(17 Feb 2021, 8:19 am)omnicity4659 wrote If he's going out for the sole purpose of photography, then yes it would be an issue legally.

However, the catchily named Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) Regulations 2020 don't define "local" nor "exercise". As long as he is "exercising" and/or "food shopping" in England then there isn't a problem by law.*

I'm not exactly impressed that people are still going out to take photos, perhaps it's morally wrong, but there's certainly nothing wrong legally - as long as he's doing what's allowed in the regulations too.

*GOV.UK shows heavily worded (optional) guidance mixed with law. If you're wanting to check the actual law, visit legislation.gov.uk.

When you look at the restrictions, you really need to check if they say you 'should' do something, or 'must' do something. There's a massive legal difference between the two.

"You should minimise time spent outside your home, but you can leave your home to exercise. This should be limited to once per day, and you should not travel outside your local area"
Basically, legally you can ignore all of that.
You can spend as much time as you want outside of your home (as long as it's for one of the permitted reasons), you can leave the house as many times as you want, and you can leave your 'local area'. 

But how do you define your local area? I'm in Bishop, does that mean I can't go to Durham or Darlington, or even Spennymoor? Or does staying within County Durham count as 'local'.
Or, since the councils seem to love the idea of the North East acting as one when it comes to applying restrictions, does that mean I can go to Newcastle? 


Then we also have the loophole of leaving home for 'work'.
If I decide I want to go self employed as a transport photographer, and set myself up as a sole trader.
I'm technically doing 'work', so does that mean it's alright to go out and take photos of buses?