last night i went to an interesting lecture at the mpls photo center about copyright, ownership, and protecting your artwork from infringement. the speaker was david koehser, an attorney who specializes in copyright law. he has a lot of information on his website: http://www.dklex.com/
it was a cool lecture because although he had a general outline for the two hours, he kept it mostly Q&A, so there was a lot of discussion about issues that have come up both in the past and in planning future work.
one of the most relevant things i learned was the distinction between copyright release and usage, and then between exclusive usage and non-exclusive usage. clients often ask for copyright releases so they can get prints made, but really what they need are usage rights. i went into my release forms file first thing this morning and checked out how it is all worded.
there was also quite a bit of discussion about public domain and what you can go around taking pictures of and what isn’t a good idea to shoot. [rule of thumb: don't use a telephoto lens to zoom into your neighbor's yard to shoot them sunbathing and then sell the images to coppertone.] i didn’t learn much *new* here, but it was nice to confirm the guidelines i already thought i knew . . . people walking down the street in a public place don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and you can generally photograph them and use the images. people in a place like the gym locker room DO have a reasonable expectation of privacy and you shouldn’t take nakey pics in there. (duh?) you can take pictures of celebrities and bands and stuff, but you can get into some trouble when you are deciding what to do with the images. model releases aren’t always necessary, but if you *can* get one, it’s better to have one than not. someone was grumbling about being asked to stop taking pictures at canterbury downs . . . and that he should be able to do whatever he wants there because they get tax money. but, it’s not that simple. there are places that are privately owned & operated and reserve the right to make rules about what you can and can’t do on their property. people got riled up about whether the business has an obligation to post the rules. at canterbury, they weren’t asking the people with point & shoot cameras to stop taking pictures, but they said something to the guy with a big pro camera. i guess if i were one of the photogs on their payroll, i’d be pretty glad they were enforcing exclusivity. and generally when i want to go to a place to do a shoot, i ask if it’s ok – you can usually pretty easily find out the rules before you go and just start shooting.
all of this was fairly fresh in my mind after having seen Smash His Camera last week. it’s a documentary about “original paparazzo” ron galella, and the lengths he would go to in order to shoot celebrities living their personal lives. i could never be that kind of photographer! i guess he’s admired for having the balls to get the shot, but wow, i just couldn’t get into people’s faces like that. just because it’s not illegal to take pictures of someone walking down the street doesn’t mean that if they ask you not to (especially if they ask you about 800 times) that you shouldn’t just give it a rest. i feel this way about band photography too – as someone who both enjoys live music and has enjoyed shooting bands live, i think you can find a way to get good shots without having to piss off the band and the other people who are trying to watch the show. i’ve seen bands get visibly frustrated and swear at photographers under their breath – it’s just not civilized to bug them when they’re working.
but, i suppose that is a rant for another day. really, what i wanted to say is – if you are producing art that you want to protect, it’s worth reading up about. and if you are producing art and don’t want to infringe on the rights of others, well – that’s also worth a look.