a question for the TR Brainstrust

[Simon B]

I have been very slowly putting together a webpage (see the last 2 years) and there are just some things I am wary of

firstly I am not a fan of people claiming a money shot as being theirs when it isnt..... how many times has that happened to TR?

I want to do a money shot of the amps and studio, I am thinking of getting it professionaly photographed and put on the webpage and just wondering where it stands on Copywright,

I feel like a bit of an ass with this question and approach but I dont want have someone say that the things I have and the service I am doing is theirs.

If people asked me to use the photo depending on what it was for I generally wouldnt have a problem with it. I dont want to get into a copywright debate.

if someone was to use the photo and claimit as theirs doing what I am doing what things can cover me?

and If I am paying for the photographer who owns the Copywright?

and what things have to be done for permision of the photo?

just throwing it out there any help would be greatly apreciated

Cheers Simon

[astrovic]

The moment the photo is taken, copyright instantly exists in the photo. It is owned by its creator - the photographer.

Copyright is a form of intellectual property. Note the word "property". A guitar amp is another piece of property.

Therefore the creator can sell, transfer, gift, lease, licence, do whatever with copyright essentially the same as your guitar amps. All by way of contract (essentially, let's not get too technical). If someone else (e.g you) buys the copyright in the photo, the ability to do those things now exists in you.

So you could enter into a contract with the photographer in advance of the photo being taken, to decide what happens once the photo is taken. For example, you could agree that for $X, you hire the photographer to take the photo and also buy the copyright in the photo. Then it is you photo. Or with that money you could hire the photographer and take a licence to use the photo, say for a particular period of time, or maybe forever. Then the photographer still owns the photo, but you have user rights in it. Or...well, pretty much whatever you agree, goes.

If someone uses the photo without the permission of the owner of the copyright in it (whoever that is), you have copyright infringement. So, if you agree with your photographer to take a licence to use the photo, then it is the photographer's copyright in the photo that is being infringed (even though you are using the photo, you're not the owner). If you wanted to nuke the thief, you'd need to get the photographer to do the nuking for you. But if you bought the photo off him, go drop your own bombs cos its your copyright that is being infringed.

And not one word of the above is legal advice, or intended to be, etc etc...if you want to really address this issue fully, best you get a lawyer son (get a real good one!)

[13thbeach]

Hey simon,
My wife runs her own photography studio. As far as I know the copyright is owned by the photographer.

[Simon B]

Gidday Chris and Matt,

Thank you for your responses, their awesome, and I think I owe you some Beer.

I dont care for legal arguments just want to know where I stand is all,

Thank you kindly

Simon

[Sheer Noise]

I have my own professional photography studio. That's what I do when I'm not an audio/composer/arranger hobbyist.

General principal... as stated above, copyright belongs to the photographer unless a deal is reached. I know you're not really interested in legals, but just in case you get adventurous....

--------------
Since 30 July 1998 the photographer owns full copyright in their images, even if they were commissioned by a third party (see ACC information sheets "G058" and "G035"). There are a couple of caveats though. By Section 35(4) of the Act, copyright is owned by your employer if the image was taken as part of your job. Alternatively by Section 35(5), if the photograph was commissioned (by agreement and for money) for a "private or domestic purpose" — such as a family portrait or wedding or birthday party — then the client owns copyright, unless there is agreement to the contrary.

http://www.copyright.org.au/publications/infosheets.htm

(Excerpt taken from http://4020.net/words/photorights.php - which I've printed out and now carry in my camera bag to all engagements).
--------------

Oh, and if you need a photographer and can put up for the cheap airfares to Melbourne I'd love to do you a deal... :P

Dave

[Simon B]

Dave thats awesome, Thank you so much
Now I would happily put up cheap airfares, but it would cost you a pie from the village hotbake......

[chris p]

Simon, aside from the copyright law, you also asked what happens if people steal the photo from your site and use it as their own.

In short, your in the same position as the band with their latest album doing the rounds of peer-to-peer piracy - yes it is all a breach of copyright, but to stop it you need to identify the culprits and either get a court injunction (great when the culprit is overseas) or write a threatening letter (which causes the recipient usually to roll on floor laughing).

Prevention is really the only cure here, and it involves not putting the photo up on your site as just a jpg, tiff or whatever. There are website coding techniques that allow an image to be displayed by not downloaded (have a look at some professional photography sites) - it may be worth paying a professional website developer to do this part of your site for you if it is a big deal.

[Kurt]

The only way to stop a picture being saved/copied/used by someone else is to not have it online. Anything can be saved if you're keen enough.

Simon, aside from the copyright law, you also asked what happens if people steal the photo from your site and use it as their own.

In short, your in the same position as the band with their latest album doing the rounds of peer-to-peer piracy - yes it is all a breach of copyright, but to stop it you need to identify the culprits and either get a court injunction (great when the culprit is overseas) or write a threatening letter (which causes the recipient usually to roll on floor laughing).

