Key words in this issue: Grateful Dead | Posters | Thumbnail | Model Release | Commercial | Publishing House | Comdex | Corbis | Getty | Covers | PhotoSourceBOOK | Market List | Search Engines | Taxes | Savings | Spam | Kodak | Firefox | Guidance | Selling | Ad Agency |

News Words: Photoshop | Advertising | Troops | Portraits | Photographer | Business | Moms | Auction | Celebrities | Fires | Hobby | Copyright | Doubt

	PhotoAimLite, the monthly newsletter from PhotoSource International. http://www.photosource.com ISSN 1530-0511 If you no longer wish to receive PhotoAimLite, see the instructions at the end of this newsletter.

Grateful Dead Book -
Fair Use of Concert Posters
by Joel Hecker, Esq.

Whether a use of copyrighted material, without consent, constitutes copyright infringement or is a fair use, is determined through an analysis of the facts.
A recent case in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Bill Graham Archives LLC v. Dorling Kindersley Limited, has determined that use of thumbnail size visual art images of seven concert posters in a 480 page book, "Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip," is a fair use and not an infringement.
Defendants sought permission to use the images in the book to help make it the "definitive Grateful Dead history." Defendants had the blessing of Grateful Dead Productions for the project. Plaintiff responded by offering such permission, but only in exchange for significant additional usage rights to create CDs and DVDs from other material controlled by Grateful Dead Productions. That offer was, naturally, refused as was a further offer of a high license fee.
When the book was published with these thumbnail images, plaintiff claimed rights from three to seven of the images used. (There was a dispute as to whether plaintiff controlled the copyright to four of the images.)

Want to read more of this article? Go to: http://www.photoaim.com/legal124.html

Do I Need a Model Release?

Photo columnists, unaware of their First Amendment Rights, have been fanning the fires of this hotly debated question for decades. A wall of mythology has built up around the subject, and I'll make the first move to break it down for you. To give you a simplistic answer: No, you do not need a model release.

You may now get up off the floor and sit back down. I'll ask you to be open to a re-programming process. First, a few questions: Have you ever seen a newspaper photographer ask for a model release? Did the video photographer in the Rodney King case ask the policemen or Mr. King for a model release?

If your photo is informing or educating the public, you do not need a model release.

And this is where the confusion comes in. Here at PhotoSource International we encourage you to follow the trail of the new generation of new media. Its emphasis is the publication trade: magazines, books, and electronic media. About a million dollars a day are spent in this category of stock photography, whose essential use is to INFORM and to EDUCATE. Photobuyers in this arena rarely require a model release, unless the photo is so sensitive that it might compromise a person in some way. Short of highly sensitive areas such as drug abuse, sex education, mental retardation, you won't find your buyers asking you for a model release.

"How and why was I under the impression that model releases are always required?" you ask.

Most of the teaching and training in the USA for working photographers, is slanted to COMMERCIAL photography, where you always need a model release.

As stock photography grew and became more prevalent, commercial photographers switched over to media photography, and brought along with them the rules for commercial photography: i.e. you need a model release. Since most classic stock photography is used for commercial purposes, these photographers are right, you do need a model release if you are photographing in the commercial sector.

Enter the publishing world. Large publishing houses, which spend $50,000 to $150,000 per month for photography, are vigilant about protecting their First Amendment Rights, and in so doing, they protect your First Amendment Rights. If Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt Brace, etc. were to require model releases for the pictures they use, they would soon go out of business, because media photographers would not put up with the chore of getting model releases for slews of editorial, "non-posed" pictures.

As a stock photographer, operating a business in a free enterprise society, you have a powerful law on your side, namely the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment in effect says you can freely photograph in public as long as you are not breaking any local laws, such as trespassing.

Most of the horror stories concerning model releases that you read about have had to do with commercial photography (for ads and with sales and products for purchase), where YES, you do need a model release. Not so in the book and magazine illustration field.

The million-dollar-a-day book and magazine industry fiercely protects its First Amendment rights. Publishing houses fill swivel chairs at long oak tables with legal advisors, who remain steadfast in protecting their clients' side of the First Amendment, which is that when you are informing and educating, a model release is not necessary. The exception would be those rare cases involving highly sensitive subjects such as sex education, drug abuse, certain medical issues, and religion.

