We brought you a story a while back about a celebrity and a street photographer that unwillingly went viral after the former accused the latter of being a “creep” on Instagram.
With then 15 million something followers, as you can imagine, the Internet mob descended quite quickly upon photographer Darryl Wilkins after Hilary Duff “called him out.”
Taking photographs in the general vicinity where Duff’s children were playing football, the sometimes singer-actress accused him without proof of being a child predator, PetaPixel reports.
The posted video of her confrontation with Wilkins has the appended caption, “Paparazzi shooting KIDS. Go ‘practice’ your photography on ADULTS! Creep! Laws need to change! This is stalking minors! Disgusting!”
Duff also said in the video, “Like, if a parent is asking for it to stop, the laws should be changed for you to not be able to photograph that person…If those kids are a subject of your ‘photography’ practice, over and over and over again for minutes or half-hour, however long it was, and you ask someone to please stop that, you should have that right. And we really need to work on changing that law.”
As these things tend to do, the clip went viral and wound up on the Wendy Williams Show. There, adding even more fuel to the fire, Williams said: “Creepy to me. …Sir, if you’re practicing photography, why wouldn’t you go into a park and take pictures of birds and butterflies?”
The suit alleges that each person made, “false statements because Wilkins is not a pedophile or child predator and was attempting to take photographs as a photographer and not as a paparazzi or stalker or with mal intent or evil wrongdoing.”
In case you missed our initial reporting on this story, you can catch that here.
What do you think photographers should do to protect themselves from false accusations while in public? What are the boundaries of public and/or street photography? Let us know your thoughts on this topic in the comments below.
Check out our other photography news on Light Stalking at this link right here.
