Privacy Policy

Last updated: 8 August 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Valerija Kalnina, operating VK Creative, collects, uses and protects personal information when you visit this website or contact VK Creative.

1. Who is responsible for your information

The data controller for this website is Valerija Kalnina, operating VK Creative.

Email: hello@vkalnina.uk

Business correspondence address: [ADD BUSINESS OR SERVICE ADDRESS BEFORE PUBLICATION]

2. Information we collect

Information you provide

When you use the contact form, we collect:

  • your full name;
  • your email address;
  • the subject of your enquiry;
  • the message and any information you choose to include in it.

Please avoid including sensitive personal information, passwords, payment card details, confidential credentials or other unnecessary confidential information in your message unless it is genuinely necessary for your enquiry.

AI-assisted contact screening

Contact-form messages may be automatically reviewed by an AI-assisted screening system known as Luna Shield. The system is used to help identify spam, unsolicited commercial messages, meaningless or abusive submissions, possible scams and potentially high-risk or threatening content.

For this screening, only the message body is intentionally submitted to the AI service. The screening request does not intentionally include your name, email address, subject, IP address, internal message reference or session information. However, the message text itself may contain personal information that you choose to include.

VK Creative may store the resulting classification, spam and risk indicators, and a short explanation alongside the relevant contact enquiry.

Technical and security information

The website processes limited technical information to operate securely, prevent spam and protect forms from misuse. This may include your IP address, session information, submission timestamps and a protected hash derived from your IP address and email address.

Standard hosting and server logs may also record information such as your IP address, browser or device information, the requested page, date and time, and technical errors.

Website analytics

If you allow analytics, the website uses privacy-conscious, first-party server-side analytics to understand general visitor activity and which public pages are viewed.

The analytics system may process your IP address, browser user agent and preferred language to create a one-way daily visitor hash. The raw IP address, browser user agent and language are not stored in the analytics tables.

The analytics records may include:

  • a one-way daily visitor identifier;
  • the public page or path visited;
  • the date and number of recorded views;
  • a country code where this is made available by the hosting environment.

VK Creative does not use Google Analytics, advertising pixels, cross-site tracking or remarketing technologies on this website.

3. How we use personal information

We use personal information to:

  • receive, review and respond to enquiries;
  • discuss possible photography or creative work;
  • take steps requested before entering into an agreement;
  • manage communications relating to potential or confirmed projects;
  • identify and manage spam, abuse, scams and potentially high-risk submissions;
  • use AI-assisted screening to help classify and route contact-form messages for administrative review;
  • protect the website, its administrator and forms from misuse and security threats;
  • maintain and troubleshoot the website;
  • understand general website activity where analytics consent has been given;
  • comply with legal, regulatory or accounting obligations where applicable.

Contact details submitted through an enquiry are not added to a marketing mailing list and are not used to send unrelated promotional emails.

4. Our lawful bases

Depending on the circumstances, we rely on the following lawful bases:

  • Contract and steps before a contract: where you ask us to discuss, prepare or provide photography or creative services.
  • Legitimate interests: to respond to genuine enquiries, operate the website, maintain business communications, prevent spam and abuse, identify security risks and protect the website and its administrator from misuse, provided those interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms.
  • Consent: for optional website analytics. You may withdraw this choice at any time.
  • Legal obligation: where information must be retained or disclosed to comply with applicable law.

5. Who we share information with

Personal information is not sold or rented.

Information may be shared only where necessary with:

  • website hosting and infrastructure providers;
  • email and mail-delivery providers;
  • technical providers supporting the website;
  • AI service provider (OpenAI): where Luna Shield is used to screen a contact-form submission, the message body is submitted for AI-assisted classification. VK Creative does not intentionally include the sender's name, email address, subject, IP address, internal message reference or session information in that classification request;
  • professional advisers where reasonably necessary;
  • regulators, courts or public authorities where disclosure is legally required.

A notification containing contact-form information may normally be delivered to the VK Creative business email inbox so that the enquiry can be answered.

Where Luna Shield identifies potentially high-risk content, the original message may instead remain within the protected website administration area. A separate security notification may be sent without reproducing the original high-risk message content.

