Stonewalling Stonehenge
October 19th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
We recently received the following email from English Heritage:
We are sending you an email regarding images of Stonehenge in your fotoLibra website. Please be aware that any images of Stonehenge can not be used for any commercial interest, all commercial interest to sell images must be directed to English Heritage.
It’s kind of them to think of us, but this raises a number of questions.
Firstly, what legitimacy do they have for this claim? Is there any law that states that it is illegal to use images of Stonehenge for any commercial interest? Can someone direct me to it?
Secondly, if an image of Stonehenge is so used, how could they possibly police the usage? A quick browse through a number of rights-managed and royalty-free online picture libraries produced the following:
iStockPhoto (a US owned company) has 513 images of Stonehenge
Fotolia (US) has 648 images of Stonehenge
Dreamstime (US) has 670 images of Stonehenge
Shutterstock (US) has 737 images of Stonehenge
All the above sites sell images on a royalty free, unrestricted usage basis. If anyone buys a royalty free image from one of these suppliers then he’ll be using it as, where and when he likes, without asking English Heritage’s permission. How will they stop that?
Alamy (UK) has 1130 images of Stonehenge
GettyImages (US) has 860 images of Stonehenge
Corbis (US) has 426 images of Stonehenge
fotoLibra (UK) has 223 images of Stonehenge
Photo 12 (FR) has 114 images of Stonehenge
These are mainly rights managed. Rights managed images are essentially designed for a specific and time limited usage, and they’re more controlled and controllable than RF images.
Has every picture library with images of Stonehenge received this email? If we really are breaking the law by selling images of Stonehenge to be used for any commercial interest, then of course we will cease and desist immediately. However nothing in the National Heritage Acts (1983, 2002) which brought English Heritage into existence refers to their right to prevent the sale of images of any of their properties. In any case it must be legal to display them for sale if we intend to sell them for non-commercial (i.e. editorial) rights-managed usage.
If English Heritage wants to stamp out the unlicensed, unregulated, unlimited usage of RF images of Stonehenge they will have to talk to the people who hold those sorts of images for sale. In a large number of cases they will find that the picture libraries or stock agencies who hold these images are owned by foreign nationals who are not subject to British jurisdiction, who are based overseas, who have no connection, emotional attachment or even necessarily fondness for the United Kingdom.
Why the hell should they listen to a powerless quango which wants a slice of their profits? English Heritage is the current custodian of Stonehenge. It has been their responsibility for 27 of the monument’s 4,500 year old history. And they want to own the image rights to the site. (BTW It’s well known in the Headley family that our great x 170 – grandfather Elfis carved the stones for Stonehenge out of the Presley mountains in Wales, so our claim to the site is far longer than English Heritage’s nano-ownership (o.oo6% of the lifetime of the henge)).
In a recent blog post I noted the plight of a property owner in San Francisco who took the HSBC Bank to court for using a photograph of his house in a promotional leaflet without his permission. He lost, seven times over. That doesn’t set a strong precedent for EH or the National Trust or indeed any owner whose property can be seen from public land. Google Earth and Google Maps have pretty clear images of the place, as well.
OK, English Heritage’s email did not ask us to remove the images of Stonehenge from fotoLibra. But they did use imperative, urgent words like ‘can not’ and ‘must be’. I am ready to be proved wrong, but I don’t believe there is any legal substance behind the request. How can there be? Look at this:
Photo © Clive Morgan / fotoLibra
What if we photograph the place from the air? What law can we possibly be breaking here?
While we’re looking at Clive‘s photograph, who built that ugly tarmac footpath cutting through the sacred ring?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
What You Should Buy In Order To Sell
September 28th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
After buying the spiffy new camera, the first accessory most photographers want to get their hands on is a mighty new lens.
It ain’t necessarily so.
This is a list of things photographers should buy in order to improve their sales. It is in the order of our suggested priorities at fotoLibra.
Remember, as a picture library / stock agency we’re not necessarily reading from the same page as our photographer friends. Most photographers want to create beautiful, stunning images, and of course we want to see those as well, but above all we want photographs that sell.
And if that interests you, then here is what we suggest you need to acquire.
- A decent DSLR or large format digital camera. The make is unimportant, as long as you’re comfortable with it. One famous old tip to get comfortable is to put the camera in a bag, then put your hands in and spend days looking odd and learning how to use it blindfold. Feel your way round the apparatus. Learn to use it without thinking, so it becomes an automatic, natural extension of your eye. Nowadays the camera back should deliver a minimum of 12 mexapixels.
- Adobe Photoshop, Elements, Corel Draw, GIMP, Irfanview or some other photo editing software. This is your digital darkroom. You must always shoot in RAW and then post process. It’s no use having a digital camera without photo editing software.
