Interlude - intellectual property and generosity

I took a break from writing blog entries about the circumstances and stories surrounding the particular images from my contact sheets.  I’ve been thinking about something else lately, a cluster of issues around my photography.

I’ve been shooting photographs since I was eight and making my own darkroom prints since I was 14.  From the beginning, I gave away my photographs to the people depicted.  The volume of my work and my gifts increased significantly in college.  I soon ran into an issue.  I had a friend who became a lawyer.  I had a small legal issue that could be answered quickly.  The lawyer, to whom I had given many many photographs, told me to come into their office and I could pay for their opinion.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that people valued my photographs proportionally to the amount of money that they paid for it.  

One major problem for a professional photographer is that the people who hire you are usually not themselves good judges of photography.  If they were, they could shoot the photos themselves and not have to hire you.  This is why I resist shooting weddings.  People have presuppositions about what good wedding photographs look like and your job as a photographer is to create photos that are similar to what the bride and groom and family expect.  You need to read minds and then create photographs to match.

Consequently I have not been solely a professional photographer.  For awhile I was doing public relations for higher education and ‘hiring’ myself for the photographs I’d need.  That way I seldom had to deal with any client for my photography.  I got to create what I wanted.

There’s an old rhyme.  You do it to do it.  You do it for fun.  You do it for money, and then you’re done.

Recently, I’ve had a number of issues crop up.

The first issue.  I went to college with a talented cartoonist, Rupert Kinnard.  He created the first Black gay superhero, The Brown Bomber.  I shot photos of Rupert back in the day, and gave him copies.  This summer I watched a PBS documentary on gay cartoonists, “No Straight Lines,’ that featured Rupert.  It included a photo I’d taken of him, without credit without payment.  I followed up with Rupert.  He apologized.  He contacted his producer who told me that she viewed it as fair use.  I will contact my own lawyer to figure out what they think.

Rupert also said that the producer said that maybe she got the picture from the college we attended, Cornell College.  I got in touch with the director of communications, a woman to whom I’ve given my photographs to use in her publications.  She got in touch with the archivist who said, no we’ve got no written release - we didn’t give it to her.  Then the director of communications wrote, doesn’t the college own the copyright for the images you shot for the yearbook?  I explained why not.  I produced the images paying for my own photo paper and was paid a pittance for each photo requested.  This was not work for hire but images licensed for a particular use.  I used the same images in my exhibitions. 

She did not reply directly, but instead said that it was different when she did the yearbook a few years after.  The yearbook bought the photo paper.  I suggested that this was probably because the price of silver skyrocketed in the early 1980s and the student photographers didn’t want to bear that cost.  

Then a few weeks ago I got a message from her asking whether I had shot any photos of Julian Bond’s visit to Cornell College in the 1970s.  I sent her the link to my website showing her how to do key word searches.  I also said that I was reluctant to share photographs with an entity that claimed ownership yet had no possession.  She replied that she wasn’t interested in using a photo but that she was asking for Rupert.  Rupert didn't want to ask me directly.  She showed me a photograph of Julian Bond and Rupert and I replied that it wasn’t mine.  I offered a few possibilities as to whose photo it was.

She had also tracked down another question I had.  About five years ago I got an email from Cornell College's development office.  One of their greatest benefactors and trustee lived in the same dorm as I did, Tom Durham.  They wanted to honor him with a photograph of mine - a picture I'd taken of the residents of Altoona Hall on the roof of the dormitory taken from the water tower beside it.  I spent over an hour retouching out the dust spots and gave them the best image I could.  I got a perfunctory thank you, and I heard nothing back from Tom.  I had wondered whether the development office had told him that this was a gift from me as well as a gift from them.  I did not charge the college for the image or the time I spent in making it good.  The director of communications had learned that Tom wanted the photo.  Tom asked the development office to get it for him.  He knew it was from me and did not bother to thank me.  Obviously to a $500 an hour tax lawyer in Chicago a free photo from me, a municipal court judge, was worth what he paid for.

Last May I got an email from the leader of my high school class 50th reunion committee.  They were thinking of printing a placemat - did I have any images of the school that they could use?  In June I scanned a few aerial shots of the school taken in the ‘70s and sent her and the reunion committee a link to those photos.  And I showed them how to look elsewhere on my site for other possibilities.  I offered to shoot informal portraits of people attending the reunion at the sign in.  I also said that I’d been burned lately about having my photographs misappropriated.  I reminded them that when I scanned photos the last time, one of our classmates, Peterson, had offered to show people how to download screen shots to bypass the ‘no download’ function of that old web site.  I said that I would let them use a photo for their placemat, but that if there were any unauthorized use of my photograph, I was billing the committee for $500 as liquidated damages for this misappropriation.

I heard nothing back from them.

Two weeks ago I got an email from the reunion committee offering t-shirts and hoodies for sale that had a 50-year-logo with a photo of the school in the zero.  It was not my photo.  I wonder if I’d supplied a photo for the placemat, would it have become the photo for their shirts?  The sender of the email made a mistake in copying everyone email address, rather than sending it BCC.  I had a momentary evil idea to offer my own design of the shirt - not in just black and white - to the same audience.  But I wanted no drama.

This afternoon I got an email from the reunion committee director:

Eric
A long time ago, you have us a CD of our classmates. Is it ok to use this in our reunion collection video?
Joan

So, no word back for months, no acknowledgement of the photos I offered or the work I volunteered.  No greeting.  No “please.”  It was a quick reminder of how alienated I felt from my classmates 50 years ago.

I’ve usually been very generous with the images.  I recognized early on that the more ego I brought into a situation, the worse the photographs.  Though I’ve put in a lot of work over the years to improve my photography, ultimately my talent is a gift.  And I’ve wanted to pass that gift on.  But not when I feel that I’m being taken advantage of or that the images aren't valued as much I value them.

I gave it a lot of thought.  I asked the I Ching.  It gave me “Standstill (stagnation)” with the first and sixth line changing into “Following.”

I replied to that email in the same tone:

Joan
No.  Please return the CD to me at either this Friday's or Saturday's event.
Thank you.
Eric

I did add ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’

Now to see whether they already used them and were seeking permission after the fact.

I want to show others my photographs.  I want people to enjoy the photographs.

The last time I made a photo website, I had problems with people hot-linking the photos to use in other circumstances.  I had people screen capture the photos and use them without permission.

Now I have the website using low resolution copies of the images rather than the much more detailed higher resolution.  I have a watermark plastered across the images.  Both actions reduce the quality of the images I want people to enjoy.

I know that there are current AI tools that could strip the watermark out and ‘fill in’ the resolution to make it approximate the version I scanned.

I feel that I have been generous.  I feel that I have been taken advantage of.

I don’t know what to do.