American Photo Steps Up

Well, just when I thought the spirit of free speech had left the US publishing environment, American Photo magazine steps up to the plate. This month they have a cover story on controversial photography and matched the article by printing a selection of the work – including on the cover itself.

Now, these are not pornographic or even nudes, which turn up regularly in photographic magazines. These are controversial for all the right reasons, they expose a view that others may find uncomfortable or they portray the human condition in a less favorable light. In other words, they force us to look at ourselves or think about things we would rather pretend didn’t exist.

What I was also impressed with is they explained the background behind the photograph and sometimes the price the photographer paid for presenting the work.

One of the most moving pieces is a picture of a little starving African girl trying to make it to a feeding station. A short distance behind her is a vulture waiting for her to fail. It’s a disturbing picture of what is probably an all too common occurrence in some parts of the world. After the shot, the photographer chased off the vulture and carried the girl into the station. This was not a posed work, but rather what he saw there – and this was not the only staving person in the area.

For his efforts, he received a well deserved Pulitzer Prize, but also an unusual amount of abuse. For many people seemed to want to kill the messenger and blamed him for the situation, as if he was responsible for girl’s plight. Personally, I think people just hated being shown something they wanted to ignore, which is fact that a lot of people on this planet are starving to death. To deal with this reality, people sent him death threats, nasty letters, and many other forms of scorn. Unfortunately, it turned out to be too much for him and he committed suicide less than a year later.

Photojournalists have a difficult job. They need to travel horrible locations and face horrible situations with enough human compassion to capture a photograph that explains to the rest of us what’s happening there. Besides the physical risks involved, it also requires them to risk a lot of physiological damage. Conflict photographers are just as likely to get PSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) as combat veterans.

American Photo is to be commended for presenting this work in a fair and balanced manner. To present it all is probably a challenge, as I expect they will be receiving nasty letters from a variety of special interest groups. Hopefully, they will continue to step up and show this type of work.

The self-censorship of the modern press is disturbing and dangerous. The desire to avoid controversial subjects or views in the interests of maintaining audiences or market share or advertisers risk losing the freedom of the press that was fought for in the first place. It’s not safe speech, commonly held views, or government approved statements that need to be protected – even the most repressive regime allows this already. It’s the dangerous speech, the speech that offends some and makes others think that needs to be defended. This is the type of speech that needs a Charter of rights and freedoms or a bill of or rights or the protection of high courts. This is the speech that tells us what’s actually happening and makes us consider what should happen. This is the speech that gives us the knowledge to vote properly and forms the foundations of a free and just society. Without it, we are nothing.

As Voltaire said a long time ago “I may not agree with what you’re saying, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.”.

Here’s to American Photo for doing their bit to maintaining this freedom and this tradition.

Canadian Copyright Law under review

The Canadian Government is in the process of reviewing the existing copyright laws with the intention of "correcting" them. They have started a consultation process with the public and the following is my response:

1. How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized?

As a professional photographer, my only value to a client is my skill, training, and experience. My only asset is the photographs I create and my only protection from abuse is the copyright laws. My clients are larger, better financed, and better able to endure a legal process that an individual such as myself. Even if in the right, I am unable to sustain an extended legal process without destroying my business and the people who depend on me. They are many and I am one, so they can steal from me without some form of protection.

Canadian copyright laws need to be modernized and improved, but they need to remember and reinforce their purpose. That purpose is not to protect the interests of large corporations, but to protect the individual creator from abuse from both individuals and groups, such as corporations. Canadian copyright law currently fails in this mission, as registration does not use a sample of the work, copyright infringement is difficult to detect and to punish, and there is no support in the legal process for enforcement or restitution. Willful infringement, which should suffer the most penalties, is not even recognized properly. To protect my work, I am forced to register my copyright in the US and use the Berne convention to protect myself in my own country. It has forced me to turn to the American legal system for protection in my own country. This is wrong and a complete failure of the system - this is what needs to be corrected.

2. Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time

The laws must be changed to use the strength of the state, in the form of the legal system, to protect the individual creator. Of all the parties involved, they are the most vulnerable and the most underrepresented. This is not the individual who copies materials, as this requires neither skill not artistic talent, but rather the individual who can create art and intellectual property. This person strengthens our country with every creation and this person deserves the protection of copyright laws with strength and focus.

3. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?

4. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada?

5. What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?

All three of these questions are answered in the same response.

A true registration process that includes a sample of the work to be protected and a certificate. Infringement against registered copyrights should have mandatory penalties of a magnitude that is noticed by the largest infringer - corporations. Each infringement should be fined individually and legal services at a free or reduced cost should be made available to individual content creators.

J.R Rowlings created an industry unto itself and one of the most successful book series in history. She would have failed had she not been able to protect her work through copyrights. Most poetry, painting, and photography is created by individuals (although some photography is created by a team led by an individual). Without copyright laws, there would be no value in our creations and there would be no reason for us to focus on the effort. The result would be a grey and mediocre world full of endless slight variations of the same idea. The ease of copying does not increase the creativity of the copier, it simply weakens the efforts of the creator. This is the very reason copyright laws must ecist.

The value if the individual creator is rarely noticed, except in hindsight, but it is their creative efforts that bring true value to the world. The arts are often how the value of a society is measured and without individual creators there would be no arts, with solid and strong copyright laws there are no true creators, just copies.

Regards,
--

Scott MacQuarrie, CPP
Certified Professional Photographer (www.certifiedphotographer.com)
ZWCX Photography     www.zwcx.com
99 Bronte Rd, Suite 123
Oakville, Ontario, Canada   L6L 3B7
416-818-4449               scott@zwcx.com

Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon is one of my favorite photographers.

