Legal implications of using self recorded public footage

[NorCalNavigator]

Hey everyone. Sorry if this has been addressed before but couldn't find much reference to it. I'm pretty new to droning and currently working on a website for a new business with a focus on marketing to local neighborhoods. Is there any issue with using footage from flying ~300-400' over a suburban part of town during the day (with a 107)? Mostly still shots looking down over different parts of town and short clips of flying forward facing the horizon with the neighborhood panning out below. There are no specific local laws addressing this that I'm aware of except the general right to privacy law but having footage of people walking below and being able to see into their yards has been making me a little nervous about using it. Have been flying from friend's properties and public right of way type places with no one in the immediate vicinity and trying not to hover in the airspace directly over stranger's houses or pedestrians. I'm trying to stay high enough so as not to be able to make out specific license plates on cars and similar although maybe with the right software someone could if they really tried. Also I don't think there are any naked people in the hot tub or anything like that lol. Am I overthinking this? Are there any other considerations I'm missing?

 

[Felix le Chat]

The laws in California may be very different to this side of the pond, but in general: you should be covered by the incidental inclusion clause... unless your specific intent is to take a photograph of an individual or group, where you intend to use them as a photographic model in that particular environment, in which case you need to get a signed waiver from every person you consider to be a model.

Capturing images of people in a public environment is classified as "incidental inclusion" - spontaneous, candid, or street photography and as such: people don't need to be approached to sign a waiver... because their presence was incidental to the taking of the photograph.

The same applies to the incidental inclusion of either people, or properties in any photograph of streets or buildings within the frame you wish to capture.

If you're asking whether you are required to post printed notice of intent through every letterbox in the neighbourhood and get signed waivers from every Tom, Ricardo and Harriet window shopping or mooching about: that way lies madness and very sore feet.