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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.
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
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.
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?
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?
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.