User:Johannes Maximilian/Nummernschilder

I have created this page to explain how I deal with numberplates. This is not an official policy, this is just my personal opinion.

As soon as I start taking photos with a DSLR camera, people around me start looking at me, especially vehicle owners. I have been asked several times to pixelate numberplates. Seen from a German legal perspective, manipulating the numberplates is not necessary. With the information given, only the city of registration can be determined easily, but private owner information cannot be obtained from the numberplate. However, this is the situation in Germany. And it does not mean that the situation in other countries is the same. For instance, in Hungary, a numberplate belongs to a certain vehicle and not to a certain owner. This means that the vehicle keeps its numberplate until scrapping.

Some undesirable gentlemen use photos they find on the internet to offer cars for sale they don't own; for example, the car on the right has been affected, according to its owner. And well, I do not want to help anybody do dodgy dealings.

This is why, in general, I manipulate numberplates of vehicles (unless the vehicles are obviously not owned by a private person). Instead of removing the numberplate, I put a random combination of letters on it, because I think that a "normal" numberplate looks better than a numberplate that has been completely removed. This process turned out to be the easiest way of dealing with this for me. Usually, I take vehicle photos with a focal length of more than 50 mm. This eliminates perspective distortion, and as a side effect, letters appear even and not shifted. This means that I can easily put numbers and letters from a set of characters on the numberplates without them looking obviously weird.

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  This is a numberplate for motorcycles
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  "Egy" is the Magyar word for "One", and well, this technically is a legit numberplate, but who has got a plate that reads ONE–111?
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  5 is a very nice number, so I use it a lot
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  This Ikarus 256 is not owned by a private person, and in addition to that, everyone in Hungary knows this bus' plate, so there was no need for me to change it