Lessons
What Is Food Porn?
11:48 2Food Photography Lighting
07:14 3Food Photography Props
05:01 4Food Styling Tips
12:29 5Food Styling Tools of the Trade
04:36 6Camera for Food Photography
13:53 7Food Photography Camera Settings: Do The Math
10:20 8Understanding Light Meters and Settings
09:13Lesson Info
Photo Copyright
Okay, let's talk a little bit about copyrighting because it's something that's important to people. And I have already talked about this, I broken by saying that I am up diametrically opposed to work for hire arrangements, I don't think they benefit anyone because I honestly as a photographer, you're not retaining any of your intellectual property. Um, and that is a problem. And I think it's a problem in our industry that there are people who are willing to do that type of work because what you're doing is you're training the clientele to think that that's the way it works. The more people. That's why I'm happy that this was something that was really popular and people were looking forward to hearing because I want to get that message out. I want photographers to understand that if you don't retain your copyright and you don't understand usage that you're going to get used. I think that's a terrible business practice. And I understand it. Look, I understand if you want to make money an...
d this is the only opportunity you have. But the reality is that if you are, we are not unionized, we're not collective. We don't have a set of rules. We don't have structured pricing were individual business people, but on some level, we all operate in the same industry. And if you don't respect the idea of intellectual property, um you're hurting the industry, you're hurting yourself and you're hurting everyone else who does this business. If you're selling yourself cheap, if you're giving it away, you've got to get something back in return. And if it's work for hire situation, you're going to um one day you met regret it, and I'll give you an example is that picture, right? I retain the copyright on that picture of the chef who worked in Las Vegas. I didn't say I wasn't and I used the picture on my website because I liked it. And a couple other things that I had with, and I wasn't gonna, it wasn't intending on selling it to anybody. But the reality is I retained the rights to that picture. If I had just given up the rights to that picture, and now it's uh a life size poster at a restaurant in Las Vegas. I lost that's a that's a lose, you know, so you don't want it. That's the that's the whole issue there, right? Is everything that comes out of your camera belongs to you and your mind and your brain. These are the things that created that image, your hard work. So if you don't insist on retaining your copyright, you're losing potential earnings in the end. And like a negotiation with an advertising company. And I told the story at the lunch table the other day, we were sitting there talking is how I shot a job for a major international marketing international brand uh to almost three years ago now. And because I retain copyright on all the images, they have to continually re license the pictures to use them. So it's like getting a new job every time they want to use the pictures, that's why it's important to keep your copyrights. A shared copyright is a pretty standard procedure because the idea is that it's not only your property, but it's theirs as well. Um This ends that that particular arrangement ends with advertising though, when it's editorial, that's one thing advertising something completely different and publishing as well. Because you negotiate up a lot of this stuff ahead of time. Most of the time when you enter into an arrangement for a a photo shoot is a contract and that contract will spell out exactly what your rights are. And if you don't like what's written in that contract, strike it, send it back renegotiate. Don't just accept it just because they send it to you and read the fine print because they will sneak in these little things where all of a sudden you're sitting there going, oh, I don't have uh I can't do that. That's terrible. Now, I never thought of that. Read the contract, understand what they mean. If you don't know what it means, Get somebody in your life who does have a lawyer read it. If you know a lawyer or a friend who's a lawyer or somebody who's familiar with reading business, you know, photography contracts, another photographer and try to understand the terminology that's there. Like the way we just talked about work for hire, right? That's a term that appears on contracts. This is work for hire. You need to know what that means. Um, so these things that we're talking about with copyright and shared copyright and usage. Now, when you talk about licensing pictures you're talking about and entities legal right to use the image that you've created, that's usage. Now, every contract, whether it be editorial or not, there is sometimes a moratorium on the picture. So let's say, and that's usually what happens with an editorial photography, like newspapers and magazines. There's, there's a moratorium on it, meaning they can use the picture in there whatever they want. You have to wait a certain amount of time before you're allowed to use it in another venue or resell the picture because it needs to retain the integrity of the original story. And I don't know that that's gotten any trickier because of the web, which you would, I would have thought it would have because I think that the entities would have been like, well, let's extend the moratoriums because we're gonna use this for a lot longer on the web, but it really hasn't changed. Read that in your contract. And if you feel that the moratorium is way too long, if it's like a year or two years or things like that, you can negotiate that back. It's a bargaining chip, you know, any, anything in the contract is a bargaining chip and you'll know you'll figure out which ones you run up against that are stone walls and which one's a bendable, But it's it makes you feel and present yourself way more professional when you understand what's going on in the contract, read it, understand it, negotiated, strike things, send it back. So just so you know, and then people know they're dealing with somebody who knows what they're doing.
Ratings and Reviews
Unicorn Dreamlandia
I loved this fast class, the whole course was very complete but in this fast class you can easily get the idea of the business!