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The Art of Intellectual Property
dpilgrim writes "When digital technology meets intellectual property, most of the attention focuses on the movie industry or the music business. I was surprised to discover how much of an impact there is in smaller areas like professional photography, and put together some reflections on my experience." This is why when I get married I want to make sure I contract only for the photographer's labor.
The problem is this: she is still living in a world of 20 years ago where the primary means for viewing and distributing photographs was as a print on paper.
The problem is this: they are still living in a world of 20 years ago where the primary means for listening to and distributing music was as a casette tape.
Our photographer thinks she is in the business of providing high quality printed photographs. In fact she is in the image-capturing business, and as the business shifts from printed to digital format, she will either adapt or fail.
The RIAA thinks they are in the business of providing high quality music CDs. In fact they are in the audio-distribution business, and as the business shifts from CD to pure digital format, they will either adapt or fail.
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
the scary thing about the advent of technology in media is that while we expect that it would enable more "use" out of our media in various ways -- take for example the CD-ROM of this guy's photo album -- in fact, so many companies are endevoring to turn this tech revolution into a way to either provide less to the consumer or charge more for what they already have.
for instance, divx, god rest it's soul, was basically an effort to remove our ability to purchase and watch our favorite movies again and again, by luring us with better image quality and sound. there are plenty more examples of this, and plans for even more.
it's up to people like us, who realize when people are being ripped off by technology because they don't know better, to get them riled up over the issue. send more people to the EFF et. al.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
According to RMS, that's not even a valid phrase in the English language.
Just like with source code -- it is up to to the producer of the source/photograph to decide what copyright terms to attach to the product. You don't like the terms, go elsewhere. Once this gets off the ground there will be photographers (or artists in general) making "Open Art", and there will be the ones making "Closed Art." You can't get on a high-horse and say that "Art Wants To Be Free" or anything like that.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Guests at a wedding take lots of photographs, but they are all the same. You get a million shots of the couple cutting the cake, but not many of Aunt May together with Uncle Bruce. As the article says the wedding photographer also composes shots that other people copy.
The other thing is: never hire a friend to take your wedding photographs. Your friends are there to enjoy themselves. One of my friends hired another friend to take the wedding photos. Something went wrong and the photos were never delivered. Those old friends are still not talking. Don't be cheap, hire a pro!
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
Art is like like source -- copyright is copyright, and you have to respect it.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
I have to agree with the professional photographer in this instance. This isn't a case of fighting an uber-huge corporation that has billions of dollars to spare. This guy is effectively cheating a good source of revenue out of a photographer who is trying to earn a living.
;) As one who has tried to get his art featured in several galleries, I can attest to this! Let's face it- photographers earn a living off of one thing- the final proof. It's very difficult to set up a shot, get the lighting perfect, and have a harmony of composition just right- combine this with the fact that many people want their wedding pictures to be *perfect* and you can see the photographer's dilemma. That shot that you've worked so very hard on is being distributed to hundreds of people, who will never pay you a dime for your efforts. Even worse is the person who stands over your shoulder just to snap the same shot you do... Come on people! It's not like the photographer is being unreasonable! She's simply trying to recoup her losses and earn a living... Oh, and if you don't think that photography is an expesnive business, allow me to demonstrate. A medium format camera (5 x 7 negative, which most professionals use for weddings) runs in the range of $1000-$3000 for the body(!!) alone! The lens, on top of that, will run somewhere from $100-$900, depending on what you need. Then, the film itself can cost up to $15 for a single negative! Oh yeah, there's also darkroom costs- chemicals, the enlarger, the processing time.... Oh, and don't forget that photographer might just want to earn some money for the hours that she's spent on site with your family...
Let's face it, photographers are not millionares (for the most part!
So, I'm sorry, but this isn't an issue of "open sourcing" the finals. By giving High-Res pictures to your entire family without paying for each one of those photos distributed, you have cheated and honest, hard-working, photographer out of a living. (I know a few who have been driven out of business because of this.) So, please, spare me the "I have rights to a picture" argument... Sure, you have the right to do what you want with that photo... But by the same tokein, the photographer has the right to not sell you the super high res photo you want.
As an aside, and unrelated, I think that "analog" photography is a much "truer" art form. If anything, you have a negative, which you can use to prove you took the shot- as opposed to a jpg, tiff, or what have you which could be the property of anyone.
-jokerghost
This is not quite like the popular topic of the RIAA and free access to your own music. First, you are dealing directly with an artist, not a representative of an industry (i.e., RIAA). For RIAA, it is all about the money. For an artist, it is about their work, effort and yes, the soul they put into the final product. You will never see an open source concept for artists. This is why artist freak out when their work is displayed in a disparing manner (see VARA (Visual Artist Rights Act). Definitely a European concept, but it has caught on in America (There was a big stink a while ago of a sculptors works being displayed in a disparging manner in a building and also a big stink put up by the artist who made the original of that "living sculptor" at the end of "The Devil's Advocate"). Open Source is a great concept, but there is a middle road too between it and Microsoft, as well as areas where I don't think you will see it enter (such as open source art). -A
However, when you commission an artist to do a painting, all rights to that painting belong to you.
eh? I would recommend you review your law books -- when i paint a portrait I'm certainly not selling the copyright to the sitter. If he wants to print it on the cover of his autobiography, or an art book, the publisher had better call me and write a check. You sell the painting, not the copyright. Frequently artists will even retain the right to borrow the painting for purposes such as exhibition.
I can reprint all of my paintings without anyone's permission (except of course ones for which I have sold reprint rights). The owner of the canvas certainly cannot do it without mine.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Just curious, what did your contract say, Taco? Were you scammed by the DMCA in a photographer's disguise at your wedding?
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
As always, it pays to read the contract. I had to pay a high sum for the photography at my wedding, but I also got all the negatives, high-quality proofs, and high-resolution scans to distribute and reproduce as it pleases me. All I had to do was negotiate a work-for-hire.
If you don't read the contract, you are almost certain to get screwed.
