Saturday, September 8, 2012

EOC WEEK 9: Letters of permission


I submitted 4 letters of permission for various things that I as a photographer would be likely to shoot and would need a release to do so:
  • ·      a child, to be signed by the parent or guardian
  • ·      a person of age 18 or older
  • ·      an object
  • ·      a building

I chose the child, the person, and the building because when submitting images to stock agencies they require such releases and won’t accept images without them. While I was researching them I found some interesting articles warning that it is better to be safe and get the release even if you are not sure you need it. In one case a photographer was offered money for some images he took of the backs of people in Costa Rica. He assumed the release wasn’t necessary but Getty images refused the images without the releases and so he lost out on some money.
The odd one in the list is the object, I chose that because I myself have sometimes shot copyrighted and/or trademarked objects and it would be useful to have such a permission in case I ever wanted to try to sell images of such objects. For example, I shot some Coke bottles once and Coke is a trademarked product.
The moral of the assignment is that it is probably wiser to go through the hassle of getting permission from the appropriate person rather than miss out on some potential revenue or risk getting sued because you used such images without proper permission.

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