Whose Picture is it Anyway?
Sometimes passing the camera around creates a sticky copyright situation.
Submitted for your approval, the following photography containing the author of this blog and his photographic idol/mentor, Jim Brandenburg.
Jim Brandenburg and Rikk Flohr
Photo Credit: Heidi Mae Niska
The shot above was taken at the TCACCC 2008 Spring Break event where Jim Brandenburg presented to over 300 photographers. The shot was taken with my camera by Jim’s assistant Heidi Mae. She was kind enough to snap the photo of me with my photo-mentor after the presentation.
My Canons are all programmed to fill in my copyright notice upon capture. Dutifully, my 20D filled in a © Rikk Flohr. Upon extraction from the camera, a more complete copyright was filled in by Lightroom.
Here’s the rub. I didn’t take the picture! Heidi Mae did-with my camera-which automatically applied a notice. So, whose picture is it anyway?
I am not a copyright attorney but I am guessing that it is not quite clear. Was Heidi my agent in shooting the image? Was she a de facto work-for-hire photographer? Is the image mine because I have claimed the ownership or is it Heidi’s by virtue of having snapped the shutter? Sticky wicket, to say the least.
How many of us pass our cameras around and allow others to take photographs-never realizing that we may not own those images? Heidi’s or mine? She gets the photo-credit for sure. I get the pleasure of having the image. The copyright? Who knows?
Opinions?
Rikk Flohr © 2009
August 18, 2009 at 11:49 am
Rikk,
Seems to me that it’s a about mutual understanding . If Heidi accepted the role of picture “taker”, as requested by you, the camera’s owner, then she was acting as your agent and just snapped the picture. You’re nice to give her that credit, but the image is yours. On the other hand, if she asked to borrow your camera to do her own photography and you relinquished your camera to her for that purpose, the copyright should be in her name and she should, at best, pay you for your time and materials to provide her those images, which have nothing to do with you, other than lending the camera to her.
my $.02
August 20, 2009 at 12:51 am
wow…it’s a great idea to put the copyright on every picture we’ve captured…is this so necessary?
August 24, 2009 at 9:54 pm
All my camera’s leave the copyright, my address, web site, every little detail. I then add more details to more important images.
August 28, 2009 at 7:23 am
The question is, how does one set up the copyright info in camera?
I can’t find any way of doing that in camera.
August 28, 2009 at 7:39 am
Read here: http://fleetingglimpseimages.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/copyright-claim-your-images/