Tag Archives: Photography

Photography campaign group launches new copyright proposals; ‘National Cultural Archive’ among plans

Earlier this year the stop43 campaign successfully campaigned against the introduction of Clause 43 in the Digital Economy Bill, arguing that the legislation would take away the rights of photographers and artists.

Campaigners, which included members of the Association of Photographers, the British Institute of Professional Photography, the British Press Photographers’ Association, Copyright Action, EPUK, the National Union of Journalists and Pro-Imaging, were worried that proposals to collect a fee for commercial use of works whose creator could not be identified (so-called “orphan works”) were in the interest of commercial publishers rather than the original producer.

They got their way, and Clause 43 was removed from the Bill, before it became an Act.

While Clause 43 may be dead, Stop43 isn’t and it has been developing a ‘New Thinking’ proposal, to take to the new coalition government.

Stop43 supporter and photographic consultant Pete Jenkins told Journalism.co.uk that parliament will again be looking at orphan works and copyright, after the summer. “[W]e need to ensure that they are working on the right models – that is models that are creator friendly rather than publisher friendly as witnessed in the past,” he said.

The campaign has now unveiled its new proposal, which lays out plans for “cultural use” of orphan works, “and for this cultural use to switch all other uses and users to “known” works, to stimulate cultural and economic activity to the benefit of everyone”.

To enable this we propose some changes to current copyright law and the establishment of a National Cultural Archive, which must be free to use.

The group will continue its efforts to replace “inequitable and unworkable proposals” in the failed Clause 43, says Paul Ellis, co-founder of Stop43, in the latest announcement. The New Thinking proposal, he believes, “should benefit everyone”.

The Conservatives promised in their manifesto to introduce an Intellectual Property Act and we would like our proposal to be incorporated into that Act.

Although our proposal concerns itself with photography we believe it could easily be extended to all media types to create a massive cultural and economic resource of immense value, and Stop43 is eager to work with creators active in other media to achieve this.

This proposal was first introduced at the 2nd National Photography Symposium at the beginning of May, and was received well, with almost unanimous support, says the group.

The proposal has three parts [PDF at this link]

Jenkins is optimistic that the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government will listen. “[P]ersonally I am hopeful that we (photographers) will get a better response from the new government than we did with the old regime,” he said.

But there are challenges, Jenkins warns, citing the British Library’s recently announced partnership with DC Thompson’s brightsolid, as an example. Plans to digitise newspapers and make the British Newspaper archive available to the public for a fee, trouble him.

Whilst their initial efforts involve out of copyright material, if all goes to plan it will not be long before the partnership is digitising work which is in copyright. Although questions have been asked of the British Library as to the clearance of copyright they have refused to answer any of them.

Photographer tracks down subjects from 30-year-old photos

From last week a nice story from Peterborough Today (and picked up elsewhere) about photographer Chris Porsz – nicknamed the ‘paramedic paparazzo’ because of his day job – who with the help of the local paper has tracked down some of the subjects of photos he took in the 1980s, finding out what had happened to the people in them and recreating the original pictures.

Full story at this link…

More pictures from Porsz are featured in this Mail Online article.

Fast Company: AFP’s legal row with photographer – and Twitter

Fast Company takes a look at the legal row between news agency AFP and photographer Daniel Morel – and where Twitter fits in. In summary, AFP is currently embroiled in a rights row with Morel after using photographs of Haiti that had been uploaded on Twitpic. Morel reportedly sent cease-and-desist letters to which AFP responded with threat of a law suit.

Fast Company writes:

AFP, like a lot of more established organizations, seems unable to change their perspectives on Twitter to address what the service actually is. That Morel posted some of the most important photos of the decade on Twitter before any other publication shows the power and flexibility of Twitter as a legitimate news service. AFP’s argument, that Twitter is in some way nothing more than a digital bulletin board with no accompanying rights, is worrisome – it’s a different kind of news outlet than AFP, but that doesn’t mean its value in news can simply be ignored.

Full Fast Company story at this link…

More from Russian Photos Blog at this link…

Outsourcing photography – what cost to local news organisations?