Want to read more of this article? Go to: http://www.photoaim.com/clmn106.html

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"The magic of photography is metaphysical. What you see in the
photograph isn't what you saw at the time. The real skill of
photography is organized visual lying."
- Terence Donovan
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Collapse from its own weight . . ?
A Lesson Learned

What is the largest Information-Technology conference event? There isn't any.
Why? The IT world grew too big for itself. Like all successful innovations, it has fragmented itself into specialties.
For fifteen years, everyone interested in IT attended COMDEX in Las Vegas. But with unrestrained growth it became too big for everyone to see everything.
Visitors decided they would rather attend other conferences that were more focused in their particular area of interest.
For the second year in a row, COMDEX has been cancelled.
This is an example of how, in like manner, Corbis and Getty and the other massive stock agencies can get TOO BIG. Photobuyers will eventually seek out imagery in their own specialty areas.
As the supply of sources of images on the Internet grows (that includes you), we can expect the same phenomenon to happen. Photobuyers will want to go to smaller stock agencies and individuals, who focus on their particular (specialized) targeted needs, and where they can expect speed, customer service, and a deep selection of images in the subject area they need. -RE .

WHAT WORKS?
THOSE BOOK COVERS

An average of 55 photos are used in the interior of a textbook, and usually one photo on the cover. Payment for cover photos ranges from $300 to $900. The secret of making a photo a likely candidate for a cover, is to engineer a graphically clean area in the upper left or upper right of your photo. (Easier and faster to do this 'in camera,' rather than give yourself the time-consuming task of electronically manipulating the photo.) This area should take up approximately 1/4 of your photo, depending on the subject matter. This gives the book jacket designer convenient space to place the title of the book, or other significant text.
Next time you are on a self-assignment, begin taking some of your photos two ways: a regular composition approach that will be appropriate for inside-use, and the same subject from an angle that format-wise, will make it eligible for a book cover. - RE

BUILD YOUR MARKET LIST

Rather than find your markets through a less than adequate hit-and-miss approach, use a market guide. Many such guides are general in nature; others focus on specific subject areas -- biology, environment, aviation, agriculture, and so on. Depending on your interest area, you'll find hundreds of potential markets. Granted, some of these directories are in the $200 to $400 price range. However, they are also available in some local libraries -- give the librarian a call.

Goodbye Taxes

Arithmetic in grammar school and algebra in high school never appealed to me. But when I discovered later on in life that I could save hundreds of dollars every year, I soon became fascinated by mathematics.
Once a year we have to get serious about taxes. Most photo illustrators have the same comment. "Taxes . . . Oh! I leave that subject to my tax accountant."
It turns out the tax accountant is usually Uncle Harry down the street, or someone picked out from the Yellow Pages. In other words non-experts, who are costing the photo illustrator mucho dollars.
Before you close the doors and slam the windows and refuse to let me talk to you, let me make two points: 1) you are missing an opportunity to save anywhere from $10 to $1,000 a year (or more) on your taxes if you are a salaried person and attempting to get your stock photography side business off the ground, and 2) what I'm going to say has nothing to do with evading taxes -- that's illegal. You will avoid taxes -- that's your legal right.