Funnily enough, I went to get visa photos today, and the photographer was very reluctant to give me the negatives as well (which I need coz Canada's changed its rules post 9/11), until I crossed her palm with a tenner. Which I thought was pretty reasonable.
./configure stage is a bit long, fnar). It's more like buying a non-free-software product, agreeing to the licence, and then trying to insist that you have rights to infinite-user versions on all possible platforms.
I don't think the original poster's analogy holds, though. The source code for a photo is surely the information required to produce it, which is the scene, camera settings, darkroom/lab settings, etc, as well as the skill of the protographer. Information on how to take photographs is readily available, (though the
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
I can't help but think that photographer should simply leave the cameras at home and go out to weddings with scenery and LIGHTING... amateurs simply do not understand lighting... she could charge the same price for simply directing photographic situations. A full complement of lights, the right setting, and it's *tweet!* bring over all the amateur digicam people and have THEM do the photo taking. It'd come out much better than their usual stuff. She could have some prosumer digicam herself, but not consider for a moment that the resulting images were what she'd be charging for.
I've been fooling with studio building for a long time now- and currently my focus hasn't been on assembling a bunch of recorders and stuff- people can do that in their homes so easily that it's a tough sell even if I can trounce their quality levels. Instead, I've been getting TOYS. Guitars, basses, now an electronic drum trigger kit (eventually a real acoustic drumkit). People can have all sorts of (half the time warez) software for recording, but they will NOT typically have a mesh-head drum trigger kit to bash away at. I'm hoping to expand that out until I can get business as a studio- NOT for having recording equipment, maybe some people will even want to bring their PCs and use their own! Instead, it will be for having a killer SETTING and the environment that you just don't see in most pocket studios.
It's like that. I hope like hell I'm making the right call here but I honestly don't see how else to do it. The actual media is next to valueless, but making the environment for the media to be produced can be all the difference.
I once produced some totally pro-looking product shots for guitar boxes I make, on an old Connectix Color Quickcam (640x480 webcam). Did it by using the sun for lighting, using a big curtain for strong diffusion where needed, taking lots of identical (except for lighting variations) pictures and averaging them together in software... couldn't overcome the resolution issues but dynamic range ended up being phenomenal, easily pro level...
And of course, there was a time when I could've told you that in a book and probably sold lots of them because it's such a killer effective trick, but now in the digital age I've just replicated those words God knows how many times over the internet for basically nothing, and have to hope that (a) it'll benefit people to know about PTAverage and averaging near-identical digicam pics together for dynamic range, and (b) if I keep giving good ideas, people might figure out that I tend to have them, and record in my studio or something :)
It's really quite a braintwister figuring out what constitutes work and value in an age of digital replication. It's like, to go into the future we need to DESTROY the idea of value for individual collections of bits and somehow reformulate business around expertise and convenience. In that light, the whole 'piracy' thing is counterproductive because it's a concerted attempt to teach people that copying is morally wrong, when it's still effectively costless and effortless.
What would the world be like if ALL copying was completely permitted and there was no IP at all, but then people had to seek out the producers of any particular new thing they wanted produced? Would it be abundance? Would it be drowning in media all of which was worthless?
It would be more fair for everyone if the photographer just charged for his time, and then charged a fair amount for reprints. The end result should be about the same cost.
In fact, a wise photographer would offer two payment plans: the traditional one, and one that charges more per hour for taking photographs but offers the negatives and lower-cost reprints. People who don't want to make their prints can pay the photographer to do it.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
WHen I contracted a wedding photographer, I contacted 17 professionals, and NONE would release the negatives or waive IP rights. I ended up going with an amateur, and I havent gotten the pix back yet.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Here's the deal: If you don't have to pay for it, you won't. And if you don't have to pay for an inferior version, then you will get the freebie and skip the superior one.
Photographers know this. It's fundamentally the same as the MP3 craze. What would you rather have, free low-quality MP3 format songs or high fidelity CD audio for $15 per album? Too many people choose the freebie, and thus less money to those who produce the content.
When you hire a photographer to take pictures, you are paying them for 2 services: 1-their time and effort. 2-whatever photographs you eventually decide to purchase. A professional photographer cannot hope to make a living on only the labor fee. Thus, photographers are beginning to limit the availability of proofs. Photography is a profession from the time when it took a hell of a lot of skill and experience to "capture the moment". Now, in an age where we have a cheap and inferior substitute to "analog" photography, the profession is finding itself in a vulnerable position.
10 years ago when you hired a photographer and bought prints, you were effectively buying a service and product that could not be easily or cheaply reproduced. In effect you weren't buying the rights to the picture itself, but a copy of the picture. Nowadays, you are still in spirit buying the printed photo itself, but you now have the power to copy them as much as you please, almost for free. How can artists compete with that? By A: charging more and B: limiting your ability to make high-res copies of THEIR artwork.
I also take offense to the comparison of "closed/open source" with the photographic medium. The primary positive philosophy behind open-source development is that when the original data is open to view and modification, it can be IMPROVED by the author's peers. This is completely at odds with the digital photography issue. The original data (the negatives/proofs) of a photo session can't be openly analyzed and improved by the photographer's peers. It can only be freely copied by the user.
IMO, this is a decently written, but very misguided commentary. You don't pay artists for all rights to a picture. You pay them for the limited quantity of paper images you receive. Hell, I guess you could buy the rights to the initial image, but if this were to become the case in the future, expect professional photos and negatives to cost much, much more.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
You can run a nearly infinite number of these stories, and eventually the one that applies to you in some way, you will agree with. Technology is in that little exponential curve right before it shoots off into worlds unknown, our very own event horizon into the tech future. Quit snickering. It's true. Not a one of you in here can honestly predict what tech will have done to us in 50 or 60 years. Digicams are letting everyone emulate a professional photographer. We're stealing the environment she's set up? Guilty. The day someone pays a photographer to set up shop, hang out at the buffet and let the guests do their own shooting is the day we are vindicated. Maybe someone already has. What moral tragedy will it be when McDonalds realizes it is cheaper to replace all of its workers with automated machinery? Can a person of today really be so stale as to admit that day will never come? I've read this site for a few years now, and it's become apparent that companies care about but one thing- money. Before you know it, we'll have stock broker chat bots with financial AI, and convenience stores that are mutated into 35 foot wide vending machines. Every single job, or career, can and will be replaced with technology, with the rare exception. A long time ago, half of Americans were dutied to provide our nation with food- that's right, they were farmers. Now that number is a very low single digit. Did we complain? Yes. Is half of America unemployed? No. So what happened? That doesn't help push the position that our futures are all doomed. Amazingly humans have the ability to adapt. I don't know if I will be hyper enough to exist in a world with 12 billion people who have every utility provided to them by an automated process, but I'm sure the people of that day and age will have a most excellent plan for it. Maybe there will be two planets that shine blue, with all that tech. Maybe three!
