails & Mailing Lists

My observant existing clients may have noticed I have not sent out any emails requesting permission to keep emailing them. This is because I do not have a fancy email list.

I will only email you in relation to an enquiry, or a question you have asked me. Or to beg you to hurry up and choose album pictures already. Or for a host of other important reasons relating to your enquiry or wedding booking.

In the unlikely event that I’m organised enough in future to send out regular promotional emails and would, therefore, need to set up a mailing list, I’ll be sure to ask permission in advance and comply with all the double opt-in stuff. I’m still catching up with blogging from last year though, so this looks unlikely.

Links to Other Websites

If you decide to stop looking at the collection of photos that I have painstakingly selected for your viewing pleasure and head off to another site via a link, I cannot be held responsible for either any disappointment in how the photography over there compares to my own or that website breaking your computer. I periodically do check that any links do work properly, but I don’t check them for malware.

Security

Precautions are taken on my website to ensure it is as secure as possible. This reduces the chance of data being robbed via hacking or malware.

I delete old emails and mobile numbers when everything has been delivered and we’ve not been in touch for 12 months or longer. If you do text me out of the blue, please keep this in mind. Remember to mention who you are along with your wedding date.

GDPR Compliance

I keep up to date with changes in legislation, and I’m working on ensuring that I’m fully GDPR compliant.

Over on the Information Commissioner’s Office website, they explain that the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) are currently a working document and therefore subject to change, so I commit to doing my best to keep up, but if they go and make a load of changes just before peak wedding season, all bets are off until October. Editing your wedding photos comes first. 🙂