The clip below is from a show at the International Center of Photography, called "Through the Eyes of Richard Avedon". The clip includes comments from the curators of the show and mentions a few things I did not know about Richard Avedon's Career.

For example, Harper's Bazaar had a policy that they would not use photographers non-Caucasians in the magazine - ever. Well, Avedon threatened to quit unless that used a Portuguese-Chinese model he liked. He, of course, followed this with an African-American model and thus started the trend of matching the ethic background mix of the public in the magazine.

I wish I could see the show in NYC, but I am not traveling for a little bit. Hopefully, someone will report back on the show.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/05/13/fashion/20090514-avedon-feature/index.html

Requiem for Ringo

Requiem for Ringo

I'd like you to meet Ringo. He's a coon hound and he's five. I was recently asked to take some photographs of Ringo by a good friend of mine.

They adopted Ringo several months ago and rescued him from an unhappy place. He's had a difficult life, but my friends Steve and Gwen took him home and made him a member of their family. He gets lots of attention, plenty of walks and all the food and water he needs.

Unfortunately, they discovered a lump in his throat and it turned out to be Lymphoma, a nasty form of cancer and inoperable in this case. Ringo was not given long and my friends wanted to get photographs of him while they could.

We spent a pleasant Saturday morning in the park. Ringo was in great spirits and filled with the joy of being alive. Dogs live in the moment and wouldn't have cared about his illness even if we could have explained it to him. I was honoured to have been given the opportunity to meet him and to capture some of his joy for my friends.

Ringo died today.

In my brief time with him, he showed me a few things that I should have known already. That life is brief and we should cherish each moment and the people close to us. That the real power of photography is its ability to capture these moments for the future.

Ringo is gone, but not forgotten.

Color Management in Firefox 3

Live and In Color!

Colour management is a critical issue for all professional photographers. We invest significant time and money in equipment to create proper profiles of our monitors, printers, projectors, and even the cameras themselves.

Unfortunately, one of the largest populations of viewers of our work has been unable to take advantage of this investment in color management. That group would be web users, who are often viewing our website and work online. Without color management, we are helpless against the color errors on the audiences monitors.

Now, with an embedded profile, the data is there to display the colors correctly (as defined by the photographer and their equipment). Until now, web browsers simply ignored this data and used whatever default profile they considered correct.

Until now.

I recently discovered that Firefox 3 has enabled color management. It's not well documented and not easy to find, but you can turn it own.

Here's how:

1) enter about:config in the URL bar (BTW, this bar has a LOT more functionality than you would expect)

2) Click through the warning. Basically, you can fubar yourself nicely if you randomly change items here.

3) look up gfx.color_management.enabled (use the search function, as it's much easier)


4) The default is false (no idea why,as it only uses a different profile when it finds it). Right click and set it to true.


5) Restart Firefox and see the colors as the work's creator intended.



Hopefully, the next version of Firefox will have this on by default and other browsers will start following this example.

No Contest

.....that includes a rights grab

Photography contests are wide spread and very popular for both amateur and professionals alike.

For the amateur it's a chance to measure themselves against their peers and see just how good they really are at photography. For the professional, it's much the same thing, but also an excellent tool to distinguish yourself from the other shooters in the market. It becomes one more credential and a means to get noticed. Many a mailing to clients has begun with the announcement of a contest win.

Most photography contests are well run, serious, and fair. Unfortunately, this is not the case for all of them. There is a rising a subtle trend in photography contests that has developed almost unnoticed. Almost, but not quite, as many of the professional organizations have started warning their members of this threat.

Threat? What threat? Well, some of these contests have some interesting clauses relating to rights and permissions. Now every contest needs to promote itself and often does so by using the work of previous winners. . All contests have an entry rule that grants the contest management the right to use the work of entrants for self promotion. They need this rule to operate and everyone benefits. The contest can promote itself and the winners and runner-ups get the attention they deserve.. No problem here.

The problem happens when these rules include the permission to use winners work for any purpose at all. This permission often includes being able to license it for any purpose, including advertising and even to third-parties.

What this means in simple terms is the contest management can use your work as part of their own picture library and license it to anyone and everyone. I've even seen contest rules that prevent the photographer from licensing their work themselves without permission. In other words, they own every photograph entered into their contest - and they often charge $10 for each entry. This means that the poor people entering these contests have actually paid to have their work stolen from them.

This is not an isolated event or a particular contest. It's happened in quite a few and not just contests for amateurs , even some professional contests have tried this nonsense. Of course, smart professional photographers belong to professional organizations, such as the PPA (Professional Photogtrapher's of America), ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers, and others. These groups represent thousands of professionals and can bring a lot of attention to something that affect us.

These groups and others have notified their members repeatedly of these rights-grabbing contests and even managed to get some very high profile contests to adjust their rules correctly.

So....read the contest rules carefully before you enter and if you think they are asking for more rights than the contest self-promotion, decline to enter. There are plenty of well managed contests you can enter. Voting with your feet and your dollars will help drive these unfair contests to either be fair or be gone.

Avedon on the Internet

I'm not sure of you are a Richard Avedon fan, but I am one. I really like some of the interesting directions he took with his work. Not just his creative portraiture of the beautiful or famous (or both), but work like his American West. Just taking a road trip and photographing what we consider the familiar in a way that highlighted it and let us see the interesting things that are around us every day, but we often miss.

The Avedon Foundation (here) has an incredible collection of his work, both in photographs and articles. The site is clean and easy to navigate with a remarkable amount of material in a very uncluttered style.

I highly recommend you check out this site, as I don't think you'll be dissappointed.