Pro-Imaging

This is aimed both at those photographers who perhaps do not fully understand either the value of or the need to defend their copyright, and at those clients/art buyers/commissioners who may think that requiring all rights from the photographer is a good idea.

Copyright is an automatically created right present in an original artistic work (e.g. a photo, song, poem, etc) from the moment you create it and it is freely given to you by the law. Thereafter it is up to you personally to defend that right from those who wish to acquire it from you. Why you may ask is it so important to keep copyright and why do so many competitions and clients try and take it from you?

Loss of Future Income 

Copyright is an intellectual property right and has real and significant value, something which large corporates like Getty Images for example are only too aware of and why they are in business in the first place. Copyright provides the owner of the copyright, which is you the instant you have taken a photograph, with access to a future potential income stream by giving you the sole and exclusive right to license usage of your photograph to others in return for a license fee.

A potential client contacts you wishing to use your image for some specific purpose. You issue a license specifying how the image can be used (e.g. in a particular advert), how long for (e.g. 1 year), and where in the world it can be reproduced (e.g. one particular country), and the fee that has to be paid to you. The greater the reproduction rights requested, for example needing a license to permit reproduction of the image throughout the world, the greater the license fee you will charge for such usage. The terms of the license are set by you, and this is how you as a creator can earn income from your creativity.

Copyright also acts as a safeguard against misuse of that original image, protecting both the creator and potentially any subject therein.

If copyright is handed over willingly or 'grabbed' via a competition's terms and conditions of entry, you lose any right to generate any further income from that image and give the new copyright owner all that potential.

Read Terms and Conditions carefully! 

Note however not all competitions seek to claim copyright. Instead they may state that you will retain the copyright, giving the impression that their rules are fair and respectful of photographers rights.

However look beyond that apparently respectful statement and you will usually find buried in the small print  terms such as "you grant a perpetual and irrevocable right to use your images worldwide and in all media without further recompense to you" or similar. In such a case they have just granted themselves the right to use your images for ever and for free! Although this does not remove your copyright, it does greatly restrict your earning potential.

For example you could be asked by a client to license exclusive use of your image for a period of time, say a couple of years, and in such a circumstance you would charge a significantly higher license fee. However because the competition promoter has got free use of your image for ever you are no longer in a position to make exclusive deals. Also, this practice of claiming free usage forever is hugely damaging to photographers everywhere because it is building immense libraries of images that can be used freely reducing greatly the need for photographers.

No wonder then, that so many competitions seek to create image libraries from the entries and amass large quantites of imagery to populate those libraries - it is a huge earning potential.

Preventing Misuse 

Preventing misuse and misrepresentation of an image is another excellent reason for the creator to keep the copyright. That way, any future usage and licencing of an image can be controlled and ensure that both the image and its creator are not compromised. Once copyright has been handed over, the new copyright owner may themselves pass the rights down to another agency and so on. This could be potentailly damaging to the creator and to anyone within the image itself.

Clients and Copyright 

It is common for clients to ask for copyright either in the official purchase order given to you or as part of the negotiation and estimating process. Sometimes, this is due a lack of understanding of what it is the client really needs, and sometimes this can be a deliberate attempt to wrest copyright from you. It is worth remembering that in the case of a Purchase Order it becomes a 'battle of the forms' with the last piece of paper on top having the final say...you need to make sure it is yours!

It does happen that when the usage requirements for a particular image are unknown at the point of commission, clients or buyers will play it safe and ask for 'all rights' (by which they may actually mean copyright). It is always preferable to offer an extended licence to use rather than surrender copyright for the reasons outlined above. Sometimes simply discussing requirements with a client or buyer can result in a better definition of the licence terms and clear up any misunderstanding.

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