In God We Trust

I love partisan politics! Yesterday, the U S House of Representatives had a complete melt-down over the issue of bailing out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion in an attempt to solve our current financial crisis. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, a leading economic indicator, immediately dropped almost 800 points.

Another side-effect of the failure of the House to pass the Wall Street bailout was that the Representatives were too busy with partisan wrangling that they plum forgot to vote on whether or not to adopt the Senate's orphan works language in deference to their own. In the meantime, there were rumors spreading that certain members of the House Judiciary Committee were keen on preserving their version of the bill, which could be relatively good news (the House version, while not in any way desirable, is still better for us than the Senate's version); but the best news came in an e-mail from the office of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), which said that "no Orphan Works bill will be scheduled by the House in this session."

It looks like we have a golden opportunity to regroup, re-strategize, and come up with a truly unified approach to the next Orphan Works movement, likely sometime in the next two years. Should the leaders of our various organizations fail to reach a consensus, for whatever reason, the memberships (you and me) should definitely rise up and throw the bums out and find new leaders who are committed to working together for the common good of all artists. The current feudal system is petty, serves the interests of no one, is completely unacceptable and it has to end.

ASMP, APA, PPA, SAA, EP, IPA: Let's get it together, and get together, for our common good and defeat the next Orphan Works amendment.

Register Your Copyrights & Prove You Care For Your Work!

While I suspect that key committee members in the US House of Representatives will be firm on retaining the protections for artists in their version of the Orphan Works bill, preferring the language of their bill to the competing Senate version, the Orphan Works amendment will almost certainly become law. The only thing that can possibly derail it is a prolonged floor fight over the Wall Street bailout and a desire to get back to their districts quickly to campaign for re-election. So... what do we do about it?

The most obvious thing to do is to prevent our works from becoming orphaned in the first place. I've proposed to the ASMP leadership that our highest priority in the near term should be the redrafting of the standard Terms & Conditions that govern our transactions: our estimates, invoices, delivery memos and licenses, and to lean heavily on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in creating a contractual penalty that makes it a no-brainer for our clients to preserve metadata in our digital files and to include a copyright notice that identifies the photographer/illustrator as the copyright holder to the image for all uses.

It's also important, in fact it's more important, for every photographer to to make copyright registration a normal part of your daily workflow. We now we have the option of online registration that makes it faster and easier to accomplish (and you get your documentation quicker, too). We have to prove we care for our work!

Looks Like Summer's Over

Spent a few days up in Door County (Wisconsin) at the end of August. Took the ferry to Washington Island for the day and tried to have fish for lunch. Guess what? None of the restaurants had any fish. Imagine that, I was on an island with no fish! Do you believe it?

What do you call 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of Lake Michigan? A good start.
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Above: Canon EOS-5D, 28~105/3.5~4.5 Canon EF Ultrasonic lens, ISO 200

Dirty Deed Done In DC

Jeeez! You'd think that with the entire Goddamned financial system about to implode the US Senate would have better things to do than to hotline S2913, their version of "The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008." These guys are just evil!

I must've written a dozen letters and made as many telephone calls to the Capitol in the past couple of years since this whole Orphan Works stuff got started, not to mention bugging my friends and colleagues to do the same.

All to no effect. The Senate sold us all down the river this afternoon when they passed the bill on a voice vote, and the House of Representatives is poised to do the very same thing any minute now. With 38 days to Election Day we should all be thinking about a 2009 with no incumbents in Congress. Throw the bums out! All of them!!

As I wrote last spring: copyright law is just fine the way it is. The only ones who really want to change it are those who would like carte blanche to avoid paying for the usage of artworks. Apparently there are more powerful interests with deeper pockets and more influence than there are photographers & illustrators, and the guys with the deeper pockets want nothing less than a free pass to steal our work.

It's time to quit shooting and do something else, photography is looking less and less profitable every day!!
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Above: Nikon F3HP, 600mm/f4.0 ED Nikkor lens, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film

The Best Picture Never Sold

I've recently written a brief note about my start in the stock photography business and the image that jump-started my career.....

I've been in the stock biz since 1987 when I signed my first contract with Telephoto. In the first two years I made about $1700 and thought, "there must be more money than this," so I started looking around for better representation (there was more, I found out later on that Telephoto was stealing from the photographers).

While I was looking at other agencies I received a letter from Tony Stone in London saying he'd seen a particular image of mine (copy included) and wanted me to sign a contract based on that picture alone. After swiftly completing my due diligence I signed-on with TSW. It's been 19 years and I've made a fair amount of money as a result of signing that contract, except that the image that interested Tony has never... never... been licensed.

Great picture, everybody loves it, never made a dime.

Go figure!
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Above: Olympus XA, 35/2.8 F Zuiko lens, Kodachrome 25

Holy Cow... A Two-Wheeled Society!!

GIRTON, Cambridgeshire (UK) - Been staying in Girton the past week. Girton is northwest of Cambridge, just a few miles away. Also about a mile east of Histon, which is more-or-less due north of Cambridge. The geography being what it is and the price of petrol being in the range of $8.00/gallon, or twice what I pay in Chicago, I've hired a bicycle and been getting around that way. It takes about fifteen minutes to bike into the center of Cambridge from here.