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Sure, you can have your friends with digital cameras take wedding pictures, but you are deluding yourself if you think you will get the quality a professional photographer will give you. A prosumer digital camera today offers a single zoom lens and 5 megapizels per shot. This is well below what a good 35 mm film camera with interchangable lens is capable of, and not even in the same universe as that Bronica or Rolliflex medium format camera used by the pro. Not only that, but the professional knows what poses, lighting, framing, exposure, film and so on to use. Not to mention the simple fact that in photography the craft is in the making of the negative, but the real art and skill is in the production of the print.
The fact is that the level of skill and equipment required to produce that color corrected perfectly framed razor sharp 8x10 is not going to be available unless you hire a pro. And that pro has a family to feed.
If you want open source, i.e. the negatives or high res scans, you can probably negotiate that with a photographer. But be prepared to pay a fair price for that, equivalent to what the photographer would normally net from selliing the prints and albums to all the relatives.
It was a different time, with a different kind of economy. And guys like Leonardo, or later, Mozart, sought out sponsors, patrons.
This tradition continues today. Richard Stallman and Tim Berners-Lee being two receipients of the MacArthur "genius" fellowships .
Our modern understanding of intellectual property is merely a convention. It is not a natural law.
Having said all that I find I agree with dpilgrim that his photographer was making a poor choice about how to adapt to the introduction of new technology.
There are lots of tasks which were once the province of highly-skilled craftsmen. People who have had their rice bowl broken by technology have my sympathy. But they are best served by adapting.
Being a designer that works with photographers, I say that photographers need not worry about losing out to amateurs with digital cams -- it's not just their knowledge of lighting and composition that gives them an advantage -- it's the simple fact that there are certain qualities and effects with a photograph shot with the right film and process that a digital camera simply cannot duplicate.
As for copyright, if a photographer (like a designer) is seriously worried that another fraudulent professional will steal that image and call it their own--quite frankly clients will find out soon enough whether or not they're a fraud. The cream usually rises to the top in our profession.
If the photographer profits from selling additional copies, then he should do the basic work for free. The low-quality samples provided should be treated as a sales catalog. The couple who got married should be treated as models, they shouldn't have to pay anything for the production, and should get part of the profit from the sale of additional copies.
Suppose it was a fashion magazine which had a photo of, let's say Cindy Crawford, on the cover. Would ms. Crawford have to pay for the whole production and not get anything from the magazine sales? Saying Cindy Crawford is famous and her image is worth a lot is not an answer, since, if one can sell pictures from a couple who is getting married, then they are professional models, deserving as much respect as Cindy Crawford, only their image would not be worth exactly as much as Cindy's, since it would sell less copies.
You can get the negatives or a high quality digital image quite easily, just buy them, and the reproducing rights.
The photographer expects that they could make more money selling their work in the manner of reprints, and charges appropriately.
Just an idea, wait a year, the photographer will lower their expectations for reprints and sell the negatives for quite a bit less. My photographer wouldn't consider selling them until at least 1-2 years after the wedding. Of course by that point I realized spending money on wedding photos is dumb.
When I got married (5 years ago), we hired a professional photographer we knew to shoot the wedding. His standard contract was for a proof sheet, several wedding albums, and extra prints (different quantities of albums and extras dependent on what level you paid for). Also, after 2 years, we got the negatives.
This allowed us to get albums for ourselves and our parents, and some extra prints for the family. He was able to sell more prints and albums to people who wanted them in the short term. We ended up with the negatives, so we can now scan / reprint them ad infinitum.
Sounds like the best of both worlds to me.
- The Sigless Wonder
1)You are a work for hire
2)The sitter owns his image
Your copywrong is nixed.
"Frequently artists will even retain the right to borrow the painting for purposes such as exhibition"
Not if you don't get past my shotgun.
1) No, I'm not. I have done work for hire, but portraiture is not work-for-hire, by the standards of the IRS or the standards of any normal portraiture contract.
2) Everyone owns the right of exploitation of their image, but that doesn't mean they own everything with their image on it. I can reprint a painting in my "works of" book without the sitters' permission (not that I would), but I can't sell it to be used on the cover of Time Magazine.
"Frequently artists will even retain the right to borrow the painting for purposes such as exhibition" Not if you don't get past my shotgun.
It's a term in the contract -- if you don't want it, it isn't necessary, but most people who pay for portraits are honored that their portrait will be recognized as a work of art by the public and exhibited. I don't believe many artists would be interested in exhibiting an image if the owner wasn't willing to have it on exhibit.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
The photographer isn't going to go out of business because of guests with digital cameras. He took group shots at the ceremony, but my wife and I then went round to his nearby studion for some more shots. My point is that a guest with a nifty digital camera isn't all you need to realy good shots. The studio had proper lights, backdrops and even live doves and this shows in the results.
There is also no way that I would have accepted on CDROM no matter how good the quality. I want my grandchildren to have access to these images. What would you do if your parents gave you a roll of punched tape and said "Here are our wedding photos?" Even if my grandparent's wedding photos were on glass plate negatives, it wouldn't be difficult to rig up a scheme to view them.
Or have you never heard that saying?
