User blog comment:Musa666/Letting off a bit of steam/@comment-53539-20140605094817

If the photo is taken "within a public area", (example a highstreet), there is no control they have over the image. Least... This is the UK law. I don't know about elsewhere. There was a issue over this about a decade ago when a police officer forced a member of public to delete a image they took of the copper. Reality was the photography was taking an image of the street, not the officer. It created a fuss.

If you, however, take a photo of someone outside the public domain, without premission, they have every right to ask the image be deleted.

Either way, your teachers had no right to ask you delete the image in this case. If the natives did not complain about their photo being taken, then its not within their jurisdiction to have it deleted. What would they have done if you did not delete it? Exclude you? This exclusion could have easily been over turn because it was part of a school trip, if the school did not want you to have that photo they should have considered their decision of going on that trip. :-/

Overall, its actually possible to recover the image, even if its deleted, though not always possible. You could look up how to do this. Its how they catch rapists and murderers who try and hide evidence of their doings when they take photos of their victims, just because the camera is wiped doesn't mean the images are not still there.

In future, if this ever happens, put your points across that the natives are the only ones who can ask you delete the image, that the school choose to take you to THIS particular place and if especially the camera is not school property, they have no say on your own property. :-/