There are no privacy right issues. You do not have a right not to have your picture taken in public, whether you are performing or not. No one needs your permission. Nor does it injure you if they do take your picture. You also don’t have a right not to be in someone’s spank bank. Nor does it injure you if you are.
If I were, would I have the right to be bothered by people taking my picture? I actually think that would be less invasive, because I’d be on a stage and they wouldn’t be so close. I’m really not exaggerating when I say that when these people are taking my picture, they’re in my face.
There’s also been some back and forth about picture taking in the entire facility, as it turns out. We have some things in our collections that they won’t allow to be photographed- priceless antiques and things like that. And originally, the living history exhibits didn’t permit photography, but I’m not sure why that changed. I also don’t know that the people are told they can take pictures as part of the schpiel at the admission booth, or if they are told they can only if they ask the person at the booth if it’s allowed. I’ll have to find that out. If it’s a blanket statement made to everyone, then I have no reason to complain, other than that I’ll always find it a little annoying (but that will just have to be my problem and I’ll have to get the hell over it.) If not, I at least feel it’s justified to wish that people would ask first.
The venue is set up to maximize entertainment for the customer, not you. For better or worse your expectation that although people are allowed to take pics of every other actor type performance, but they should stop and ask your permission before snapping you while you sing is (to be frank) absurd.
I mean, honestly, say this quote of yours aloud. “Strangers”, “no idea what they’d want with a picture of me”. It sounds like you have no clue what your job is. You’re in show business. You’re paid entertainment. People like to take pictures of things to remember them. Unless your singing is going to be introduced and presented as in entirely different context than every other performance in the venue, people have the entirely reasonable expectation they can take pictures.
I mean, the reason you can’t take pictures of the antiques is because flash photography can damage the paint, and whatnot. Also, because they probably sell bound books of pictures of the art in the gift shop. Unless the flash can damage your (priceless) paint, or your pictures are in the gift shop books, there’s no reason not to allow photography of your tourist attraction.
The thing is, once that photo is taken, you’ve got no control over it all. And once a photo has been published, it can’t generally be un-published. And further, in today’s world of "Photograph everything and upload it to Facebook or wherever, I think it’s a reasonable assumption that a photograph taken on a digital camera is going to get uploaded or published somewhere on the internet- an entirely different kettle of fish to photographs taken on a 35mm camera which will likely only remain in someone’s photo album.
I did, and never understood why people granted permission for them to use the footage. I certainly wouldn’t.
And FWIW, my personal ethics dictate that politeness extends to not taking the photo in the first place if the subject says “Please not photograph me or this thing that belongs to me”.
WHile it is expected that some folks may want to snap your picture becasue you are part of their larger experience at the venue, any overkill would annoy me. If it was an occassional discrete picture click? no problem. getting up in your personal space with their camera phone is tacky, annoying and quite possible retarded. What is with some people and their obsessive desire to capture everything on camera?
I don’t understand your train of thought here. Why does it matter if they tell everyone they’re allowed to take pictures, or only those who ask about it? Either way, they’ve given the customers permission to take your picture.
Because if everyone who comes in the door is told they can take pictures, then they’d have no reason to ask my personal permission before taking them. They were told it was okay so they wouldn’t feel compelled to ask. But I guess my thought is that, if they weren’t told that and they just started snapping away at people without any warning, then it’s kinda rude.
The price of performing, I’m afraid, Green Rosetta. I’m the lead singer in a rock band, and people are always taking pics of me (Why? Who knows? 
). It’s not like they can ask me for permission when there’s 100 dB music going on. I probably look like horribly sweaty and overwrought in most of them. But your situation is a bit more intimate and I can see how it can be a bit disconcerting. All I can offer is to try to take it in stride and with a sense of humor. People are just goofy, that’s all.
The reason some people want to take your pic while your singing is that we now live in amongst a generation of people that document every facet of their lives, via electronic means.
They would have no need to ask permission anyway. If you are in a public place, you are fair game for photography. They don’t have to be told that. It’s the default. It goes without saying.
Moreover, you have a job where you are explicitly called an “exhibit.” You are essentially like a monkey at the zoo. If you don’t want your picture taken, don’t work asa zoo exhibit.
You are not harmed by the picture taking, by the way. That’s the essential thing to remember.
Especially if you are midway through their “path” in the exhibit, and they’ve been primed by the other cool stuff, the people who are taking pictures of you may attach a certain significance to you and feel the need to take a picture.
The university I went to owned and restored a recording studio that had been used by Elvis and Roy Orbison in the 1960s. We used it as a classroom to study recording techniques. After the restoration, tour groups were still allowed to shuffle in quietly as they had done for decades. They would often take pictures of us (college students!) at work simply because we were in the room.
We felt silly at first because to us, it was a classroom, but we soon realized that others felt it was important enough to them to document.
What you said is that when people aren’t all told that pictures are OK, but instead ask at the admissions booth and receive permission, that they are rude for also not asking you directly.
Maybe that’s not what you meant, but that’s what you (it seems to me, anyway) wrote. Hence my confusion.
You seem to be talking about two separate issues here:
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The fact that you don’t like your picture floating around out there being used for nefarious purposes (and I get the impression this is your primary beef); and
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The fact that the act of picture taking in itself is distracting.
With respect to issue 1, I think you just need to get over it. I don’t mean that in a snarky way. It’s just that you’re working in a place that allows it, vacationers generally like to take a lot of pictures and aren’t particularly discriminating about their subjects, and there’s really nothing you can do about it and you should just learn to live with it.
With respect to issue 2, I agree that it’s rude to get so close as to be obtrusive, but that would be the case whether or not there was picture taking. For example, getting so close as to invade your personal space, talking during the performance, and dancing and snapping fingers would all be annoying distractions, and maybe the solution would be to have some sort of barrier to make people keep their distance. I get the sense that this isn’t really your issue, though.
I wish to apologize for the people apologizing in this thread. They have been sacked.
The people responsible for sacking the people apologizing in this thread have been sacked.
As for distractions during performances – I fronted bands for years as a guitarist and singer, and I played to inattentive, distracting or disruptive audience members plenty of times. It’s just something you have to get used to. If you’re a pro, you learn to develop tunnel vision and soldier right on through just about anything. I’ve played through bar fights going on at my feet literally without missing a beat. Distractions go with the territory. I actually found photography to be one of the least distracting things that people could do (and on more than one occasion I played to people who were videotaping entire sets, moving around to get better angles and closeups the whole time).
Things like this are a part of why I never pursued an acting or music career. Its bad enough dealing with unwanted photography as it is. I feel for the OP, but have to agree that it comes with the job.