The problem here is that the photographer is trying to charge for the wrong part of the work. The photographer is trying to charge high prices for the easy part of the work - making copies - and keep prices low for the hard part of the work - setting up a good pose with good lighting and a good background - because the technology used to allow this pricing model.
It has become too easy for the customer to do his own copying, and the pricing plan needs to change to reflect the current realities. The high-cost part of this should be showing up at the wedding and setting up the shots. The resulting photographs should be supplied at close to actual cost, because that isn't the hard part of this. And none of this crap about how making the album is art, that's a cookie-cutter operation, pull out one set of photos and put in the next set.
I do agree, this isn't an issue of "open sourcing". This is an issue of not recognizing where your "art" is, and charging properly for it. Trying to charge for a package with a built-in (false!) assumption that people will come back to you for re-prints is not recognizing the realities of the business.
And yes, I *do* strongly object to being told I have to pay again and again and again for a picture of me. No, I paid for you to set up the shot. The resulting shot belongs to me.
I paid for your expertise at arranging the shots, not your abiltiy to make copies of pictures.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Moving from photographs to video, think of what will happen in the distant future, when our DVD players work no more. Historians will have no way of recovering the images stored there, because the secret of decoding them will be lost, thanks to the DMCA. That's not the intent of copyrights, as spelled in the US Constitution. If you have the means to keep your work secret, you have no needs for either copyrights or patents. These exist solely to give you an incentive to share your work with the whole world.
And as for using digital rather than film for realy important photos, I'll stick with film for now. The photos of my wedding in March are on film and there is thus a good chance that my grandchildren will be able to figure out a way to look at them. Putting them onto the web was no problem as I have a film scsnner. If my parents wedding photos were on punched tape I think that I would struggle to see anything at all.
As a Fine Art photographer, this situation doesn't affect me much, since my prints are made with antique processes and nobody would ever consider a digital reproduction as anywhere close to the quality of my original prints. But occasionally I do run into a complete idiot photog. I recently had to have a portrait done for a Japanese resume, which is not much more than a passport photo. Wwhen I told the photog the picture would be republished in a book of resumes, he said that was prohibited, he would not allow reproduction rights without an extra fee. I told him I would use a different photographer. Oh if only I could take my OWN picture.
One thing this article clearly shows is the polar opposite viewpoints that people tend to take - the "enlightened" let's-find-a-way-to-benefit-from-new-technology view (exemplified by the narrator) and the "backward" let's-keep-things-the-way-they've-always-been view (the photographer). I bet she'd love to hear about Microsoft's upcoming ubiquitous DRM system. ("you mean you can send out a file that can't be copied more than once? And they have to buy it again if their computer crashes? Awesome!")
Unfortunately the "backward" side seems to be winning. Look at DVDs - DVD video could have been specified in a neutral video format that would play on any player, anywhere in the world. But the MPAA film studios didn't feel like re-negotiating all of their exclusive regional distribution contracts, so they slapped on the Region Coding system. So we have regressed - there are now MORE barriers to international video distribution than the simple NTSC/PAL dichotomy of the analog world.
And since more barriers always benefit the producer, and the producers have Congress in their pockets, it's going to get worse...
The musicians had a body of work that was theirs BEFORE the label contract came on the scene. I read something Frank Zappa said once to the effect that there is no canonical versions of any his songs, only particular recordings and performances. He didn't just fight Warner Bros. for his master tapes but for the music he composed while in their stable. I would grant that the label owning the copyrights for particular recordings they had paid for being fair. It's just like getting paid to play a private party. The band, on the other hand, would still have the copyrights to the sheet music itself. They can perform and record their songs elsewhere even if the relationship with a label goes bad. Alas, no record company behaves so fairly. They want to own the whole enchilada and not only be able to fire a band but to lock them out of their life's work in the process AND be able to bleed them financially white for that last drop of profit once they aren't "big" anymore. I have a feeling Rosen likes the idea of used up boy bands working fast food just as much we do...doesn't make it fair though.
Nothing so dastardly is being proposed for wedding photographers.
In the case of a wedding photographer, his technique is not the whole art of it. The subjects of the art are paying to record a deeply personal moment....one I would not suffer to let someone else own in any way. I would allow the photographer license to use the photos for promotional purposes or whatever other fair uses go into running his business. I'll cheerfully let them have the use of the photos. I simply won't allow one to own a part of my life. The musicians should not allow record companies to own parts of theirs.
The fact of the matter is that technology isn't going to eliminate the value of professional photographers in certain situations, most particularly weddings. While you may get married more than once during your lifetime, the fact of the matter is that each unique wedding event, only happens once. The reason you hire a professional photographer is that the photographer provides an insurance that you'll have one good set of photos to look back at with the grandkids. Whether they are taking digital or analog photos, it's their ability to provide consistent quality that you pay for.
If it turns out that due to digital piracy, photographers find themselves unable to charge for prints, then they'll end up providing originals, and charging more up front instead of charging for printing. In the end they'll end up getting the same amount of money, they'll just get it all at once instead of getting it spaced out over time. People will pay it because the service provided is worthwhile.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
And this illustrates one of the things that exists but is being ignored in most paintings, and seems to be a problem with photography.
If you commission a painting/portrait, you are probably familiar with the works of that painter, and probably respect their work as an artist. You may have met them at a gallery that exhibited their work once. You probably have a decent relationship with this person.
You probably don't have an adversarial relationship. The artist may not be a real friend, but I doubt they are someone you would go after with a shotgun. This is a person you chose to deal with because you liked their work.
We seem to have a lot of fun around here hating the evil corporation, and making it into an adversaial relationship. I'm tempted to say they started it, but that sounds so incredibly childish that, well, maybe it fits the topic pretty well after all.
When you're dealing with a person, talk to them and ask questions. When you're dealing with a corporation, you don't usually have that option. This is where a lot of the problems come in. Take advantage of the fact that you are dealing with a person, and talk to them.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
With the advent of new cameras in the 10+ Megapixel range, the bet is going to be on digital.
