Gaerek
No longer a newbie, moving up!
- Joined
- May 2, 2009
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- 1,341
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- Tucson, AZ
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- Photos NOT OK to edit
Found this on the website. If you, Robert, really did ask your friend to take it for you in exchange for pizza, you are indeed the owner since your friend took the shot while under your employment. However, if this were to be a real big-money lawsuit and the picture was worth more than $500, your oral agreement would not be enforceable and she would own the copyright (contracts dealing with more than $500 must be in writing).Q. What if I have an idea and I hire a photographer to execute my idea, pay for his or her expenses including models, film, processing, assistants and special equipment, does the copyright belong to me?A. No. Usually, the person who creates the work ñ in this case, the person who trips the shutter -- owns the copyright. Of course, the parties can make other arrangements such as assigning the copyright or agreeing in writing to create the photograph on a work-for-hire basis. Also, under some circumstances there could be joint ownership of the copyright.
Taken from Frequently Asked Copyright Q&As by Andrew D. Epstein
So there you have it. Case settled?
Except that what I've found is that in most cases, the work-for-hire has to be in writing, in the form of a contract, or something like that. It might be a state by state thing so I'm not 100% on this.
Let me use a similar, but different scenario, and see what you think. I go to your website, and I find a picture you took that I like. I change the color, the brightness, the contrast, the color saturation. As a matter of fact, the only thing I liked was one little part of your photo, that was maybe 50x50 pixels, hardly anything at all! I paste that (with all of the above changes) into a photo I took. I then sell that photo, without giving any credit to you and without notifying you, because, after all, I made almost all of the creative decisions with regards to the finished product. I have a feeling that you...and your lawyer would have a problem with that.Also, I was responsible for ALL parts of the composition of the photos in question. It was my equipment. I set the ISO, the Fstop, the shutter speed, placed the subjects AND photographer, and then in post, I (massively for some) cropped the photos to exhibit the framing that I desired. Of course there were some that either my girlfriend or her sister fired off suggestions as to what they thought would make a good shot, and we did those too, but doesn't that always happen? If someone shouts to a pro at a game "oh my gosh look at that!" and then points at something the photographer takes a picture of, does he get a credit? These are MY pictures. I'm not going to post them again, but I am just wondering how the rule got translated from "owns exclusive copyright" to "actually pushed the button."
Just because you had almost all creative control over something, doesn't make it yours. As for the law, there needs to be a point where the image becomes owned by someone. We can sit here and start saying that I had 95% control over how the photo turned out, or whatever, but in the end, that's not what determines copyright. It's whoever caused that shutter to trip...period.
robertwsimpson said:can you direct me to some sort of document that backs that up?
Although I can't direct you to a document that backs that up, I can relate to you a conversation I had with a Disney photographer, not 2 weeks ago. I was in Disney World over Christmas break. Although we rarely buy the photos, we almost always get our photos taken by the PhotoPass photographers that are there because it's an easy way to get a shot of everyone in one shot. After the photographer had taken the photograph, she asked if she could take another using my camera. I had my reservations, but I asked her, "Wouldn't that make you the owner of the photograph?" She answered, quite plainly, "Yes, but there's three problems with that. One, I don't care, so it doesn't matter to me that my photo is on your camera. Two, it would be basically impossible for me to prove that it was my photo. And lastly, we are told by management to abide by all reasonable requests by guests who want a photo from their own camera."
A couple days later, I asked another Photopass Photographer who basically told me the exact same thing, just to make sure.