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.

How is it the photographers property?

[Error-404NotFound]

if i hire a photographer to capture an event, the person is doing nothing more than giving a good angle, lighting, etc. on MY actions. It's a capture of MY actions, MY position, it's a capture of ME! I belong to myself, and I say that if i hire somebody to capture that, it's my property.

The photographer is right

[jokerghost]

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.

Let's face it, photographers are not millionares (for the most part! ;) 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...

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

Well, of course.

[Chris Johnson]

Of course- that's the problem. Digital media makes information so liquid that it's really tough to meter it. You've got to figure out some way to operate that's more than just information scarcity.

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 [ampcast.com], 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?

good luck

[briancnorton]

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.

My Wedding Photographer

[SWPadnos]

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.

Re:The photographer is a thief

[sparkz]

D&L's photos have value to the photographer, but only because the photographer has put work into creating them.

The photographer, had s/he not been commissioned to do the work, could not care less about Don, Lucy, or their wedding photos.

Having done the work, they have value to the person who created them - the value, to be specific, is the fact that they can sell these photos to Don, Lucy, maybe D&L's parents, and maybe even a couple of guests.

That value must, necessarily, be enough to keep the photographer in work. Duh.

Re:More photog weirdness

[bbtom]

"Oh if only I could take my OWN picture."

Why not? Check out Bill Brandt's "Self Portrait" in black and white (1966) [photonet.org.uk]. That's how you do a self portrait!!

Re:The *customer* is right

[WNight]

When I got married I simply wouldn't accept not getting the negatives. I told a few photographers to take a hike when they got uppity about 'artistic integrity' or some other bunk reason for not giving me the originals. (In this case, digital.)

After about five calls I found one who would shoot in digital (Canon 1D) and give me the originals. He was twice the price of anyone else, but cheaper (in the end) than it would have cost going with someone who expected to have a monopoly on producing my wedding prints.

One photographer in that group of five understood that business models could change and found a niche for himself. Will the rest of the industry go the way of the RIAA and MPAA, luddits keeping everyone in the dark ages?

It would be one thing if photographers kept partial copyright, the right to reproduce for a portfolio or something, but for them to claim full rights to a picture of you, that you paid for them to take? They're dreaming.

I paid extra for the original files because I wanted to support a better business model, and because I wanted higher quality than I could get by scanning them. But I'd have copied them without a moments thought if it were the only way I could get electronic copies. Copyright makes no sense in these circumstances and I refuse to play along.

Re:This is why I quit wedding photography

[gafferted]

An excellent posting. If I were getting married now, I would be looking for exactly the type of experience and forethought that you discuss and would expect to pay appropriately for the privelage. (Of course, back when I got married, the idea of spending $2000 was not even open to consideration...)

But I'd like to bring you back to the article in question: Having paid you appropriately for your time, skill, experience, consumables and equipment, would I then get the finished images in a high-res digital format to do with as I wished, or would you want to stiff me for access and use of the software that I have already paid you to create?

Re:Copyright is Copyright

[meta-monkey]

Hey, that's fine, but expect to pay more. I speak from experience, since my wife is a professional photographer (I'm an engineer) and I often accompany her to weddings to carry her bags, lighting setups, cameras, etc, and I handle a lot of the finances.

Anyway, here's the simple facts:

1) You hire a professional photographer because you want professional quality photographs. If instead all you want is 3x5 out of disposable cameras processed at Eckerd's, then have your buddy do it, and you'll have crappy photographs.

2) Pro photographers have to make money. Their equipment setups cost tens of thousands of dollars, and they have to insure it. My wife uses the new Canon D60 digital camera body, which costs about $2600. Each lens is about $1000. A flash unit is about $600. Lighting equipment runs into the several thousands of dollars. Also, you have to have backups for EVERYTHING (flashes, batteries, lenses, bodies, etc). Then there's all the time. The photographer has to spend a few hours before the wedding discussing all the photos and the organization with the bride, travel to check out the location, etc. Then there's about 6 to 8 hours of work on the day of the wedding itself (the setup before the wedding, people like pictures of them getting ready, the guests arriving, etc), the actual event, then all the posed portraits, then the reception, and so forth. It's not just "pressing a button" either. Often, the wedding photographer winds up directing the wedding, too. You'd be surprised how often a bride fails to actually PLAN the wedding, and just ASSUMES everybody will go where they're supposed to, do what they need to, and not assign somebody to coordinate the wedding. The photographer has to corral everybody together, get them organized, and tell them where to go. Afterwards, the photographer will spend upwards of 20 hours retouching, editing, and color-correcting the photographs. That is extremely skilled labor--you couldn't do it. Then they plan the album. They pick out all the photos, order and arrange them, crop and size the photos to fit in the album book. All of these activities take years of training and experience, not to mention a natural artistic bent.

3) If you expect to pay $1,500 for all those services, get the proofs, then scan them and make all the copies you want, you're robbing the photographer blind. When you add in all the planning, on site work, retouching, album planning, and so forth, a wedding photographer probably puts in about 40 hours of time on your wedding. Where the hell else do you get 40 hours of skilled labor for a measly $1,500? Drywall contractors make more than that. This isn't like downloading an MP3 off the internet that you never would have bought anyway. You're not anonymously ripping off some multi-millionaire idiot in Hollywood by not paying him $15 for his CD. You're ripping off a small businessperson in your community, face-to-face, out of about $500 to $1,000. These are the photos of YOUR wedding, which have value only to you and your family, and also to the photographer, who will use them in her portfolio, or enter in competitions. If you want them, pay for them, one way or another. Most photographers WILL sell you the negatives (or in the case of a digital photographer, a CD containing the high-res image files, suitable for printing), but expect to pay more for it. Either pay the $1,500 dollars for the service, allow the photographer to keep the rights to the photos, and then pay another $500 to $1,000 for the album and the prints, or pay $2,000 to $2,500 and get the rights to the images and the negatives, and make your own prints (which, by the way, probably won't be as good, since most people would take them to the local one-hour photo, instead of using a professional photo lab with a $100,000 color-corrected professional photo printer).

Pay for what you get.