Digital offers a lot of convenience, but the fact of life is that a 35 SLR film camera with a good lens gives you the equivalent of a 40 megapixel digital camera. Don't forget that 10+ megapixel SLR digital also carries a $6000 price tag. And wedding photographers normally use medium format cameras with 6x7cm negatives - to match the resolution of that large negative with digital you are looking at 200 megapixels.
The author posits that fifty years from now there will be a drastic reduction in the number of photographers per town because digital cameras will democratize picture taking so much. I think that he is deeply confused about what photographers do. Photographers do things like lighting, composition and framing that have nothing to do with the particular technology available. Sure, in the future photographers will charge for their services rather than for physical prints. But that will only emphasize the specialized nature of those services. Perhaps wedding photographers will be squeezed by those who think that Uncle Bill can do it but there are many sub-specialties of photography. Even in the world of wedding photographers there is an even chance that people will continue to prefer professional composition and lighting to "taking your chances" with whatever the guests take.
Portrait artists didn't go out of business. The business evolved into photographic portraiture. Now the analog business will evolve into the digital one. The skill of capturing the moment will not be dispersed any better through the evolution of technology.
When you're dealing with a person, talk to them and ask questions. When you're dealing with a corporation, you don't usually have that option. This is where a lot of the problems come in. Take advantage of the fact that you are dealing with a person, and talk to them.
I think this hits the nail on the head. my honest first reaction to the story is that i was surprised the guy didn't understand he wouldn't get the negatives or a high-res scan, or didn't ask about them earlier.
in most weddings, you'll literally spend hours with the photographer just discussing what kinds of shots you want, getting engagement photos, getting bridal photos days before the wedding, deciding on a basic package of prints.
Surely at some point, he saw a price sheet and was able to judge whether or not they could provide what he wanted. i don't klnow many creative people who won't be flexible with a customer, but asking after the fact and being disappointed at the price is not a very valid criticism of the business (IMHO)...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
If need be, can't the bride and groom scan the photos, post them on the web and send friends and family there to view them? Sure the prints aren't great, but the pictures can be scanned well enough for viewing on the computer.
So, in the short term, people get to see the pictures without paying ridiculous reprint fees (yes, that's my opinion of the payment system) and the photographer gets zero business for it.
In the medium run, wouldn't it make more sense for photographers to offer to pricing plans: the traditional one where their services are very cheap and prints are expensive, and a second where the service is very expensive (as it should be for any professional or artist) and the prints are provided on CD for the customer to duplicate?
In the long run, I agree with the article, consumers will demand and get open source photos much in the same way we are currently demanding cheaper music and software. If the market does not respond, the consumers will work around them just as they do now with Bearshare for downloading music and software. Right now, people go along with the photographers' system because they haven't imagined the alternative. All it takes is a Napster to come along and change the way people view a system. Then things start changing.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
I only think that, if you got paid to take my pictures, the pictures are mine, negatives and all, with no strings attached. Should my mother-in-law want reprints, I will lend her my negatives and she will take them to you to make prints, just like she would do with the pictures she herself took during her vacations. The pictures are MINE, I paid you to for your job, and you said they have no intrinsic value for you, anyhow.
What I was surprised about is that he didn't get the negatives. I think it's so obvious the negatives belong to the customer...
in most weddings, you'll literally spend hours with the photographer just discussing what kinds of shots you want
So the photographer isn't doing any truly creative work, is he? The photographer is a craftsman exerting his skill. He is like a weaver, making a tapestry designed by somebody else. A good photographer will make better pictures than a mediocre one, and a good weaver will make better tapestries. But they aren't creating anything, from the intellectual point of view, so the IP doesn't belong to them.
It's worse than you think, however. Many of the weenies who don't let you copy the images you buy don't keep your negatives forever. That's right, they throw away your negatives in three to five years. Only you and your desendents will value those pictures, but the garbage man gets the real source. If you find out your photographer did this to you, will you feel cheated? It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. No studio lasts forever. The case is exactly like abandon ware, except it's personal.
Who cares how much money the photographer has, this is a matter of greed, stupidity and incompetence. The article is correct in asserting that the art is in the composition and work done to capture the event, NOT the mechanical copy of the results. Photographers who simply charge what their time is worth up front and then give the results to the person paying it will do better than those that purse their lips at relatives who take their own inferior pictures. That's an honest deal. Dicking people around and trying to keep them from making said inferior coppies is a waste of time that agrivates the client. If the photographer's work is not noticibly better than the relatives, the photographer sucks. Photographers have a right to suck, but no one has to hire them. Those driven out of business might reconsider their business model, do something to showcase their skills, or simply stay out of business. When you hang your sign up and charge people money for your services, you had better know your stuff and please your client. People who please people make money and always will. Those who don't waste their time and other's money.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Last winter I was involved in a play with a local theatre group. As part of the production, I was taken to a photo studio to have a portrait done for the programme as well as an 8x10 for the display board at the entrance to the auditorium. The photographer used a high end digital camera which gave you the opportunity to select from the proofs immediately after the sitting, or even sit for a few more shots.
I enquired of the producer about keeping my photo from the display board after the run of the show was over. She said that she couldn't do that since the photo studio required the photo to be returned to them. However, the studio advertised to all the cast members that we could buy 8x10 copies of our photos for $50. each (!) I checked at the local supermarket photo dept. and discover that they sell 8x10 prints for less that one tenth of that price.
I began to realize what a scam some photographers run. In addition to charging a sitting fee for their artististic services (in this case about $300.), by retaining possession of the "negative" -- in this case actually just a computer file on a hard drive -- he could force people to pay ten times the open market price for prints.
However, I think this kind of business practice may be starting to disappear. When discussing this situation with a friend, she reported that she had recently attended a wedding trade show and was surprised that quite a few of the photographers promoting themselves there were offering to let the client keep the negatives.
Like some other posters have pointed out, I think photographers need to market the thing they have that truly is a scarce commodity -- that is their skill in lighting and arranging the subjects. Maybe for an additional $50. they will even offer to snap the photos for you. Beyond that, everything else is just add-on sales: making quality prints at a reseaonable price, arranging them in a fancy photo album or packaging the batch of high res photo files on a CD for a service charge.
