Sunday morning column: right on spot!

[Erik M]

The restrictions against tripod use are at times to keep you from blocking the movement of pedestrians. Insurance companies may also have restrictions against this. Limits on tripods are also there to FORCE you to buy nice photographs from the gift shop, which is surely the worst reason.

Actually, the best way to fight this is to start a web site full of photos of placed you aren't supposed to photograph. Give away the photos to everyone. Make the silly laws look as silly as they are.

[RS Foto]

And why only the photographers. What happens if a take a chair, sit down near the golden gate bridge and begin to draw the bridge in its full details?

Terrorist do have much more time than we photographers to plan their malice!

They are not in a hurry like we sometimes are and do behave far much more normal than we photographers.

Oh our dear politicians.

[RS Foto]

Hi lexvo,

A copyright does not impede you of taking Photography whereever you want. It will punish you in the moment you make business with it, but as the ignorance will, the guards of this buildings do not know the difference.

You are innocent until the copyright holder proves the contrary.

You must be doing business with the copyrighted landscape. If not you are not braking the copyright.

This is at least how I imagine it works.

So if the government of Tuscany has a copyright on the landscape they are God, right?

I can only get a copyright on something that I have created.

[Dan Sroka]

Think of it this way. Say you own an old house, and spent considerable time renovating it. It is now is a beautiful thing, and gets lots of attention. Then, imagine someone comes along, takes a picture of it, and begins selling prints of that photo. Imagine that that photo becomes famous (becomes iconic, like the Painted Ladies in San Francisco) and the photographer earns a pile of cash. How would you feel? How much of the revenue the photographer is earning is based on his skills, and how much is based on your work?

That's the question that comes up with all of these: what happens if you own something of value, and someone else tries to profit from it. Not an easy question, in the simplest cases.

This happened to me recently. I designed an ad a few ago, that was pretty successful. Then recently, a painter painted it, making an exact copy, and sold it for thousands of dollars. So, he is profiting from my creativity -- his only contribution was the idea "let's make this art". Nevermind that I think this is the dopiest kind of "art" -- it was interesting when Warhol did it, but after that it is just plain derivative. I have no recourse, because I made the design for a company, so they own it. If the company desires however, they could sue him for making money off of their property. They probably won't (bad press, little impact), but legally they could.

It is all an interesting question.

Dan

[lexvo]

Hi Dan,

For commercial purposes, I agree with you.

My problem is however, that I shoot landscapes, architecture etc. for private use. I like to watch my images when I return home and like to share these with friends. But there ends it: I don't sell them.

Just as I can see things I want to photograph things.

The problem for the guards at say a building is of course that they don't know if I'm shooting private or for commercial reasons. There must be a way to deal with this.

[Erik M]

>>The problem for the guards at say a building is of course that they don't know if I'm shooting private or for commercial reasons. There must be a way to deal with this. <<

It doesn't matter if your shoot is for private or commercial use. If it (the bulding) publicly visible and you're shooting from public property (a sidewalk) there is nothing they can do. Period. At least in the US. If you then sell the photo without a release the bulding owners are free to take you into court in a civil proceeding to collect from you. In other words, the law really governs what you can do with the photo AFTER it's taken, not with the actual taking of the photo. Under no circumstances does any private security guard or individual have the right to take your film or camera. Period. If they do that is theft. Call the police. Press charges. Your property simply can't be confiscated (not even by the police) without due process of law. Luckily landscape photographers don't have many of these problems.

[Bill Lawrence]

From a tourism standpoint, I think it would be better not to copyright a landscape (I'd heard about the tree in Carmel, and thought that was outrageous, but all of Tuscany?).  After all, distribution of lovely photos encourages people to visit such places, so limitations on photos seem to be counter productive for the tourist industry.  If places like, say, Bermuda, are willing to pay to have landscape photos placed in magazines etc, to advertise their locale, it seems to me that discouraging taking and distribution is turning down free advertising (I mention Bermuda, of course, because they recently had an ad which included a beach scene actually taken in Hawaii, not Bermuda).

As to rights of the photographer in the US (don't know sites for other countries, it might be worth checking out:

http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm

An excellent one page PDF file entitled "The Photographer’s Rights: Your Rights and Remedies When Stopped or Confronted for Photography", by Bert Krages - he also has a book on legal aspects of photography.

Bill

[lexvo]

As to rights of the photographer in the US (don't know sites for other countries, it might be worth checking out:

http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm

An excellent one page PDF file entitled "The Photographer’s Rights: Your Rights and Remedies When Stopped or Confronted for Photography", by Bert Krages - he also has a book on legal aspects of photography.

Bill

Bill,

Thanks for this info! I'm trying to get likewise information on Europe.