Gaining Consent from my Minors

I had already gained the permission from my female model Kate via a text message that she was pleased to be involved within the photo shoot at the studio and satisfied with any of the images obtained to be used for the main magazine products I was producing. However there still remained the issue of gaining the consent from my brother, although he too had agreed by a relayed text message, I could simply not just use him without being granted proper written consent due to the issue of him being under the age of 16 and therefore being at risk because visual evidence of him was being created. Kate was over the age of 18 and as an adult she could verbally or virally give her permission without difficulties, with my brother being younger however the issue arose that to use him I would either have to gain approval from my mother of himself. For his and my own safety should anyone ask, I concluded my best course of action was to obtain written informed consent from him, the method I chose to do this by was in the form of a letter for him to personally sign. This way should the situation arise that someone may question me about my permission to use him for my publication, I would have hand wrote evidence that he indeed has consented to the procedure and what was expected for him to comply to. Importantly this would discourage the notion of any ethical considerations that may have been ignored and that I was not breaching guidelines considering the minors.

Whilst at home I composed a letter which provided vital details to my model regarding to what will happen to the nature of their images (i.e if it was to be distributed into the public domain), who would be seeing them and to clarify they were 100% happy with the procedure that was about to take place. It is important to note that the option was given within the letter that stated the individual did not have to participate at all and could withdraw completely if they felt this was necessary. I felt obliged to offer them this incentive to ensure they felt comfortable, knowing there would be no deception involved and that their feelings would be taken into account no matter what the circumstance.

Above you can clearly distinguish that my brother was happy to be involved within the photo shoot and had no concerns over his images being incorporated into the product as he has consented to his part by signing the permissions form. At any time should he feel dissatisfied or unsettled, he would be prompted to leave the shoot if it became obvious he changed his mind and his photographs would be discarded from the set. This was the visual evidence I needed to gain to reassure everyone my minor was content with what was to occur. Now that I was granted this critical communication, I could conduct my studio shoot without any further sources that required immediate attention to resolve.