Copyright is all about ownership

I have seen many discussions on various blogs and journals about copyright and I am often surprised how few people actually understand how it works. I wanted to talk about it here. There are some good links listed at the bottom of this post.

The person who owns the copyright owns the image and has total control over what happens to the image. In the case of a photograph it is the photographer who owns the copyright, which is established at the moment the shutter is tripped. This is true in every case unless the photographer is an employee of a company that the photographs are being taken for in a work-for-hire arrangement or there is some contract in force that says otherwise before the image is taken. The law is actually very clear on this point.

The key here is that the contract has to be signed BEFORE the image is created. So say you are approached by a model or stylist that has a kick ass idea for a shot. They arrange everything, set up the model and get the props. Then they find your portfolio online and decide you are the one they want to shoot it. They tell you all about the shot and what they want you want to do. You set a date and they come over to your studio and set everything up. You set up lights and take the photo. You now own that image. At the moment, you are the only one that have control of the rights to that image.

An interesting point to make here is that you can't copyright a concept. It is the image that is a result of the concept that is copyrighted. They are free to retake the shot themselves some other time and then they would own their own version of the shot. If there is a contract in place before the shoot such as a work for hire agreement then the copyright belongs to the person you are working for, you agreed ahead of time that the image was the property of your employer.

There are several ways that you can give some of your rights to others once you create the image. In most cases photographers will give someone the right to use an image for a temporary period of time or for a specific use. You may allow your image to be used on a book cover for the first edition of a book, or you may give a magazine the right to use your images for one issue. You may also choose to allow a model or stylist to use some images for their portfolios and self promotion uses. That doesn't mean that they can sell the image to a store to use for an ad. You can however grant a model permission to do just that. Its up to you, its your image. As photographers we are all familiar with model releases that give you the right to use the model's image and we (hopefully) are clear about where the model can expect their image to show up and how it will be used. In order for someone else to use your images you need to sign a similar contract or release.

Be careful about how your assignment of rights is worded. I always suggest that photographers use one of the standard releases from a professional organization as a starting point and then have an attorney with copyright experience work to modify the release to meet their needs. A photographer was recently telling me that they worked on a shoot with a stylist and he signed a release that gives the stylist equal rights to the images with no restrictions. Here's the problem with that: both the photographer and stylist now have the ability to sell all of the rights to the image to some 3rd party. What if the stylist sells the image to a company for an ad and the company doesn't want the image used anywhere but in their ads, this ends the use of the image by the photographer. If this photographer had wanted to maintain shared use of an image he needed to specify that neither photographer or stylist can grant anyone exclusive rights without the other person agreeing. This is just one example but it shows why a little legal advice from a lawyer is worth spending a few bucks.

Here's the one other thing about copyright that you need to know: registering an image with the Copyright Office is the only way to get damages if someone uses your images. If your images are not registered and someone uses one of them it will be up to you to prove the value of the image; then you will probably only get the usage fee that you would have gotten in the first place. For the person stealing your image its often worth the risk, and most photographers never register anything with the Copyright Office. But if you have registered your images you gain the protection of the full force of the copyright laws. The current laws provide for payment of up to $150,000./image as well as payment of your legal fees. The catch is that you have to register the image before the infringement occurs so register your images on a regular basis. We all hate paperwork but this is worth spending the time on. You can register a number of images with the same form and for the same fee so get used to doing it once a week, or once a month. There are links below with some good step by step instructions so I won't repeat that info here.


National organizations:

• American Society of Media Photographers
• Advertising Photographers of America
• National Press Photographers Association
• Editorial Photographers

Copyright info and registration stuff

• Editorial Photo resource page
• Copyright Office website
• PDF files of all the forms you will need
• ASMP step by step tutorial

Here we go

So I decided to finally do a blog about photography. To be honest I've had a LiveJournal for years, but it has mostly been a place that I would post random images from shoots and things that amused me in general but it was never a place to really talk about photography.

I want this thing to be about photography, and I dont just mean posting pix and having people comment on them. To be successful in photography you need to know about more than just taking pictures. You need to know about copyright, travelling with equipment, lighting, how to find cool locations, how to build simple sets, which light stand is right for you, where to get your film processed, how to get cool packaging to sell your prints and more. You get the idea. its not just taking pictures its also developing, marketing and running your photo business like a business.

Anyway, thats what I hope to do here. I'm going to post the problems and solutions that I run into and hopefully you can gain somthing from it. We'll see. :)