- A tripod. Your hands shake, I promise you.
- A subscription to fotoLibra. “Yeah, yeah, what a surprise,” you smile, but this is where you get regular lists of the photographs that buyers need, hints, tips, blogs and newsletters. A huge amount of storage space for your images. And all your sales and back office admin taken care of, leaving you to get on with pressing that shutter.
- Lighting, unless you plan only to photograph landscapes by available light (a very small market). At the very least, a separate and moveable flash unit. The flash built in to the camera is strictly for amateurs.
- A large roll of white paper to act as a neutral background, such as this. Professional picture buyers like plain backgrounds and cut outs. Cut outs are virtually impossible to achieve successfully without starting with a plain background.
- And of course Goalposts, on which you put the paper. You get to move them, as well. Properly called a “background support system’. Here’s one.
- Books from the fotoLibra Bookshop. I like the intelligent and elegantly designed Rocky Nook titles. You will never, ever stop learning as a photographer. Even Snowdon, one of the twentieth century’s most famous photographers, admits he’s still learning at eighty.
- Photography courses, such as those offered by Nick Jenkins at Freespirit Images. You will learn tricks and techniques which would never have occurred to you on your own.
- Apple Aperture or Adobe Lightroom. Post processing taken to new heights. I know it will hurt to spend money on bits and bytes before lovely, smooth, hefty glass and metal, but would you prefer to collect kit, or make a name for yourself as a photographer?
NOW you can start to splash out on more expensive lenses, camera bags and all that other non-essential kit. But armed with the Top Ten, you will have what you need to take photographs that SELL.
And my lens suggestion for when you finally buy a second?
Go for the widest aperture you can afford.
And if you don’t agree with this list, please post your own in the Comments!
Apple Mac Blues
September 9th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Tags: Apple, iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, Macintosh, OS 10.6, printing, problems, Snow Leopard
Geek stuff here: yesterday we bought a new 21.5″ iMac from the Apple Store in Regent Street.
It won’t print.
This morning we gave up and called Apple Care. We spent 2 hours and 10 minutes on the phone with them without any solution. The guy admitted he was completely baffled. We still cannot print from the iMac.
We have a Konica Minolta Magicolor 2450 and a Toshiba e-Studio 16s networked in our London office through AirPort Extreme. We have no problems printing wirelessly to these printers using a MacBook Pro on 10.5.8 and a MacBook on 10.5.8.
We copied data and settings from the MacBook to the iMac using Migration Assistant. The PPDs were not copied across.
We downloaded new PPDs from Konica and Toshiba and installed them.
The iMac will not see either of the printers which are on an AppleTalk Local Zone. The Add Printer option on the 10.6 iMac has “Default | Fax | IP | Windows” while the 10.5 MacBook Pro has “Default | Fax | IP | Windows | Bluetooth | AppleTalk | More Printers” and the two wirelessly networked printers appear under the AppleTalk window.
We connected each printer directly to the iMac using an ethernet cable. It still wouldn’t see them.
What are we doing wrong?
Apple’s Tech Support guy said that Apple only supported USB printing. From the great pioneers and advocates of WiFi (I bought an Apple AirPort 10 years ago) that comes a little hard.
We figured out a convoluted workaround. By checking Sharing Printers on the iMac, MacBook and MacBook Pro, we can finally see the printers, but this means we must have two computers running in order to print. Not a satisfactory solution.
Anybody got any bright ideas?
We’re taking it back to the store this afternoon, because of the multi-coloured stripes across the screen. Apparently the graphics card has collapsed. Not an auspicious start.
Another Wonderful eBook?
August 31st, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Readers may recall the troubles I’ve recently had with an enhanced ebook: The Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe.
Ever the early adopter, I rushed out and plonked my money down when the immortal Oxford English Dictionary was first published electronically in 1993. We didn’t use the word ebook back then.
It was merely called “The Oxford English Dictionary on Compact Disc”, and it came in a chunky A4 sized white plastic box. This was considerably smaller and lighter than the 16 volumes of the printed work, and of course somewhat cheaper, as well.
Inside the plastic box came a printed instruction manual, a floppy disk which contained the program and the necessary fonts, and a CD-ROM which held the data.
I can’t use it any more because it only runs on Mac OS 7, 8 and 9, and I no longer have a computer that uses those operating systems. Or a floppy disk drive.
But all is not lost. In June last year I had a cheery letter from Oxford University Press offering me, as a registered user of Version 1.0d, the Oxford English Dictionary 2nd ed — new Mac-compatible CD-ROM v4.0 on a Special Offer!
For a mere £149.25 more I would be able to read my version of the OED on a more up-to-date computer.
Of course for the same amount of money I could buy all 16 volumes second-hand from Abe Books.