6. AI-assisted contact screening — Luna Shield

VK Creative uses Luna Shield as an administrative security and message-triage tool. It helps distinguish genuine enquiries from spam, unsolicited commercial messages, meaningless submissions, possible scams, abusive communications and potentially high-risk content.

The AI system may return a message classification, a spam indicator, a risk indicator and a short explanation. These results may affect how the enquiry is presented to the website administrator and whether it is forwarded by ordinary email, held for review or accompanied by a safer security alert.

A message identified as spam, uncertain or high risk is not necessarily deleted. It may remain available to an authorised administrator for human review.

Luna Shield is not used to determine your eligibility for photography or creative services, establish prices, determine contractual rights, or make solely automated decisions about you that produce legal or similarly significant effects.

OpenAI API data controls

The AI screening service is provided using the OpenAI API. OpenAI's handling of API inputs and outputs is subject to the applicable account, project and data-control settings.

OpenAI provides optional settings through which an API account owner may choose to share API inputs and outputs with OpenAI. Where this optional sharing is enabled for the project used by VK Creative, shared message text and AI-generated screening output may be used by OpenAI to identify usage patterns, measure model quality and inform future evaluation and training of its models.

These settings may be changed over time. VK Creative will update this Privacy Policy if there is a material change to how contact-form information is processed or shared.

You should therefore avoid including unnecessary sensitive personal information, passwords, payment details, confidential credentials or other information that is not reasonably required for your enquiry.

7. International processing

Some hosting, email, technical or AI service providers may process information outside the United Kingdom. Where international processing or transfers are subject to UK data protection requirements, appropriate safeguards or other lawful transfer mechanisms will be used as required by applicable law.

8. How long we keep information

  • Contact enquiries that do not lead to a project are normally reviewed and deleted within 12 months after the last meaningful communication.
  • Where an enquiry leads to work, relevant communications may be retained for the duration of the project and afterwards where reasonably required for contractual, accounting, legal or dispute-resolution purposes.
  • Copies of ordinary enquiries delivered to the business email inbox follow the same retention approach.
  • Luna Shield classifications, spam or risk indicators and related screening metadata stored by VK Creative are normally retained with the relevant contact enquiry and follow the same applicable retention period.
  • Security-throttling records contain a protected hash rather than the raw IP address and email address and are normally removed within 48 hours.
  • Website analytics aggregates are normally retained for 90 days and are then removed through the analytics cleanup process.
  • The analytics consent preference is stored for up to 180 days.
  • Server and error logs are retained only for the operational period needed for security, maintenance and troubleshooting, and are rotated or deleted according to the hosting configuration.

Information processed by third-party providers may also be retained in accordance with their applicable service terms, privacy terms, security requirements and data-control settings.

9. How we protect information

Reasonable technical and organisational measures are used to protect personal information. These include access controls, protected administration areas, encrypted HTTPS connections, form security controls, anti-spam protections, AI-assisted spam and risk screening where enabled, and restricted access to stored enquiries.

Potentially high-risk contact messages may be withheld from ordinary email forwarding so that potentially unsafe content is reviewed within the protected administration area instead.

No method of transmission or storage can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

10. Your data protection rights

Depending on the circumstances, you may have the right to:

  • ask for access to your personal information;
  • ask for inaccurate information to be corrected;
  • ask for information to be erased;
  • ask for processing to be restricted;
  • object to processing based on legitimate interests;
  • receive certain information in a portable format;
  • withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.

These rights are not absolute and may depend on the reason the information is being processed and any legal obligations that apply.

To make a request, email hello@vkalnina.uk. We may need to confirm your identity before completing a request.

11. Complaints

Please contact VK Creative first if you have concerns about how your information has been handled.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK supervisory authority for data protection.

12. Third-party websites

This website contains links to services such as Instagram and LinkedIn. Those websites operate independently and process information under their own privacy policies. VK Creative is not responsible for their privacy practices.

13. Changes to this policy

This Privacy Policy may be updated when the website, services, data-processing practices or legal requirements change. The latest version will always be published on this page.

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