Ideology is for ideots.
Not long ago, I had a digital dupe (print-->scan-->print) of my parent's wedding picture taken. I had to do it that way because we didn't have the negative. It never even occured to me that I was obligated to seek out the photographer. The picture is 51 years old and was taken in Rhode Island. Not much to go on. Can anybody really expect me to do that? Frankly, it never occured to me that my parents (and by inheritance, me) didn't own the wedding picture.
Now, the logical solution IMHO, is to pay the photographer for the negatives and the IP rights not the prints. If the photographer is smart, he offers prints at or below cost for those who purchase his negatives, but for the photographer to retain IP rights for such things just doesn't make good sense. First, many people like myself would be unduly burdened to find the photographer at a later date. Second, the photographer has to store all those negatives which could become a huge liability. For most wedding pix, they won't be printed after a couple years. I seriously doubt that my parent's negatives are sitting in a climate controlled vault in Rhode Island. Odds are they were destroyed years ago, whereas if we had them they'd still be intact.
So, if I ever manage to get married, I will have to make sure that the photographer sells the negatives and the IP rights. How hard would it be to make such an arrangement? How many professional photographers would say "yes" if I said "I'm willing to pay what you make from the average wedding based on the traditional fee structure, plus 20%"?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
As a wedding photographer, if I wasn't selling pictures, what was I selling? Dependability, repeatability, and creativity, along with years of experience learned the hard (and expensive) way, burning film and breaking cameras. Let's take these one at a time.
1. Dependability. I didn't have a special camera I used just for weddings, I had two of them, both top of the line and maintained annually by the manufacturer so that I could be sure that when I told a couple that "I'll be there on your wedding day," they could be damned sure I would be there, with working equipment, ready for action. You don't think this is important? Try it some time. Then there are all of the "special" shots brides (and their mothers,) really, really want. Coming down the aisle with Dad (or Mom or Grandpa: whomever.) The exchange of rings. The first kiss. A long list, actually (typically anywhere from 30-40 special moments on a shot list.) I got them. All of them. Oh, and most ministers/Priests, rabbis, etc. don't permit flash photography during the ceremony, which means I'm shooting in whatever light is available (surprisingly often flourescent. That's why your shots are green. Mine, obviously, weren't.) I got them all, even if I knew -positively knew, beforehand - that no one would be buying them for their albums. No flub-ups, no re-takes: the right shot, first time, every time. Mistakes? Sure: I wouldn't be human if I didn't make one occasionally. But as a professional I'm paid to minimize the mistakes and give my bride and groom the best possible chance of getting the photographs they wanted (and paid for.) If they didn't, I didn't get paid. Dependability? *Every* essential component of my wedding kit was duplicated, in some cases triplicated (is that a word?) Two main cameras, both professional and expensive (Mamiya 645.) The most used lens is the 80mm, so I had two of those, as well as a wide-angle 45mm and 55mm and 150mm and 200mm telephotos. Tripods. Three pro on-camera flashes (Sunpak.) Two dozen batteries ('cause all batteries die when you need them the most.) Filters in assorted sizes for each lens ($25-$50 per filter, my filter pack at one time ran to over 20 of them.) Radio-slave lights and backups for those and batteries and backups for those... backgrounds, stands... it took most of a minivan to get my kit on station. I rarely used even half of it but there were times when the backups got used... and one memorable disaster when by the end of the reception I was down to my last camera backup (a 35mm,) and film. Something about a torrential downpour, gale-force winds, and marble sized hail... But you couldn't tell it by the pictures.
Repeatability: My portfolio reflected what I did. Prospective customers could count on their wedding being done in the same 'style' my portfolio portrayed. It was constantly changing because I was constantly changing, but at any given moment in time a bride and groom could point to their wedding album and my portfolio and say, "I got what I thought I was getting." I used pro films, kept track of my lot numbers (color emulsions vary a little bit by lot, but when you need detail of a white gown next to a black tuxedo you need to know, not guess, how the film will respond.) and used professional processing. When you came back six months later and ordered a few more prints because Aunt Sally was miffed she didn't get an album as good as your mom (and after all, she's been sending you the same $5 for your birthday every year since you were born, you ungrateful little tramp!) the prints you gave her were identical -- not approximately, but absolutely the same -- as the ones she saw in your mom's album.
Creativity. Sure, Uncle Ed can take a picture of you and your new spouse coming down the aisle as well as anybody can. What about the black and white you asked for, because you read somewhere that color prints don't last as long as B&W? How about that shot of you and your spouse lighting the peace candle with your faces glowing in the warm candlelight and that expression of beautific joy on your spouse's face? You got that photo (which you used to headline your album, by the way,) because I knew -- knew, not guessed -- it was coming, saw the image in my mind far enough in advance to have positioned a camera with the appropriate lens on a tripod in the one place in the entire church where everyone else's head would be out of the shot, and set the exposure for ambient lighting because a flash would have ruined the whole thing. How about that double-exposure of you and your new spouse gazing into each others' eyes underneath that beautiful stained glass window, resplendent in all its Technicolor glory? Did you realize that was a double exposure, the window made with a long exposure the morning of the wedding because it faced East and by the time of the wedding the sun would be in the west, muting the colors? Did you know that the window was actually shot on different film precisely because of the exaggerated color that film gives, which is normally the absolutely last thing you want in a wedding photo? No, you did not. You can't tell by looking at the picture.
Someone somewhere is saying about now, "what the hell, I can do that in Photoshop. Take ten minutes. No big deal." You sure can, too. Did you think of that in time to get the photos you needed, or are you just making it up out of the shots you happened to have taken at the wedding? "Oh, look: these go nice together." I thought so. Are you going to make 20 copies because everyone who saw it wanted one, and guarantee each and every one of them for 70 years or your money back? No, what you're going to do is print as many copies as you have ink and paper for and give them away, rationalizing that those printed at the beginning and end of ink cartridges look a little off with the thought that, what the hell do people want for free, anyway? Did you do that 10 times per wedding? Or did you do it once and, pleased with yourself, sit down with a nice cold one?
