Tuesday, May 20, 2008

GGgggrrrrrr

YOU may recall last week I took a photograph of a woman driving along the Quays in Dublin eating a bowl of cereal. Morning Ireland were doing a road safety feature all week that I was following; I sent them the image showing how mad and blatantly-bad some drivers behave and it was mentioned on air.

At one stage then over the weekend AnCatDubh from Pix.ie commented here saying they had seen the pic in Friday's Evening Herald. So after some Herald hunting, there it was, no permission asked, not even so much as an email sent to me. Some of you may know that I am pretty easy to contact.

On top of it all I am quoted all over the place and there is not one attribution. I've called them and will be sending them an invoice.

For the record I have no problem selling my photographs just so you know. If it is going to be used in a publication that makes money I probably will charge you. After all, eh presumably, most of the images in, for example, a newspaper have been either bought or used via some agreement so why shouldn't mine.

Grannymar of course can use them whatever she likes. Then again that might be a bad idea, she is a bit wild... ;)

9 comments:

MrsDesperate said...

That was cheeky of them. I'd definitely be sending them a bill.
Just discovered your blog via twitter and like it a lot. And your little girl is gorgeous!

MJ said...

That's pants! Let us know if you hear anything back. Surely they wouldn't be bad enough to totally ignore you...would they?!

Anonymous said...

Sue the fuckers, sue sue sue.

Or at least send them a bill, get paid and then tell em to fuck off back to the scumbag land they came from.

Wankers

Anonymous said...

wow - my innocence.

There's a worrying trend in some of the media these days called 'publish first->pay later and only pay if detected by the owner of the image'. There's been quite a bit of it reported over on boards.ie in recent times.

I think if they *genuinely* have no budget and want to get a free image then they should have the common decency to attempt to make contact and offer at least attribution which perhaps would give 'pay back' in other non financial terms (increased site traffic, etc..). Ooops - there i go - innocent me again ;o)

I think if you kick up enough of a stink then you will probably be sorted with a payment in respect of the image but its probably not the point at all which is that all of us like consideration and fair play.

I hope it works out for you.

Cheers.

Declan said...

How much do you charge? This happens frequently to you doesnt it? Put a notice on your flickr

"Photos are available for publication:
With my permission €30
Without my permission €300"

Or what ever your chosen amount is :-)

C. K. Kelly Martin said...

How totally shoddy of The Herald (which is a hideous paper anyway).

I hope you get proper payment but they should've known better in the first place. As they made no attempt to contact you I'm guessing this is common practice for them.

Anonymous said...

Something similar happened to me but with the News of the World. I blogged about it at the time. They eventually sent me a cheque for £150 which was their "standard rate".

Sucks when it happens though. Good luck with the invoice. You should ring up and get a name first. Not sure who, either the picture editor, or someone in accounts?

Annie said...

That's so unacceptable. It's outright stealing. They shouldn't even have the option of paying you a "going rate" for it after publication, they should have to pay fines.

I think new laws need to be set up against journos stealing bloggy work. And capital punishment reintroduced for newspapers who steal bloggy work and then write horrible columns about how crappy the blogosphere is.

C. K. Kelly Martin said...

It seems like the Orphan Work Act would make this sort of thing legal in the States:

http://www.tinanicholscouryblog.com/2008/05/carol-heyer---orphan-work-act.html

Crazy! It's almost as though you're being penalized for creating art.