Prevention is really the only cure here, and it involves not putting the photo up on your site as just a jpg, tiff or whatever. There are website coding techniques that allow an image to be displayed by not downloaded (have a look at some professional photography sites) - it may be worth paying a professional website developer to do this part of your site for you if it is a big deal.

[DwaneHollands]

I agree with Kurt. People can simply do a screen capture. (Alt > Print screen button) and then paste into Paint.

A better if not more controversial way of 'protecting your images' is what the stock photography people do.

WATERMARK it. In the centre. (if you do it on the edges they will simply 'crop' that out).

Then if they steal your image, they are doing you a favour! Advertising your website. Use a URL for your website.

It is close to impossible to remove a watermark and even a crazy photoshop guru would not even bother with trying to 'clone' out the watermark. Easier to find someone elses image!

It would be 100% effective in preventing someone claiming your studio is theirs ----- but it may look a little naff having watermarks on all your images. (I suppose if you could do it 'classy' enough it might even become a marketing trademark for your studio).

Another thought, you could try and put your logo in the centre of every photo, it's extra branding perhaps - apply a little subtle gaussian blur to the background image. Anyways foddar for thought. lol. (yes I'm a photoshop nut)

[Me: Does this mean I'm now part of the TR Brain Trust?]
[TR Brain Trust: Pick a window. You're leaving]

[Sheer Noise]

There's fairly simple ways to embed metadata in images that contain copyright information about the image. I do it with all of mine at the editing stage. It makes it much easier to make a claim against unauthorised use.

I have had a few shots "stolen" in the past, one image I posted in a blog was used on the cover of an Education Magazine and distributed across Australia and NZ. I rang the company and asked them to run the contents of the metadata of the offending image by their lawyers and let me know if they'd prefer to discuss a basic renumeration package and licence after the fact, or deal with the matter in court, they paid me what I would have charged to run a shot on the cover of an International Magazine.

I find people are extremely willing to change their minds about misappropriation of intellectual property once they are confronted... as we saw with Rick's little incident a few months back - once the morons were found out, they changed their site very quickly.

If it were me, I'd be satisfied to get great shots of what I need, post them on my site, and keep an eye out for thieves. There's nothing to stop people using the text, layout, headings, sentiment of your site anyway. Why should the pictures be any different.

Oh, and I paid for a pretty decent security system to keep the images on my site secure, and a friend in web security took about 30 seconds to find the directory where all the folders of images in password protected galleries were stored.... if people really want the shot, they'll get it. I'm not going to get hung up on it, I'll just contact them and offer them the number of my accountant and my lawyer and they can choose who they'd like to deal with.

Dave

[Chinagraf]

Doesn't using Flash instead of HTML make it harder to steal your photos from the site? I mean I'm sure it can still be done, but it's a lot harder then right click save picure as..

[Sheer Noise]

Yeah - Flash makes it a lot harder, but unless you're making very large flash movies with the images embedded in them, the flash code still has to point to a folder of images somewhere on the server, which means anyone with more than a basic understanding of server referencing and stuff (which I don't understand) can eventually find. Like I said, took my nerd friend about 30 seconds, I haven't been able to do it since with about 3 30 minute attempts.

Dave

[Simon B]

I am not terribly fussed I am just a country boy and generally carry a country attidue, just like to know where I stand,

seem to remember rob had some U67 photos he took and put on the bay

your responses have been awesome....

Like I said I have been meaning to do this for years and every time I get my ass into the page I get distracted by something else,

I think it will look good though

[OzDrum]

any publicity is good publicity! Get the photos up!

This sounds like the musos who are too afraid of playing their songs to others for fear that it will be stolen - I've come across a number of those in my time. Seriously what are the chances
it will be "stolen" - anyone serious enough would know what you have from the list also.

just take the shots, embed your logo into them and get them up!

[DwaneHollands]

Just some further food for thought...(again this is still not as beautiful as untouched shots)

When I said put the logo in the centre. You might be able to around with a compromise is to have the logo 'strategically' positioned so that if they did crop the photo it would be useless to them. Again if you've got logo's on your photo's and they get distributed, just more people aware of you studio ...and it's free.

[mfdu]

simonB

being an ex-country boy myself, i dont think i even locked a door for my first 16 years.

my (unintentional) solution has been to ensure that i'm so ghetto that nobody in their right mind would rip off my images - why talk Brooklyn when you're actually Toorak?
(if you know wot i mean)

but that may not help if you actually want to appeal to prospective clients . . .


cts.

[Kurt]

Clients just get in the way and make a mess anyway...

simonB

being an ex-country boy myself, i dont think i even locked a door for my first 16 years.

my (unintentional) solution has been to ensure that i'm so ghetto that nobody in their right mind would rip off my images - why talk Brooklyn when you're actually Toorak?
(if you know wot i mean)

but that may not help if you actually want to appeal to prospective clients . . .


cts.

[mfdu]

i smell what you're cookin, tiger.

i mean, since when have you had a client who actively contributed to the improvement of your studio capability?




attractive older women and bolivian marching powder notwithstanding, obviously . . .