One thing for sure, and the other half of the reason I quit wedding photography, is that digital is definitely replacing film for that type of event. It isn't ready for the job, but it's doing it all the same. (No, I'm not being spiteful, either. I wasn't ready for my first programming job but I got it anyway. And learned very quickly. Panic quickly. Thoughts of, "School wasn't anything like this," quickly.) Short of extremely expensive digital equipment and even with the best in digital printing, a digital photo in many (not all, but in many) circumstances still can't beat film. Truthfully, today the difference is mostly in the output, but even so 8 to 10 megapixel cameras are far from common and are the minimum required to approach the quality of even 35mm film. They are, often enough, good enough for the purposes to which they will be put, however: magazine and newspaper reproduction, cheap posters that'll be in garage sales in 12 months, that sort of thing. By the way, I'm going to get snooty and elitist here. I've looked at hundreds of digital prints and uncounted prints from film and I have to say that, today, anyone who says that digital output even comes close to a competantly made print from film is blind, stupid, or lying. And I don't give a tinker's damn what you think about it, either. It's a free country, go ahead and be wrong, you have a constitutional right to be an idiot if you want to. You may not be able to tell the difference, my dog may not be able to tell the difference but I can tell the difference and I refuse to tell the emperor what pretty clothes he has on when I damn well and good can see with my own two eyes that he's buck naked as a jaybird on the day he was born. God, that felt good!
The other half of the reason I quit wedding photography? Photography is a commodity: everyone has a camera, or could have, if they half-ways wanted to. Everyone has seen countless pictures in magazines and on fliers and... so everyone questions why should they pay me $2000 to photograph their wedding when they can go to Wal-Mart and buy a perfectly keen camera for $129.95? My answer is -- you probably shouldn't. I'm a photographer because pictures are important to me. They obviously aren't nearly as important to you, so you should have the option of paying less. And you do. And when I got tired of having to justify my price, I stopped doing it. I still get a dozen inquiries a year from couples who've seen my work and want to know what it would cost... but I've sold the equipment (well, most of it
Oddly enough (and to get this back on-topic for the Slashdot crowd,) this is pretty much the same reason why I'm a pointy-headed manager now, instead of typing furiously away at a keyboard as I did for most of the past 20 years. It isn't about the money, it's never been about the money (the Lord has blessed me in that I've always had enough and that I'm not greedy. Don't really want to be rich.) Some things I won't compromise on and quality, of whatever I'm doing, code or photography, is top of the list. Now I earn my living one way and coding and photography, where I can be as picky, as self-rightously immolative as I desire, is for me, a very demanding audience of one. My personal programming projects set on a shelf while I rotted for 20 years, cutting quality to meet artificial and unrealistic deadlines, feature lists compiled by drunken marketing droids who couldn't tell a customer from a toilet seat, and interface designs produced in fevered heat by dyslexic color blind toxic waste snorting reeky farts. My personal photography rotted for 15 while I shot one more couple in heat and, in all honestly, both have improved since I returned to amateurdom. Lesson learned, thanks.
Oh, and a parting piece of free advice for those thinking of taking the vows in the future: the very first couple I photographed as a wedding photographer chose an inexpensive package with the frank excuse that, "Statistically, we only have a 55% chance of still being together five years from now. Why pay more with odds like that?" Now, 12 years later, they're still married. Then there's the other woman, who called a couple of months ago to see if I would photograph her fourth wedding. Yes, I did the first three and no, I won't be doing this one.
I've never commissioned a work of art, but I did on one occasion purchase an original canvas. The artist made it clear that I was purchasing the original, but not the right to reproduce. This was fine with me because I figured that if it were ever reproduced in some popular context, my original would become far more valuable. For example, IIRC the originals of Dogs Playing Poker have auctioned for upwards of $30,000-$40,000.
Now, this business of the artist coming back to borrow the work; that's just ridiculous. No way would I agree to let somebody randomly redecorate my living space.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The cost of the reprints may seem high to someone who takes their film to the corner drug store for processing, but the cost of having a professional color lab make high quality enlargements of medium format negatives is a lot more expensive than what you pay at the drug store.
In reality, most photographers these days do make money from the reprints, but probably not as much as you might think.
I do agree, however, that given current conditions, perhaps multiple business models could be used. Many people who don't want to hassle making their own high quality scans and/or prints will still want things done the "old fashioned" way (my parents would certainly want it that way, they don't even have a computer at home), and, OTOH, more tech-savvy users will want a CD-ROM with hi-res images and then make reprints themselves (I'd prefer this myself).
A photographer could offer both models to potential customers, with the second approach being more heavily "front loaded" in terms of the fees since he/she knows that there won't be much income from reprints. One way or another, the photographer needs to get paid for their time and their artistic input to the end result, and earn an amount of money commensurate with the value associated with profesisonally taken photographs. Although I might want the option of the hi-res CD approach if it better fits my style of doing things, I shouldn't expect that it should necessarily be cheaper to get the images that way.
My wife is a professional photographer, and she does a lot of weddings. The problem with your situation is that you didn't pay for what you got. The photographer was expecting to make more money from reprints and lower-resolution digital images. Instead, you took those things, and didn't pay for them. What you did was despicable, because those are things you certainly would have paid for, so that really was money out of the photographer's pocket.
Next time, be honest up front. Tell the photographer what you want to do, and he will sell you the negatives or the rights to the photos. My wife does all digital photography, and she will sell the high-res digital images and associated copyrights for a few hundred dollars, and then you can make all the prints you want.
You either pay for it up front (that is, really contract for the labor, and expect to pay much more) or pay for it later, by paying less for the labor, and more for the prints. Either way, the artist deserves to make his or her money.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
What I was surprised about is that he didn't get the negatives. I think it's so obvious the negatives belong to the customer
/. (suffice it to say I have known more than a handful of technically proficient camera operators who wouldn't be considered artists). But as to "IP" belonging, you're talking about a strictly legal issue, and the IP belongs to the photographer under US (and most international) law.
in a vacuum, maybe -- but after 6 hours of conversation about what kind of prints you want to buy, no. I can't imagine somebody walking out of that conversation without understanding they didn't own the negatives (if they did, why would they want to pay a thousand dollars for a set of prints?). It's all spelled out in the contracts, too, which aren't particularly lengthy for this type of work since it's usually a small operation and there isn't any publishing involved.