THE IRS RULES ENCOURAGE YOU

The IRS encourages you to avoid taxes. Sound odd? It's correct.
The reason the IRS doesn't want you to pay so much in taxes is that our free enterprise system recognizes that it takes courage to start up a business, thus, the IRS wants to en-courage you. They know that if you succeed, you could very well help stimulate the economy by hiring more workers, who in turn will pay more taxes.
Perhaps you thought "write-offs" were only for the big boys, and that it costs big dollars to ask questions about tax advantages. Not so. The IRS provides you with all the information I'm about to reveal to you, in their free and informative, "Taxpayer's Business Kit." (Phone them at 1 800 242-1040).
But if you're like most of us, you'll take one look at that two pounds of information and put it away in a drawer for "later."
A costly mistake. Here's what you'll discover when you sift out the information as it applies to you, the photo illustrator. The government will give you five years to stop calling your operation a hobby and start calling it a business. Within those five years,* you should show a profit ($1 is a profit), at least two of those years. That means you could go two years without even selling a picture or showing a profit and still reap the tax benefits (more later). (This applies to someone who has a salaried position and is starting a stock photo business on the side. If you are self-employed, with your stock business as your only enterprise, you don't have to make a profit in any of those years, to qualify as a full-fledged business.)
You don't have to "get a license" (unless your local city or township requires it). You only have to show intent to be a business, rather than a hobby.
Intent translates into "putting up a shingle." In other words, get some stationery printed, and open a separate bank (business) account. At income tax time, fill out Schedule C, a form that lets the IRS know whether you made a profit or a loss on your photo illustration operation.
Now here's where your savings come in.
Much of your business-related expenses (photo, travel, home office, vehicle, darkroom if you have one) are no longer your personal expenses, they are business expenses, because you need them to be able to produce your product: photo illustrations. Therefore these costs become "deductions" -- in other words, expenses to your business. Even though you don't make a profit, you are still entitled to this write-off.
"And how 'bout that $1,000 savings?" you ask.

Want to read more of this article? Go to: http://www.photoaim.com/clmn86.html

ONLINE
by Bill Hopkins

SPAM Is Good For You?
Of course, it all depends on your definition of SPAM. For 12 weeks, volunteers at five large Canadian companies received weekly e-mails reminding them to eat healthful foods and keep active. These folks were already participating in a larger study about health and exercise. The report (in the American Journal of Health Promotion) stated that those who received e-mail reminders exercised more, reduced their body mass index (BMI), and knew more about the benefits than those who did not. The group that did not get the reminders gained weight.

Yes, It's (Sadly) True
Kodak has announced that it will discontinue manufacturing black-and-white photographic paper by the end of this year. They will continue to produce B&W chemicals and film. (In case you're interested, the paper is made in Brazil.) Many reasons are cited, including the huge move to digital, and Kodak's need to trim their workforce while trying to stay profitable. Ilford, another B&W paper maker, was rescued this year from bankruptcy (filed last year) by a management buyout, and AgfaPhoto (Germany) filed for bankruptcy this last May. So if you want to continue your fine-art B&W photography, consider stocking up on your favorite paper, especially if it's Kodak's.

Firefox Flaw
If you're using Firefox as your Microsoft Internet Explorer replacement browser, you may be vulnerable to a couple of severe security risks. These flaws could allow a malicious web page to make software installations appear to be from a trusted site, such as Mozilla's own update websites (update.mozilla.org and addons.mozilla.org), which are listed in the browser's whitelist. This has been mostly fixed by changes made to those websites that alters the installation process. You may still be at risk if you have added your own sites to the whitelist, however. So check out and verify the legitimacy of any other URLs in your Firefox whitelist. And it wouldn't hurt to get the latest version, either.

Want to read more of this article? Go to: http://www.photoaim.com/onlin159.html

Getting Good Guidance

In grandfather's day, before the technical revolution, it was customary to pay attention to the wisdom of "the older voice of experience." Grandfather (and grandmother) passed down the wisdom of the ages. When it comes to ethical and moral thinking, that's pretty much true today, yes. But when it comes to today's business operations, including photo research business operations, such as delivery, temporary storage, research, and development, grandpa is usually clueless.
Too often, I hear a photographer say, "So-and-so, who has been doing photo research 30 years, told me that . . . "
And too often, so-and-so's advice was not on-target. Why?
Because photo distribution, storage, and the actual production of stock photography has dramatically changed in the last decade. If a veteran researcher is giving you advice, and still depending on a film-based system, you can be sure he or she is advising you from a limited and a biased position. Photo researchers are like most of us, -they don't like change.

Want to read more of this article? Go to: http://www.photoaim.com/gen692.html

How many pictures are in your file? Wait. Let me re-phrase that. How many marketable pictures? You may be selling from an empty wagon.

Fruit vendors know that all the bells, whistles, and solos of "Figaro" won't sell a tomato if everyone on the street already has tomatoes in their backyard gardens. If the vendor just has tomatoes, he has in effect, an empty wagon. Here's a test to see if your wagon is empty.