And I wouldn’t have to chuck it away when Apple finally release Mac OS XI.
But now OUP have announced that the next edition of the OED may well be available only as an ebook — no print edition at all. So we’re moving to a situation where we will have to pay out regularly for upgrades to carry on using a necessary reference work.
It’s what the software and publishing giants have dreamed of. Books that expire after a certain time. After all, who is still using Photoshop I nowadays?
Property Releases
August 19th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
We recently posted a blog about Model Releases.
Reading Jacqui Norman’s August Newsletter to fotoLibra members this afternoon I noticed she repeated her advice not to photograph National Trust properties as they wanted to reserve the rights to themselves.
As far as I know, this “right” hasn’t been tested in law. I’m a staunch supporter of the National Trust, but their unilateral ban on photography of our national heritage does get up my nose.
I’m also a supporter of personal privacy. Not so long ago someone complained because a photograph of his unusual (and ugly) car had been posted on fotoLibra. With the agreement of the photographer, we removed it, simply because it wasn’t worth fussing about. The complainant had absolutely no right to prevent its use, but as he asked nicely enough and we saw no early prospect of a sale we took it down.
The National Trust and other owners of heritage and interesting buildings deserve protection from exploitation. Images of their properties should not be used for promotional purposes without their consent. They shouldn’t be used to endorse commercial products without some sort of fee being paid.
But I absolutely defend the right of people to photograph what they will, and sell those photographs if they can, if they are to be used in an educational, illustrative, informative or editorial function. If you’re publishing a book on Castles, you’ll be including a number of National Trust properties. The book will be about those properties. There is no way anyone should only be allowed to use pre-approved images of these buildings.
It’s down to power and control. Celebs in the pupal stage will do anything to court publicity. Once they achieve imago they need to control publicity: vetting photographs, checking journalists’ credentials, only being photographed from one side.
The National Trust’s position is looking increasingly fragile. It only needs someone with a little spare time and a little spare money to challenge their stand, and I suspect the edifice will go the way of the walls of Jericho.
A recent case in America will illustrate the point. I may say that in this instance I am firmly on the side of the property owner.
Douglass Robinson lives in a startling yellow house of the Painted Lady style in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, fondly remembered by all old ’60s potheads. He’s accustomed to having the house photographed, and he normally puts up with it.
But he finally drew the line when his venerable old pad featured as the solus lead on a leaflet advertising mortgages for an international bank. Sympathetic neighbors asked if he was going to sell, or if he was running into financial difficulties?
So he did what every red-blooded American does in times of crisis: he sued. On seven counts.
And the HSBC Bank (for it was they) won every one of them.
You can read the whole sorry saga here. The blog is headlined “A House’s Right To Publicity”, but surely it should have been “A House’s Right To Privacy.”
HSBC should not have gotten away with it. Apart from anything else, it was discourteous in the extreme not to request permission of the owner. (I can hear the lawyers whispering in the back of my head: “such permission not to be unreasonably withheld”).
American law is based on precedent. This judgement is going to make it harder for property owners to claim visual rights over their buildings.
Unlesse the owners are large American corporations, of course.
Mature Times
August 13th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Keen on your hobby? Why not turn it into a business?
I don’t know much about the magazine Mature Times, but I do know they’ve got EXCELLENT ideas. Because the nice people there have written an article about fotoLibra photographer Linda Wright (she of the wondrous Birds of Prey photographs) in which they say very nice things about the part fotoLibra had to play in Linda’s success.
Aw shucks! (scuffles foot shyly behind other heel).
Hovering Eurasian Kestrel ©Linda Wright / fotoLibra
The Dictionary Game
August 4th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Before I tell you about this wonderful and enjoyable challenge, just a word on the new fotoLibra Version 4.1.
We launched it a couple of days ago and the reaction from both buyers and sellers has been extremely positive, once users discovered where to access all the new features. If they still elude you, please check out the comments in the last blog posting, where all is revealed.
Now for the The Dictionary Game.
It’s summer, time for fun and frolics (it’s raining hard as I write this), and this is an amusing if cerebral pastime.
I used to do this for fun as a kid, but I’m not a photographer, simply a man who takes photographs.
Flip open the dictionary. Find a word you don’t know (come on, there must be one).
Read the definition.
Now photograph it.
Do you see? It makes you think very hard about how you convey the meaning of a word visually. It’s even more of a challenge — and therefore much more satisfying — if the word is an abstract concept. Or a verb.
When you upload the resulting image to fotoLibra, imagine the pleasure of getting a fotoLibrawhack — your picture being the sole one returned when a search for ‘glabrous’ is made, for example.
