For about the past 50 years or so the mantra spouted by mainstream media has been that, unlike say The National Enquirer, “We don’t pay for news”. Typically this was the answer given to photographers (and others) who were in possession of timely and valuable images or footage which they want to sell or license. All […]
Archive for category You can’t make this up
A long retired successful photographer called Ed the other day for some advice. He/she has been out of touch with the business (by choice) and enjoys life pretty much doing nothing. Out of the blue photographer gets a phone call from Giant Ad Age Agency, “Hey remember that super ad campaign you did for (Major […]
The great writer Mario Puzo wrote about the underworld of gangsters and in his seminal book, “The Godfather” , summed up the world lawyers live in quite eloquently with the line: “We are all honorable men here, we do not have to give each other assurances as if we were lawyers.” It’s amazing what can […]
The Tyranny of Numbers
Nov 6
We wish we thought of this title, but it’s the title of a book by David Boyle, and the title explains it all. It’s also a perfect title for this blog piece. (Lucky for us, titles are not copyrightable, but that’s for another blog piece). Numbers can be used in so many ways and for […]
There is a famous quote attributed to Mark Twain, who in turn erroneously attributed it himself to Benjamin Disraeli, which has been used by many, and is absolutely one of our favorites. It goes: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” This will be a blog article on statistics. Some in […]
We ran across this great letter to a producer from a songwriter, NJ White in the UK, as to why he is not willing to give away his work to the producer for free. The link is on Paul Resnikoff’s Digital Music News website. It’s a great read. Read it at this link or the […]
To post or not to post? That is the question. This was going to be a comment in reply to Damian in our “comments” area, but we decided it really warrants its own article. Basically, the question is, “Just what rights do you give up in those social media Terms of Service (TOS) agreements”? To […]
Those of you who attended our recent seminar at PhotoShop World in Las Vegas on Model Releases may recall our example of using a person in an ad or article dealing with AIDS who did not provide written consent for such use. Notwithstanding that we have had similar cases, there were more than a few […]
Not My First Rodeo
May 12
This is hardly the first time this has happened to me. A client wants to use photo of mine in a magazine – sounds great. Client specifies the photo, gives me the file specs, and I send the photo to confirm that we are talking about the same shot, etc. All is good and I’m about to send an invoice when they say: […]