So the photographer isn't doing any truly creative work, is he? The photographer is a craftsman exerting his skill. He is like a weaver, making a tapestry designed by somebody else. A good photographer will make better pictures than a mediocre one, and a good weaver will make better tapestries. But they aren't creating anything, from the intellectual point of view, so the IP doesn't belong to them.
Well, it's not really a discussion that would go anywhere on
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Copyright allows a creator to create a work and sell it to 100 different people for $20 each to make $2,000. Without copyright, work for hire means she has to charge the $2,000 for her labour to earn the same money.
And in a competitive market, which photography is, in the end the wedding photog wants the money, not the rights. The rights are a path to that money.
So the benefit for the public in copyright is that it spreads the cost among all the people who want photos. If some can get them for free, then others have to pay more.
So you want the photographer to give you the negatives or the hi-res scans. Then expect to pay what the photographer hoped to make from sales to all the family and wedding guests that now won't be made. And the sales years later when images are destroyed, etc.
This applies everywhere. For example, with movies in cinematic release, I can see a $100M movie for $9. Why? Because they can make sure everybody who sees it pays. Later, when it's on video, I ahve to pay $25 to buy a DVD that is much lower quality than the one in the cinema, and I'm going to watch it only once, but they can't know that, so it costs more. Or I can rent it for less but with lots of hassle. The protection they have (in this case not copyright but rather the ticket taker guarding the door) lets the cost be spread among all who want to see the film, so we all get to see it cheap.
People seem to ignore this central public good in the copyright debate. When it comes to a business, the copyright owner would like to make as much money as possible. One way they would like to do that is to charge for every possible use of their work. Every use they can't charge for means they must charge more for the uses they can charge for in order to get the same money. Thus everything they can't charge for is subsidised by what they can.
In society, we make the decision to have that subsidy, because we don't want the draconian level of control it would require for them to charge for every possible use. And with good reason -- such a level of control would be ridiculous. But each time we decide that, we should remember it comes with a cost, something else will increase in price to make a subsidy for the thing that isn't charged for, at least in a reasonably competitive market.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Not getting the negatives is the norm for wedding photography contracts. You may be surprised but the author of the article has no excuse because, unlike you, at some point he or his future spouse had the contract in front of them and could read this with their own eyes.
Uh, no, she's not like a weaver making a tapestry designed by someone else. Have you ever taken a photograph that any sane person wouldn't just flush down the nearest toilet? If you had, you'd understand the absolute idiocy of your words.
If you shop for a photographer, you will only get photographer's offers on their terms. (Just like shopping for music or software). Go the other way and define your labor job. Ask for bids for the job. Refrences and samples of the work is required. If this sounds like your regular programming job, you are right. (I've seen too many Pro's try to get away with only the flash on the camera. It's OK if you like that kind of work. Their samples will show the improper use of flash.) If you want the copyright, specify it. I had that option for my photographer 10 years ago. I contracted for 3 hours minimum. Got 200+ shots including the reception and departure. The package did require a certian amount of prints by them. They did a fantastic job. If you have a June wedding, good luck. If you catch a slow season, like October, you may get more qualified bids.
The truth shall set you free!
... or The Art of getting paid over and over for a job done once.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The author of the essay simply wants to do the same thing to professional photographers. Fortunately, photographers are much more business-savvy than programmers. They recognize that their businesses have overhead that must be covered, and expenses that must be met. They understand that becoming solely workers for hire, unless they commanded the same rates per hour as lawyers and charged for travel time, consultations, etc., would be the end of their ability to practice their profession. While programmers are already well on the way to undermining their chances of being paid a reasonable amount for their work, photographers will likely resist -- as they should.
I've seen reasonable estimates of up to 25MP for 35mm film. But very high-end ASA 50, with incredible lenses.
Shoot with anything you'd need indoors without studio lighting (and not able to do long exposures) and you're getting down to 5-8mp.
Digitals have noise, but with a good digital the picture noise isn't going to increase as fast as the grain in the film.
The day of digital is here if you're doing anything less than full-page blowups. When the Canon 11MP 1Ds comes out it'll produce better pictures in common wedding environments that pretty well any other 35mm camera.
It is very expensive, but that's why you go to a pro.
But if they make it too painful, people aren't going to. It's not as much that I'm cheap and don't want to pay for reprints as that I want the freedom of deciding for myself if I'd rather have a high quality print made or just toss some pics in email.
The photographer does a lot more than take shots. He's the artist who arranges the situation, knows what he's doing, and gets it right, every time (well, nearly every time at least).
Like a great programmer understands what is needed, gives a realistics tenative schedule, and gets the work done without additional hassles.
In programming, mostly what's needed is not the great programmer - an average one will do. He'll get something done, in some schedule. It's enough. And costs one tenth of what the great programmer would've cost.
So if You don't think You need the perfect shots, don't get a great photographer. Get a cheap one, or make do with the photos Your family and friends get.
If You want the sourcecode from the great programmer, be ready to pay for the time he spent, and the tools he used, not just for the binary.
If You want the negative, be ready to pay the photographer for his time and tools, not just the end result. And remember, the time includes not just time spent at the wedding, but also in the lab.
I don't really know how much it'd take to hire a great photographer and get the negatives. Actually, get the properly scanned images in a CD-ROM (remember, after film processing the negatives have to be scanned correctly, with good equipment, and the scans checked and possibly still color corrected). Could be some EUR 3-5k, with a result of tens of perfect shots.
Someone mentioned that the film may cost even USD 15 per shot. In that case, assuming a gross 100 shots, the film would cost about USD 1500.. 3k sounds pretty small in that light.