Last week, the Associated Press’ (AP) commercial photography arm, AP Images, launched a new service and a new revenue stream. The new Editorial Assignment Service offers other news organisations the chance to hire out its photojournalists to cover events for their reporting.

(Read more about the launch on the British Journal of Photography’s site and Photo Archive News.)

Twenty-five AP photographers are available via the assignment service and the images on display on the marketing site are great quality. For the AP it’s a new source of revenue and use of existing resources to create a money-making service; for other news organisations – as far as the agency is hoping – it could be a labour-saving device, allowing them to outsource work on far-flung or one-off assignments.

I’m thinking in particular of local media and newspapers here. Many of whom are already AP members in the US – some of whom have left the agency as a results of increased membership fees. Much is made of multimedia and the potential of online publishing platforms to mix words with rich images and more. But where do images from the field stand on a local or regional newsroom’s budget at a time of cuts/limited financial resources?

Some such news organisations are turning photo departments into visual departments – adding video to images – and creating their own money-making products by putting these desks at the heart of the newsroom. US newspaper the Star-Ledger and its website NJ.com is now generating revenue from specialist coverage of local events, in particular high-school sports, and as such video and images remains high on the agenda.

While outsourcing could bring a greater range of images to some news sites and free organisations from the labour of obtaining them, the local knowledge and understanding of an audience can’t be outsourced or replaced by the AP. Local media outlets wanting stronger visuals would do well to develop their own rather than outsource and build products for both a multimedia and potentially commercial end.

Broadening the photographic story

From A Developing Story, a fascinating and critical post by Asim Rafiqui on taking photos in Africa. He is particularly ‘saddened’ by the treatment of a story about Zimbabwean villagers using the meat from a dead elephant, by a recent winner in a photography competition.

The entire construction of the sequence was troubling – and it is a construction because the photographer could just as well have broadened this story to show us a different possibility.

Full story at this link…

(Via @JoshHalliday and @Adamoxford on Twitter)

AP photographer’s iPhone gallery from Afghanistan

Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder has produced a stunning gallery of shots covering US military operations in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province using his iPhone and a Polaroid film filter app.

“I was trying to take pictures that would be similar to those rough, keepsake photos that marines might make for themselves,” explains Guttenfelder in an audio clip.

Full slideshow at this link…

Radio documentary tracks careers of London College of Printing photojournalism graduates

Miles Warde tells the story of a group of photojournalism graduates from the London College of Printing from the 1990s who set out to witness world events and, in some cases, lost their lives in the process (hat tip @rosieniven).

Overexposed is available on iPlayer in the UK only (without using some cunning and illegal trickery) for another 10 days.

Also check out the Guardian’s 100 years of great press photography.

RobertBenson.com: Professional photographers who are sticking to film

An excellent post by San Diego based photographer Robert Benson. He talks to photographers he calls the ‘holdouts’ – the shooters who still use film and shun digital:

Photographer Simon Watson describes digital photography images like this: “There is a smoothness that is so ugly and slick. It looks like a gimmick.” And another photographer says: “The world doesn’t need more megapixels.”

Similar feelings come from a legion of professional editorial photographers out there who are quietly going about their image making business with film: the good old organic stuff. Their reasons for shooting film are similar: “It makes you a better photographer,” says one shooter. “…It’s more sophisticated looking than film…”, “film has a richness unmatched by digital…”, and “it has a depth and painterly quality…”

Full post at this link…

(via EPUK weekly newsletter)

@Documentally: The ultimate journalistic recording tool?

‘Freelance mobile media maker’ Christian Payne (aka @documentally) discusses the multimedia benefits, and potential for journalists, of his new Lumix GH1 hybrid digital camera (with video and audio) in this AudioBoo recording:

Watch out for Christian Payne at our news:rewired event next week.

EPUK: Photographer wins copyright infringement case against Mirror Group Newspapers

Photography site EPUK publishes a report by law firm Swan Turton on a celebrity photographer’s copyright victory over Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN).

“In a judgment issued on October 16 which has potentially important ramifications for the photography industry, the High Court held that Daily Mirror publisher MGN Ltd had infringed copyright in photographs included in back copies of newspapers it was making available online to paid subscribers.”

Full post at this link…