Photography and "The Buyout"

Photographers who know what they're talking about HATE the phrase "BUYOUT". It's like nails on a chalkboard. Why? Because, among other things, it's such an ambiguous word that means one thing to the photographer, another thing to the photographer's client, and yet another thing altogether to the photographer's client's client. The Picture Licensing Universal Coalition (PLUS) promotes against the use of the word because it can lead to misunderstandings. View "buyout" to learn more about it, which, they in part caution:

Buy Out is a slang term, often misinterpreted as a transfer of copyright ownership of a work from the copyright holder to the client or client's agent. In the absence of a specific copyright transfer agreement executed by the copyright holder there is no copyright transfer. If this term is used, an additional, precise list of rights granted or transferred should accompany any license.

Further, clients who ask (or demand) a buy out either are trying to pull a fast one on an unsuspecting photographer by getting the whole pie for the price of a slice, or, unfortunately, they have been screwed over by a photographer in the past and are now in defensive mode trying to protect themselves and their client from that happening again.

There's a good discourse on the subject over at A Photo Editor - Ask Anything – The Buyout - that's worth a read.

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MediaStorm - Final Cut Recommendations

With more and more photographers migrating into video, one of the oversights in Final Cut Pro is how to easily centralize all of the ingested video, scratch disks, and render files into one central location. It takes a few minutes to properly set up each project so that you can migrate the files from one computer to another easily.

Brian Storm, over at his MediaStorm blog, has put together several short cuts for Final Cut Pro that will make your life easier, so go check them out here.

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Getty and Flickr's New Relationship

From time to time something good comes along from Getty Images. Such is the case with the latest announcement that people trolling Flickr for free photographs can license the photographs via Getty. I see this as a bit of a mixed bag, but with a net positive effect. The BBC reports here on the subject, as does Rob Haggart on his "A Photo Editor" column here, and even Paul Melcher sees something positive in it here.

It seems that Getty wants Flickr to be the middle man in the transaction, with Getty taking a piece of the pie as well. It's not clear yet how much a license will be, or even how much of a percentage everyone is going to take, but you can be sure that with an estimated 40,000,000 registered Flickr users, and multiple millions of images from them combined, even in an "opt in" approach, you can bet that a flood of new content will be licensable, and generate revenue for many parties.

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Non-Commercial Use of Photographs

All over the place, all manner of "free" content is made available, provided - and this is the big caveat - that it's used for "non-commercial" use. However, at what point does a personal use become a non-commercial use, become a commercial use?

Over at "A Photo Attorney", attorney Carolyn Wright has a great explaination of the subject, in her article, entitled "Defining Non-Commercial Use" (5/22/10).

As with all advice from lawyers, be sure to check with your own for matters specific to your circumstances

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The Future of Publishing

This is a remarkable way to reverse the way people look at publishing.

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Wedding Photographer - A Painful Incident

Below is a painful video for ANY photographer to watch. I've known a few photographers whom have suffered this indignity.

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One thing that strikes me immediately is that, while the photographer clearly had two camera bodies, he unfortunately placed both of them at risk in this situation. Surely, we commend him for his focus on getting the shot, but not at the expense of his gear. And, does he now not have any gear to finish the wedding? He still has posed photos and the reception to cover.

In the end, this incident likely cost him when he has to replace both bodies and lenses. It appears that some tuxedo-clad attendant smartly grabs at the camera ASAP to minimize the effect, and it looks like the "write" light is still illuminated, so, well, who knows?

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