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Thursday, December 15, 2022
Bathroom Photo Rules
Over the last few years we've been building up a collection of photos of bathrooms from around the world. The inspiration came from a group of people who collected photos of trash cans at Disney theme parks. I loved the idea of collecting photos of a feature of the world, that you can find almost everywhere (except when you really need it). I also liked the fact that bathrooms all over the world and even from city to city are very different in design. So we started our collection on a road trip to the east coast of Canada, and we've been collecting them every since.
The thing about collecting photos of bathrooms is you have to be really careful. For obvious reasons, you have to really take care in what you photograph, and how you photograph public bathrooms. Obviously the first and most important thing is not to invade anyone's privacy. Secondly you want to be sure that you don't gross people out. Over the years we've developed a set of rules about the bathrooms we photograph, and here they are:
1 - Never take a picture of anyone in the bathroom with one exception, yourself. If you do include yourself in the photo, make sure you're not actually using the bathroom at the time.
2 - As a follow up, never take a photo in a bathroom if you're not alone. Even if someone is behind a door in a stall, don't take a picture.
3 - All bathrooms must be public, or at the very least not in a private residence. All homes and some businesses are off the table when it comes to taking photos (this includes AirBNBs).
4 - If you can't take a picture inside the bathroom, taking a photo of the sign for the bathroom is acceptable or even a wide shot of the entire structure as long as you can see the entrance to the bathroom. Sometimes the sign or building is actually the more interesting part of the bathroom.
5 - If you take a picture of a toilet, make sure there's nothing in it.
6 - If you can't follow the rules, just give up. There have been many bathrooms that we've been in that we did not take a photo.
7 - You don't actually have to use the bathroom to get the photo, we've visited a few historical bathrooms that we have not used, and on occasion we've been visiting some places and had no use for the bathroom, but wanted to get the photo for posterity. In those cases just going in the room qualifies.
This is pretty much the main rule we follow when taking these photos. While there might be a few photos early on that broke a rule or two, this is pretty much how we've been doing for the last few years.
Later
