During my stay at his smallholding, Mr Host 3 mentioned, amongst many, many other things, that he has been very offended in the past by a WWOOFer from London blogging pictures of the inside of his house without consulting him. (Kids these days! The iPod generation! Etc.) This raised a thorny and slightly squirmy issue for me, which is - do I request permission from my hosts before I write about them and display photos of their properties on the internet?
I gave this some thought before I began my travels and eventually decided that I would not consult hosts before posting about them, or alert them to the fact I am keeping a blog, because this would affect how honest I could be about my experiences. Instead I would just omit the name of the places I visit and keep the location vague. I mean, if you tell someone you're going to be writing about them it's possible it will a) inhibit / make them feel uncomfortable with you and b) make it fairly likely that they will read it at some point which then c) means you feel you should be polite and possibly not completely truthful about how things went. Host 1 for instance - could I have written honestly about my time there if I'd known he may well read it? No.
However, do I feel slightly guilty about posting photos of Host 1's farm without his knowledge, when what I wrote about him wasn't particularly positive? Yes I do. I'm not sure how to resolve this, except just to carry on as I have been - writing frankly, but not naming my hosts so that it is unlikely to ever be associated with them by anyone who isn't already in the know. And, in the case of my most recent host, not posting pictures of the inside of his house without obtaining his permission, only including a few unidentifiable pictures of smallholding Stuff to add a bit of visual interest to my main post.
Plus it's not like I have an enormous readership so I don't think it's really that big a deal at the end of the day. Right? Right! Good.
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