Can the GDPR be used to ask free race photographs?
<p>A lot of time pictures of participants are taken during a sports event. These are often sold afterwards for e.g. 10 euro each. Some people just share the watermarked image on social media.</p>

<p>But my question is: is it possible to use the <a href="https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/right-of-access/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">'right of access'</a> to get all personal information from the photographer including the photographs.</p>

<p>If not, how far does the 'right of access' goes?</p>

<p>It should be possible to obtain any Personal Data from the owner of the image (who may or may not be the photographer), but a photograph of a sporting event may or may not be considered Personal Data as defined by 2016/679 (GDPR), depending on the purpose of its processing.</p>

<p>The UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) provides the following on page 15 of <a href="https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1554/determining-what-is-personal-data.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">their interpretation</a> :</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Example</p>
  
  <p>At New Year celebrations in Trafalgar Square two almost identical
  photographs of the revellers are taken by two separate photographers
  and stored in electronic form on computer. The first photographer, a
  photo journalist, takes a picture of the crowd scene to add to his
  photo library. The second photographer is a police officer taking
  photos of the crowd scene to identify potential troublemakers. The
  data in the electronic image taken by the journalist is unlikely to
  contain personal data about individuals in the crowd as it is not
  being processed to learn anything about an identifiable individual.
  However, the photo taken by the police officer may well contain
  personal data about individuals as the photo is taken for the purpose
  of recording the actions of individuals who the police would seek to
  identify, if there is any trouble, so they can take action against
  them.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The people sharing or selling the photograph, and the owners of the medium on which they are shared, could have obligations that the photographer does not.</p>

gdpr photography sport