Photo competitions

ThePrettyDamned

I've never entered one and doubt I will as I've no interest in doing so. 

However, I read the terms of one today - the prize was £50 voucher for the brand, and to enter, you have to have something made by the brand visible. 

You allow them the rights to use the image, indefinitely, in any marketing and promotional material for any photo submitted, winner or not. 

That £50 voucher sounds like a very, very cost efficient way of getting loads of marketing photos from hundreds of people around the world. I know some people would find it cool to see their photo used, but I'd feel incredibly ripped off if I found out a big name brand was using my photo to promote their goods with them having not paid for usage, nor provide credit for the image. 

Ranty rant rant mcranterson. I'm sure it's always been like that, but it does seem a bit cheeky. 

Emp_Fab

Bastards.  Name and shame so I can boycott them.

Bastards.

Sporky

 It's better than that 'give us your work for free exposure' scam a few have tried. But only barely.

ThePrettyDamned

Emp_Fab said:

Bastards.  Name and shame so I can boycott them.

Bastards.

I don't know if it's really of consequence - it turns out this has been going on for a long time. 

http://digital-photography-school.com/photo-contests-–-is-that-a-contest-or-rights-grab/

I found one on a watch website earlier (the thread got me looking at jewellery I cannot afford ) but a cursory Google of photo competition X (where X is a brand) will show it's quite commonplace. No boycott needed, you'll have nothing! 

ThePrettyDamned

Sporky said:

 It's better than that 'give us your work for free exposure' scam a few have tried. But only barely.

It was one of those that actually had me wondering to be honest. 

Apparently, some companies even reserve the right to sell your photo as stock. Fucking ridiculous. 

I had a thought too - with all the fake news going around, I wonder how many photos used by "journalists" are from trust worthy photojournalists and therefore known to be honest and representative, despite any artistic editing? Everyone has access to a camera and editing software these days, so doctored images could be commonplace to support misleading fake news. 

Strange times. 

Emp_Fab

Don't you dare deny me my rage !  Name the company !!  I demand my boycott !!!

richardhomer

Emp_Fab said:

Don't you dare deny me my rage !  Name the company !!  I demand my boycott !!!

It was the Fretboard Calendar competition....

WezV

I have seen it with a home brew competition.  You get a case of beer and the pride of seeing your beer in some shops.  The brewer gets the rights to the recipe.

doesnt seem quite right to me

ThePrettyDamned

WezV said:

I have seen it with a home brew competition.  You get a case of beer and the pride of seeing your beer in some shops.  The brewer gets the rights to the recipe.

doesnt seem quite right to me

Always protect your license. 

MagicPigDetective

Oh it makes me mad. Mad! 

Sporky

WezV said:

I have seen it with a home brew competition.  You get a case of beer and the pride of seeing your beer in some shops.  The brewer gets the rights to the recipe.

doesnt seem quite right to me

That seems an unreasonable step beyond the "come up with a flavour of crisps" ones. Though I still feel a bit cheated that my very on-trend suggestion of "fiery lithium ion battery" wasn't selected. It'd be very hot and quite fizzy.

stickyfiddle

We had similar on a desert version of though mudder. I got into quite an argument with the organisers - a flipping photography club of all things. 

They offered the "opportunity" to work 10 hours in the middle of the desert taking photos of entrants on their way through one of these obstacle course things. In return they'd give you back the right to use the pictures for your portfolio only (i.e. not for commercial use), but they owned the long term rights and would be selling prints to the competitors, obviously. Each photographers was also obliged to submit at least 200 fully edited shots, presumably to ensure that the organisers had enough pictures to guarantee a decent number of sales. And you even had to submit portfolio shots in advance to prove you were decent with a camera.

ThePrettyDamned

stickyfiddle said:

We had similar on a desert version of though mudder. I got into quite an argument with the organisers - a flipping photography club of all things. 

They offered the "opportunity" to work 10 hours in the middle of the desert taking photos of entrants on their way through one of these obstacle course things. In return they'd give you back the right to use the pictures for your portfolio only (i.e. not for commercial use), but they owned the long term rights and would be selling prints to the competitors, obviously. Each photographers was also obliged to submit at least 200 fully edited shots, presumably to ensure that the organisers had enough pictures to guarantee a decent number of sales. And you even had to submit portfolio shots in advance to prove you were decent with a camera.

Fucking joke. The problem is there are a lot of people that would like to make a go of it, but don't understand that if you don't charge and don't respect your own work, no one will. 

With those events, you just end up with 200 pictures that look the same - so only one portfolio image, really. Pointless. If you're going to work for free, do something very worthwhile and keep your rights intact. A personal project with amazing results will go much further than saying, "I worked for these guys for free and they even let me use images in my portfolio!". 

Apparently, bands and musicians are starting to draw up contracts where the images taken by the employed photographers and videographers are owned by them, and licensed back to the photographer for personal use and portfolio... 

Sporky

ThePrettyDamned said:

Apparently, bands and musicians are starting to draw up contracts where the images taken by the employed photographers and videographers are owned by them, and licensed back to the photographer for personal use and portfolio... 

I think having clear licensing on such pictures is entirely sensible. If the band has paid for the pictures, I'm not sure that's an entirely unreasonable licence either.

stickyfiddle

Sporky said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

Apparently, bands and musicians are starting to draw up contracts where the images taken by the employed photographers and videographers are owned by them, and licensed back to the photographer for personal use and portfolio... 

I think having clear licensing on such pictures is entirely sensible. If the band has paid for the pictures, I'm not sure that's an entirely unreasonable licence either.

Agreed. If there is a payment of actual money then it's completely reasonable to draw up that agreement and negotiate the relevant fee according to which way the rights are split. 

Where it may be a problem is if no money changes hands. The trouble is, just as in music, there are plenty of people trying to get established who *will* work for free, so the marginal value of an established professional is decreased as a result.

ThePrettyDamned

stickyfiddle said:

Sporky said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

Apparently, bands and musicians are starting to draw up contracts where the images taken by the employed photographers and videographers are owned by them, and licensed back to the photographer for personal use and portfolio... 

I think having clear licensing on such pictures is entirely sensible. If the band has paid for the pictures, I'm not sure that's an entirely unreasonable licence either.

Agreed. If there is a payment of actual money then it's completely reasonable to draw up that agreement and negotiate the relevant fee according to which way the rights are split. 

Where it may be a problem is if no money changes hands. The trouble is, just as in music, there are plenty of people trying to get established who *will* work for free, so the marginal value of an established professional is decreased as a result.

It's more about ownership - ordinarily the image is owned by the photographer, but it's becoming more common that the band will want to own the images (raw data) - so the photographer cannot use them themselves for anything more than portfolio. 

The band, ordinarily, would have a license to the images which could be long term (effectively letting them use it for promotional stuff, books, album covers, whatever is in the agreement) but for the band to be able to resell the images to, for example, a marketing department for a signature guitar, means the artist gets no licence fee for that reproduction but the band does.

Theoretical, and I've not heard of this actually occurring, but I have heard of contracts that would allow this. I'd hope, whoever was taking the photos or videos, was being paid very handsomely to sell rights... 

ThePrettyDamned

Of course, this is all hypocrisy because if the foo fighters asked me to shoot for them, I'd crawl through glass to do it. 

PolarityMan

Photography is a tricky one though. The equipment and means are so common that an ordinary snap is practically valueless and the results can sometimes surpass a professional shot especially if the stand out part of the photo is the subject matter rather than the photo composition / execution.

When people hire photographers I think what they are really looking for is guaranteed consistency in a lot of cases (think Wedding photography as an example).