More on Protecting Your Work

There are several people on deviantART.com that I follow and one of those artists is Dave Ellis of the UK, who also goes by Dingodave. I began followind Dave because of his nude work. I liked the simplicity of his art, using natural lighting or his expert use of whatever light he could find available to do his bidding. However, when you look at the man's landscape work, OMF Goodness... you'll be mesmerized by his use of HDR. Even when he doesn't use HDR, the way he captures the local scenery around where he lives in Herefordshire, make me so envious, I want to move across the waters.

Oh...I'm sorry. I'm getting off the point as to why I am posting about him in the first place. (See how just talking about his work gets you distracted?) Umm, oh yeah. In his recent dA journal entry, Dave is disgusted by the recent theft of some of his artwork. According to his post, well, let me just put it in his words:

"That is until I 'googled' DingoDave as a image search today - in just 5 minutes I found 7 of my images on 5 different sites (including flickr and photobucket, suprise suprise ) - One A'hole even had my image for sale as a print!!!!"

Now that's just downright wrong. So not only are knuckle-heads pulling other people's images off the web and passing it off as their own, you've got low down scoundrels who will actually try to profit from your hard work! This has been an ongoing topic of discussion and area of concern for photographers every since the first image capture. Many opinions exist on the matter that go from one end of the spectrum to the opposite extreme. In a recent seminar/workshop, we got to listen to a pro give us a talk on copyrighting your work. But then another pro in the group began shooting him down on the spot, believing that none of any of the copyright laws work and that you should simply not have anything on the web...period. ~Good heavens~

I've seen some photogs welcome any and everyone to their body of work. Right-click at your heart's content, as far as they are concerned. I can't recall who, otherwise I'd definitely give you the link, but they surmized that the more their images showed up, the better exposure. Well, I guess that's fine as long as the right-clicker is giving you credit and singing your praises. I am not sure I am as comfortable as this artist in having my work in the hands of anyone who wants a copy. Yes, you expect those who will pull your images from the web where the final destination is their C: drive. But what can you do for the freaks who will do you harm or profit from your efforts?

I am not an expert on the matter, let me assure you. For that I invite you to Carolyn E. Wright and her bloggings and legal opines of lawful protections and rights of the photographers. I've posted on her blog, Photo Attorney before (just recently, in fact). Let me emphysize that I strongly suggest you become quite familiar with this woman. It'll do you good. I promise! However let me add in a disclaimer: That promise is not in a legal since, of course...just as a figure of speech.

For starters, register your images with the Library of Congress Copyright Office. As a rule of thumb, I do it every 3 months. That's because that any NEW work you produce is fully protected when registered within 3 months of its creation. Otherwise the protection starts on the date of registration. Infractions that occur before registration are not protected. Second, you need to let people know your work belongs to you. Throw a simple copyright text on your image. An ALT-0169 will get you the "©" (using a PC). I normally use © 2008 Terrell Neasley on my images. I also don't put images on the web at high resolutions. Typically a web image doesn't need to be bigger than 72dpi and I make the file size small like around 70kb or under. These are reasonable protections. Can someone lift your copyright info...sure. They can crop it out or just edit it out. The fact remains that you need to still show that you've made an effort to identify the owner to the image and protect it.

Also, you can build the metadata into your photos. Chances are, your camera already includes some of that info. I need to be better at this myself. In fact, there are a lot of things in which I need to be better. The metadata is embedded into the file of the image itself. You can also have digital watermarks in your images. I won't go into great detail on all this. You can easily google the points and get a plethora of info on anything you need to know. Creative Commons is another legal protection device that will actually let you stipulate terms as to your images use. deviantART allows this option. There are many software companies that provide a for-pay service that will track a certain amount of images for you. This way anywhere that image goes on the web, its traced and you'll be aware of its use. I have no idea as to what happens if the image is altered by someone. You'll have to check that one out on your own as well. One company that is barking on another unique trend is a search engine that searches by image not words. You can type in NUDE on google and do a word search or an image search based on the word NUDE. Tineye, of Idee, INC., will actually do a search for an image, based on an image and show you where that image pops up, whether its altered or not.