Cambridge is a college town, a very famous college town, and it's the major urban center for the region. As with any urban center on a Sunday, the park... theirs is called Jesus Green... is full of the usual types..... picnicers, sun worshipers, football (soccer) players, joggers, skateborders, roller-bladers, bicyclists, etc, etc. Oh, there's one more thing they have in the park here that we don't ever see in New York or Chicago parks: cows.

Notice the bicyclist in the picture? This truly a two-wheeled society. Bicyclists are everywhere. In fact, when I left the restaurant where I had dinner last night I turned around just in time to see a bicyclist whiz by..... at 10:30 PM.

Now, the last time I was in the UK was 1983. I recall being appalled at the food and that led me to think the English didn't know anything about cooking. Having much better guidance this time around I'm pleased to learn that I was horribly mislead on my last visit and the food here is really quite good..... Bradan Rost (kiln-roasted) salmon pate, king scallops pan-fried with garlic butter, minted garden peas, chips (french fries, to you), coffee & chocolate tart..... dinner at Loch Fyne last night.
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Two above: Canon EOS-5D, 28~105/3.5~4.5 Canon EF Ultrasonic lens, ISO 200
Loch Fyne: Leica D-LUX 3, 28~112/2.8~4.9 Leitz DC Vario-Elmarit lens, ISO 400

Cambridge Cliche

ESL - English As A Second Language

Girton, Cambridgeshire (UK) - We all know that the Americans and the British are two peoples separated by a common language. We can go through the all the tired old comparisons, lifts v elevators, lorries v trucks, trucks v boxcars, etc, etc.

Yesterday, in a Tesco store (thanks Pete Dean), I discovered another one: Monkey Nuts here, peanuts at home. Calling Jimmy Carter!!

Also, these Brits can be a bit wordy. Check out the paragraph where a simple Do Not Enter sign would do! Seriously, does a bicyclist really need to know all that detail? And the type is so small I almost missed it altogether as I zipped by at nearly 20 mph. A little brevity goes a long, long way.


And just off the Market Square in Cambridge, I came upon this vehicle parked at the curb.....
.....do you think they'll really vote Democratic?

And this... a farmer's market and a flag... how could I resist.
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All above: Canon EOS-5D, 28~105/3.5~4.5 Canon EF Ultrasonic lens, ISO 400

Tonight @ Apple Store/Chicago

A Hometown In Smoking Ruin

Seven years ago today, just about this time, 7:15 PM, I was out on a pier in Bayonne, New Jersey making the picture you see above. New York City was a smoking ruin and I was burning film trying to get just the right exposure, to balance the lights on the Statue of Liberty with the darkness of a lower Manhattan that had been without electric power for the past thirty six hours. I also wished to convey the bleakness of the scene before me.

It's difficult to view your home town in smoking ruin. Even from across the harbor, this picture was difficult to make. I'd been documenting New York City for well over twenty years. I had an intimate relationship with those buildings and, by either extension or personal connection, the people who inhabited them day and night since they opened. From the east, from the west, from the north, from the south, from the ground, from the air, at dawn, at dusk, on clear days, on hazy days, on good days and on bad days... I've shot those buildings until I couldn't shoot them any more. And there I was, one more time.

I don't know how many dozens of times I've shot NYC from there, and I can't believe how strange it was to be without my old friends and favorite subjects. There was only a cloud of smoking dust where the Twin Towers used to be. As I walked the last quarter mile or so from my car, I could see the silhouette of another photographer unpacking his gear. I couldn't make out the face from far away but I could tell by the shape of his luggage that it was an old friend out there that night, doing exactly the same as I. He was just setting up as I reached our favorite spot. I said, "Jake, why am I not surprised to see you?" He said, "Man, am I glad you're here!"

We stayed together until about ten o'clock, a good two hours after we were done shooting, trying to comprehend what we were looking at. It was just too bizarre. We couldn't believe what we were seeing. It was out of a nightmare. We sat there together commiserating and reminiscing. We were glad to have met there that night after not having seen each other for quite a while.

What's that they say? Misery loves company?
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Above: Canon EOS-1N, 70~200mm Canon Zoom Lens EF L Ultrasonic, Fujichrome Velvia

September 11, 2008

CHICAGO IL - Today, September 11th, this September 11th, is the first September 11th that I haven't spent in New York City since 2001. As a New Yorker, I get an empty feeling, remembering the shock of that day. I don't know if it's the same for everyone... New Yorkers, I mean... I don't really discuss that with the rest. Actually, we talk about it... where we were, how we heard... but I'm not sure we discuss it. Maybe it's because we don't need to, maybe it's because we do but I just don't want to do it. I don't know.

Other people talk about September 11th. People, here in Chicago, in other places too, who haven't experienced it. I don't know that they really understand what we in New York (or those in Washington) went through. I haven't lived here very long, but I suspect it'll be a while before the feeling that I'm missing something passes. It may be a very long while.

This Day In History, 2001 (#3)

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Above: Nikon F3HP, 500mm f8.0 Vivitar Series One lens, Polapan film