Know your rights. Your copyrights

Tribunal des Prud'hommes Pecheurs - the court of prudhommes, work law, for fishermen, Gruissan

Copyright is one of the basic pillars of any photographer’s business. Without it anyone and everyone could use your pictures without any restraints. Copyright essentially says that if anyone wants to use your picture they have to get your permission. You can give that permission or not. If you don’t then it is illegal to […]

Useful info on copyright, licensing and pricing from ASMP

Following the two recent posts on pricing and licensing I had a suggestion from photographer Judy Herrmann to take a look at all the information that the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) makes available on their site. Indeed, you can find lots of useful info on the ASMP site. For example: On copyright in […]

The photographer’s guide to copyright

A very important new guide for photographers, and others concerned by copyright, from Photoshelter Apart from having a talent for making pictures and selling them there are few things as important to a photographer as understanding copyright. Any photographer’s business is entirely dependent on copyright, without it one could hardly make a business, let alone […]

A few reasons why Creative Commons for pictures is a bad idea

Here’s a question I just had from a friend when I told him that by using Creative commons he is loosing too much control of his images: “You say I shouldn’t use Creative Commons, but what do you suggest I do instead?” The first thing to think of is: “Why would you want to use […]

The new Getty Images watermark

Reflections of sailboat masts in the water in the Barcelona harbour

A trivial protection tool turned brilliantly into a marketing tool! Getty Images has taken a simple overlay image, the watermark, and turned it into a something that not only protects your image but also is a brilliantly engineered marketing and sales tool. To have or not to have: watermarks? Watermarks are a nuisance according to […]

US Copyright Registration with the Library of Congress, fee goes up

A bill and money on the table in a restaurant

There is a peculiarity with US copyright legislation that is called “registering your photos with the Library of Congress”. There is no requirement to “register” your images. The copyright is yours for your pictures if you don’t as well as if you do. It is not the “ownership” of the copyright that is at issue. […]

Not so easy to pin it down – more on Pinterest

A few days ago I wrote about an article by Sean Locke on the new site Pinterest that seems like yet another photo copyright infringement tool. Sean has written a follow-up on his blog, More Thoughts on Pinterest. This is a very interesting read because of two things. Sean tells the story about a real […]

Pinterest – a new copyright thief on the block?

One more site that has an interesting approach to intellectual property A new site that seems to be enabling and encouraging copyright theft has appeared: Pinterest. Sean Locke, a photographer with an interesting web site on his work and other related things, has written a long article explaining what Pinterest does and the issues around […]

Registering Your Copyrights Using the eCO System

In the US there is a system of “registering your copyright”. It does not mean that you have to register to be the owner of the copyright of the images / photographs that you do. But it does mean that it will be much easier to defend your rights if someone infringes on your copyright […]

New Year’s resolution: take care of your copyright

The Photo Attorney is a great blog if you are interested in the legal issues around photography: copyright, intellectual property etc. It is written (mainly) by Carolyn E. Wright. Her latest post has a few good New Year’s resolutions: Register your copyright (especially if the US is an important market for you) Read the Photographer’s […]

What to do when your photos are stolen

It happens to everyone. Perhaps it happens more and more often these days. Either because people think that images that they find online are free to use (totally wrong) or because they think that the chances of being caught are very small (only too right). So, you have found that someone has used your image, […]

The joys and dangers of photos on Flickr – stolen photos

Flickr is certainly an important player in the world of both amateur and professional photography today. For a photographer it can be a great tool to show his photos, although I have not really started using it for that yet. Have so far only done some experiments. On the other hand it can also be […]

Stock photographer? How to find your published images

If you’re a photographer shooting stock photography and thus selling your photos through stock agencies, then it is often difficult to know where your images have been published and even more difficult to get “tearsheets” (copies of the published photo in it’s context on the page). But there are a number of tools on the […]

File names

For a change, a post on a different subject: intellectual property and copyright – and file names and naming conventions. I want to share with you a tip that I picked up from Peter Krogh’s excellent book The DAM Book (you can read my review of the book here – I highly recommend reading it). […]