Okay, as I've aged and become more experienced as a professional photographer, my colleagues and friends have become used to my ever increasingly rigid attitudes about working for free or little pay and demanding copyright respect.
I'll admit, I did my share of jobs for little or no money, gigs where they'll "take care of you next time," or they'll make sure this all adds up to a good, long-term contract. And there are two that I remember in particular that ended up not paying at all ... not because I agreed to work for free, but because they just didn't pay. I've done jobs for friends, who hoped it would become something, and I've even cheated myself, trying to put together deals I hoped to become something.
While all these experiences have taught me lessons, and while I think being rigid about payment is as foolish about being rigid on anything else (for example, why not do something gratis for a cause you believe in?) I wish, wish, wish that the world would understand that photography is a skill and a talent that requires a lot of experience and training to perfect. You should be paid for quality work. Period.
Now, this may seem to be an odd continuation of an earlier post, even a contradiction to my apparent love of the Vivian Maier Test, but it's not ... and worse yet, that's not where I'm going here. Rather, I want to talk about Facebook.
Often, my profile pic is someone else's picture. I recently lifted the one above from the Banksy FB Revolution page, where it was posted (note the passive voice, signaling my uncaring ignorance) and I thought it amusing and symbolic. I didn't ask, didn't pay, and don't plan to. Another was lifted from The Times magazine's cover, a picture of the stars of "Doctor Who." Didn't ask about that either. This isn't the first time I've wantonly lifted someone's image for my profile, and it probably won't be the last. Am I a hypocrite?
Well, aside from Banksy's anarchistic free-source attitude, I like to think not, but I'll also admit mine is a modulated response. These people have made some fine pictures -- as shown by the fact that I wanted to be associated with them -- and I'm sure it cost them time and effort as well as money to make them. As above, they deserve to be paid. So am I ripping them off? Are the thousands, millions of people who lift images and repost them on Facebook casually undermining not just the incomes of artists, but the whole concept of copyright?
Let me invert this: What if I found one of my pictures posted as a profile pic, or shared widely on Facebook. What if I made a meme, seen around the world, but not a cent to me. Well, the latter might frustrate me a little, but until some profit-making publication "printed" it (yes, quotes, as "printed" is the only available, if antiquated, term I think for distribution in something like the now internet-only Newsweek) I wouldn't expect anything from it.
Why? Well, I chose the profile pic example with intent. That is something I can feel rather confident about. Finding a picture of mine as someone's profile picture (a pretty bunny, say, though that's hardly my specialty) would strike me as amusing and complimentary. That individual doesn't expect to profit from the image, aside from the "Likes" of her friends, and has shown her admiration of the picture in the same way she might by cutting it out of a magazine and hanging it on her wall.
Ah, you might say, but you would have been paid by that magazine. Well, yeah. And, as I think about it, perhaps this is where the rigidity breaks down. The error here is in thinking about this in purely financial terms ... and coincidentally this is where I become consistent.
A magazine buys my picture with the intent of making yet more money from yet, usually in the form of fees from advertisers. The advertisers, in turn, are paying in anticipation of income because the magazine brings them the eyeballs of potential customers. My great claim to income in this equation is that my picture is more likely to cause people to look at the magazine than anyone else's. In this model, everyone makes money ... and the end user is more likely to pay with his attention than his hard-earned lucre. (For, even in the days when printed media were king, subscription fees didn't even begin to cover the costs of productions; advertising was the real income-producers, first, last and always.)
So where do the pictures in this blog fall? I'm always the first to admit that this is primarily a business venture, intended to raise my profile as a professional. However, it's also an exercise in personal expression, and though I wouldn't refuse income if it came my way, this costs me more (in terms of time and effort) than it makes (which is ... well, nothing). However, I have been careful for some time to use either my own pictures (primarily) or those that I know are in the public domain. Otherwise, I just link. This seemed like a good chance to run a test.
So, in the end, even in the gray area of this blog, I think I am consistent, even if my guide is like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's infamous definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it."
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