I'm sure there is something I missed here. This is not an all exhaustive listing on a guaranteed, sure-fire method of protecting your photographic expressions. It is a start, however. Some will disagree. I already know that. Where I am in factual error, let me know. All this is info is based on my own research and indepth study over the last few years.

These are a few more images of Clarissa. Isn't she just beautiful? This girl has been through a lot and she still keeps going forward and upward. Gotta give her credit. She's a trooper.

September Art Nude Photo Workshop #1

"How many Licks..."

"Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be." -Edward Weston

I'm starting to make some headway into this backlog of photo edits. I still have a ways to go, but at least I'm on a roll and have knocked out a good chunk of all I had to do. Well, the first of my September workshops is in the record books. I keep getting from the participants that each one is the best yet. I'm glad they've enjoyed them so much, but the pressure seems to mount each time I set up another model and location. This last model, Clarissa, was one of Jeff's finds. He did a personal shoot with her and then recommended her to me for a workshop. I'm glad he did. This was a very interesting girl with a even more intriguing story behind her. She is a real trooper. This girl was certainly not bashful and she didn't mind getting dirty. As you can see from the redness on her back, butt, and feet, she was all over the place. At times I was uncomfortable with her fearlessness. She got up high once but she could handle it.

All in all the event was a success, but just like in most cases, I was glad when it was over. Just dealing with all the coordinations to set it up were mind boggling and this event brought on challenges that would have felled a lesser organizer with ease. But hey, I was up for the challenge and I prevailed! Hooah! The first image up top is courtesy of good friend and photog, J.L. Wolfe, who shot this most opportune image of the back of my head as I was focusing on the model. What a great shot!

One of my other challenges has been to figure out what to do with the overwhelming response to my casting calls when I need models. I do one or maybe two workshops a month. I get way more responses than that and end up turning down excellent models or at least asking them to wait til the next one, which is when you lose them or never hear back. These girls don't like to feel second to anybody. I tend to book fairly quickly. Most times, when a model sees my casting and responds, I've already met with someone, interviewed, and booked. Then I'm left asking them to wait for the next one.

I need more paid gigs for my Las Vegas Art Models Group. I do more TFP work for my independent art, but I put together my group to help get more paid gigs for models who might not have many nude venues to work outside of schools and universities or photogs who just want to see a girl naked. I considered acting in the capacity of an agency, but that's not really where my heart is. I get requests for models, but they are not as consistant as I'd like. I'd much rather sponsor my own events, but then you get into the area of availability of photogs who'll pay. My workshops are fairly reasonable, but in a recent lighting seminar in my other group, the Las Vegas Photographic Society, we had several people RSVP to be there and then only 1 showed up. I have my group advance pay to avoid this, but too many events will only result in less participation. I don't have the market to sustain more events just yet. I must admit, if I had the means to pay the models out of pocket, I'd be holding an event every week. I'm sure that would grow the group well enough til the numbers support the effort.

At one point, I thought about creating a blog for my LVAMG in addition to this one. That's a no-go. Maintaining a blog is not the easiest thing to do. Content, time, and the committment to maintain it can be extensive. So this makes me wonder why another fairly prominent art nude blog chose to shut down. Imogens, just made its last post recently. I have no idea why, but I did notice they moved their operations from Blogger to Wordpress, then began posting less frequently. No explanation was given, but I kind of wish someone else were allowed to take it over and maintain it. There was some good stuff there.

And I'll end with a new link to a fabulous to the website of a young painter, Erin Jones. (Also, Click ->Here for her blog link). She's a good friend of mine and has become the best living artists I know. I don't make that statement lightly. The girl is good. I haven't seen her do any nudes, but you'll like her work nonetheless. Erin proved very inspirational to me despite her young age. She's a 20-something emerging artist with the wisdom of someone another 20 years her senior. I miss our long talks, debates, and conversations. She's got excellent insight and is someone good to bounce soul searching questions off of. Trust me, I take full advantage.