Here are some words that have sent me scurrying for the dictionary recently:
- aboulia
- gremial
- eirenicon
- cagot
- lepid
- manyplies
- temulent
- paneity
- lucubration
- zoilism
- lek
- coper
- hamfatter
- copacetic
- autochthon
- luculent
- epicene
Have fun!
New fotoLibra
July 30th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Say hello to fotoLibra 4.1!
As well as being faster, it’s got a host of new features:
• autoFocus is a rolling newsfeed with all the top stories to interest photographers and picture buyers
• You’ve all been asking for it — the Recent Sales tab shows a random selection of recently sold images so you can see what the market is buying
• Our new Thumbnail Size option allows you to view Thumbnails 400% larger than the default size
• The Latest News tab now sits at the top of the page so you can access it immediately without digging down deep into your Control Centre
• Your Hide Sidebar feature lets you view five thumbnails in a row — more pictures per page
• You now have the data option of flipping between Thumbnail and Records View, which will show you the photographer, pixel dimensions, caption and reference number for every image
• At last (many members will sigh) you can see if one of your images has been selected for a lightbox. As far as we’re aware no other stock agency / picture library offers this feature — but there is no guarantee that this will lead to a sale.
There are many other enhancements such as a speedier registration page — new members can sign up in seconds. Little things like the transition when you submit an image to a Picture Call have been smoothed out. You will notice several other detail changes.
BROWSERS: However you won’t notice any of these enhancements if you are using Internet Explorer 7 or earlier as your browser. You will see doughty old fotoLibra 4.0 chugging away as normal. Speedy new fotoLibra 4.1 works best on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms using Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome and IE8. Even Microsoft is recommending you should upgrade from IE7: please read this.
We recommend that Windows users should perform “Windows Update” regularly.
We hope you enjoy the new fotoLibra and find it even easier to use. Please let us know what you think
Model Releases
July 26th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
We’re always asked if we want model releases with the photographs we sell.
The short answer is Yes. It’s much easier to sell a photograph with a model release than without one.
But given that the great majority of fotoLibra’s images sales are for editorial use, it’s not always absolutely essential. It merely restricts the possible markets for the photograph. You don’t generally need a model release for an image used editorially.
Now here is a terrible example, an awful warning. Someone took a picture of a very photogenic Greek shepherd complete with luxuriant beard. It was uploaded to a picture library. No names, because I don’t know them.
A Swedish yogurt manufacturer bought the photograph from the picture library and plastered it over his pots of “Turkish” yogurt. Unfortunately the shepherd’s cousin happened to be living in Stockholm and spotted his kinsman being passed off as a Turk. This is an offensive concept to many Greeks.
What was more offensive is that the subject of the photograph hadn’t given his permission for it to be used in advertising. He hadn’t signed a model release. Almost all shepherds have smart cosmopolitan lawyers these days, and the yogurt company was slapped with a £4.5 million lawsuit.
Our simple, bucolic countryman apparently settled later for £150,000, which is a lot more expensive than buying a properly licensed image from a company such as fotoLibra.
You can read more about this story (and see the offending yogurt pot) on the BBC site (so it must be true) and you can download and print off as many fotoLibra Model release forms as you like from here, and of course property release forms from here. When you use these, keep the signed piece of paper as a record of your contract with the subject and tick the ‘Model Release’ and ‘Property Release’ boxes on your Edit page with a carefree heart.
We will of course double check with you should we be about to sell one of your images to a yogurt pot manufacturer or other commercial organisation.I don’t know where the fault lies here — if the yogurt company had revealed the end use of the image to the picture library and they had authorised the sale without clearances, then the library is to blame. If the yogurt company just bought the picture without revealing what it was going to be used for, then the yogurt company is to blame.
The shepherd and the photographer would seem to be the only two innocent parties here. Unless the photographer misrepresented the image to the picture library, claiming it was model released.
Oh, I don’t know. Just be careful, that’s all.
Pro Blog Index
July 12th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
This is the Index to the fotoLibra Pro Blog postings since January 2010.
If you’re new to fotoLibra, welcome! — and may we suggest you read through the HINTS & TIPS section, and if nothing else read Great Expectations from the 2009 blog. It still holds true.
In fact there are a lot of interesting posts in the 2009 blogs, and you can see an Index to them here.
Comments are welcome, even on old posts, and will be read and often responded to.
HINTS & TIPS
ABOUT FOTOLIBRA
ADOBE
CUSTOMERS
E-BOOKS & PUBLISHING
IT
LAW
- Guidance From The Met
- Privacy
- The Future Of Online Advertising
- Curioushints & tios, Adobe, ebooks, about fotoLibra,
MICROSTOCK
- Microstock: Why Would A Reputable Company Do This To Themselves?
- More Microstock Moans
- Selling Photographs Through Flickr And Getty
MISCELLANY
NETWORKING
PICTURE CALLS