First, a reality: if photobuyers at an ad agency, pr firm, or publishing house need a "generic" scenic, they go to their favorite on-line stock agency to find it. Why? For the same reasons you go to a supermarket, not to four or five Ma & Pa grocery stores: a large selection to choose from and time-saving one-stop shopping.

Attempting to sell your "standard excellent" shots directly to a photobuyer is discouraging. A photobuyer wants to deal with the comfortable (to her) source of a familiar agency or a handful of photographers she's worked with before. She doesn't want the time-consuming and unpredictable task of dealing with an individual photographer she doesn't know, with the added trouble of processing lots of additional photos.

Photobuyers don't like to 'train' someone, or hold their hand during the process. They want hassle-free photobuying.

Why do some photo illustrator's pictures get published, and not other people's? You might say, "I see so-and-so's pictures published all of the time."
That's true. Those photographers are superstars. If you were to try to break into the field of music, painting, writing, etc. -- you'd face the same uphill battle. Photobuyers figure the cost is the same, so why not go with the 'name' photographer.

Want to read more of this article? Go to: http://www.photoaim.com/clmn104.html

PHOTOGRAPHY
IN THE NEWS

Note: If the URL is long, it may extend to two lines. In that case - clicking on it won't work. Instead, "copy and paste" the URL.

The Art of BUSINESS: The Secrets of Sustaining Success - Starting a business is easy. Sustaining it is hard. Here's what successful creative professionals say about what makes them stay successful.
http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/23132.html

Framed and Exposed: When More is Less - Photographers are almost always on the lookout for contrast. Watch experienced digital photographers and you'll see them constantly check their camera's HISTOGRAM, partly to ensure that they haven't over- or under-exposed, but also to make certain they've captured as much tonal range, or contrast, as possible.
http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/23146.html

Indian photographer faces SUIT over Coke billboard - An Indian photographer has been threatened with legal action by beverage giant Coca-Cola Co. for displaying one of his photographs -- depicting water shortages against a backdrop of the company's ubiquitous logo -- on a giant billboard.
http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=177168&source=r_general

Photographer goes 'Wild' for nature - "Anytime you're taking pictures of a WILD ANIMAL , especially in a national park, if you disturb the animal, you could get in trouble," Gross said. "You can tell by their reactions if you are.
http://www.lafayettejc.com/news20050717/200507178local_news1121577862.shtml

Photo in the News: Bum Steer at Running of the BULLS - Putting a whole new twist on the term "bum steer," a calf rear-ends a reveler at Pamplona's running of the bulls yesterday.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0711_050711_runningbulls.html

Bet on this - Lifelong Hoboken resident Michael Lisa knows which ponies to pick - at least, with his camera. Whether it's freezing, snowing, raining or a perfectly clear evening, Lisa can be seen taking photos of dozens rumbling RACEHORSES at the Meadowlands Racetrack nightly.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14874163&BRD=1291&PAG=461&dept_id=523585&rfi=6

Shooting in the RAW - Snap shooters don't bother, but serious photographers like to do things the way professionals do: setting their camera's menus to RAW. Working with RAW also allows you to undo mistakes you may have made while shooting.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050609.gtrawjun9
/BNStory/TechReviews/?query=photographer

With Digital Focus, KODAK Future Fuzzy - The new CEO, Antonio Perez, a
former Hewlett-Packard executive, has said Kodak must complete its
metamorphosis to digital within the next two years. He predicts its digital businesses, representing 41 percent of sales last year, will account for 70 percent by 2007.
http://www.courant.com/business/hc-ymleckey0717.artjul17,0,6385880.story?&track=rss

Boca Museum of Art to spotlight renowned, BUDDING PHOTOGRAPHERS
http://www.bocaratonnews.com/index.php?src=news&prid=12044&category=Local%20News

Two brothers, photographers _and innovators - at SHUTTLE launches
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/news/local/12154035.htm

Art and the Big Book of BREASTS Benedikt Taschen sells photographs of everything from Van Gogh to Fetish Girls.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3348036a4501,00.html

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Next Month: Photo Exhibitions

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