[Martin]

flash makes them harder to steal.

although anyone can apple-shift-4 anything they can see on their computer monitor

that said with some clever designer-y type work you can work some textures and shapes into the images that make them harder to use

posting super hi res pics of your gear isn't going to swing people over to using you anymore than offering free booze... (well, maybe not..)

[TimS]

isnt there a way to disable right mouse cllicking of images, embedded objects, etc??
I've seen it before on evilbay and a few sites..

[Kurt]

All can be bypassed, some more easily than others..

isnt there a way to disable right mouse cllicking of images, embedded objects, etc??
I've seen it before on evilbay and a few sites..

[Simon B]

so far this is the only shot of all of them together... I am not happy it but its a start, just have to find the the perfect back ground and layout



all the aussie stuff.


this is a start, on the right track I am just not entirely happy with it.

any suggestions?

[Sheer Noise]

Yeah.... book me to come down and take some AMAZING photos for you hahaha....

Seriously though, there's quite a few hassles with those pics from a technical aspects.

They are pretty soft in the old focus department for one. It must have been bloody dark in there to be getting 1/4sec @ 2.9 and 1/8sec @ 2.8. What ISO was the camera set to?
You really need, for shots like those, to be setting your aperture up around f/9-f/16 and focussing the camera on the closest piece of equipment, then positioning that piece of
equipment in the frame as per preferred composition... that way everything is in focus ("sharp") from the front to the back of the image. If you're doing it in the same room
with the same lighting on that ISO, you're probably going to get a good 15-30 second exposure time at those apertures.... so make sure you have a decent tripod handy, and
maybe some kind of remote trigger...

One thing to be careful of, while increasing the ISO on the camera will get you faster shutter speeds at smaller apertures (like f/16), you also increase the amount of grain
(digital noise) in the image.... On some cameras (particularly back in the old film days) this can be a nice effect, on a Finepix S1500 it will be U.G.L.Y.

I do a corporate photo profile (2 hours shooting at your place of business and all photos retouched and in full resolution within 24 hours for $750 - plus airfares)....
(and always happy to discuss discounts for TRM members).

Or you can just settle for pictures that you're "not entirely happy with" ;)

For the website design... have you thought about something simple like iWeb (mac only)... I've made some great layouts on there and it's sooooo easy to build and update...
takes very little time at all!

Dave.

[Chinagraf]

Hey Simon, I'm a Virgo, so take it with a grain of salt..but the first thing I notice is the uneveness of the stack of amps. It looks kinda jumbled.
Could you lay them all out in a way that is somehow neater looking? Would look good against a wall so your recording rig and coke bottles aren't in the background too.
I am a neat freak, so maybe others don't feel the same?
Love the rigs BTW. Do you have a pignose?

[Sheer Noise]

posting super hi res pics of your gear isn't going to swing people over to using you anymore than offering free booze... (well, maybe not..)

While I do agree that the quality of the photos may not be the selling point for a studio business, they are the first thing a prospective client sees when they check out your website... which I'm sure for many of us, is the first point of contact with new clients. I had a friend comment to me recently that their band chose one studio over another because it "looked like it had a better vibe" judging from the photo on the ad in AT mag... I don't think we place enough importance on the quality of the images we use to sell ourselves....

...but ... my main business is selling quality images... so take that as you will. :)

Dave

(edited to remove salt reference.... we gotta watch our health around here... what with all the iced vovo's going around).

[Simon B]

Hey Simon, I'm a Virgo, so take it with a grain of salt..but the first thing I notice is the uneveness of the stack of amps. It looks kinda jumbled.
Could you lay them all out in a way that is somehow neater looking? Would look good against a wall so your recording rig and coke bottles aren't in the background too.
I am a neat freak, so maybe others don't feel the same?
Love the rigs BTW. Do you have a pignose?

Every single virgo I have met is the definiton of OCD, what you are saying is right, and I completly understand.

these are not going to be on the webpage, just the first photos I have taken with all of them in the same space. I gues its a little overwhelming and

Dave Flying you down and getting some shoots would be cool, Just not entirely feasible at the moment, but definetly out of the question

Thank you for your response, alot to look at. and I apreciate it. I wouldnt mind having a discussion with you to see what we could work out.....

cheers Simon

[Kurt]

I'd set the "coolest" amps up and photograph them individually, then the photo's look neater and you you can have a little blurb about what's special about them. The background will be less distracting if the shot is tighter too.

[Chinagraf]

OOh yeah, you could make them like footy cards for each amp with stats and stuff..

[Sheer Noise]

I'd set the "coolest" amps up and photograph them individually, then the photo's look neater and you you can have a little blurb about what's special about them. The background will be less distracting if the shot is tighter too.

... and then you can use your shallow depth of field created by larger apertures (like 2.8) and blur the background out completely! :)

Dave.

[Simon B]

Love the rigs BTW. Do you have a pignose?

No I dont, eventually,

for a fraction more then a pignoise I got

I do have a little one watter called a moonrock, made by a guy in sydney, he doesnt make them anymore though

and I have 2, 2watt amps made by a guy from newcastle. these amps are monsters


I am really digging the idea of football cards