PhotoWalkPro

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Photo by kevincole

I got an email yesterday from my publisher, Peachpit Press, about a new Flickr group.  The group is called Canon 50D: From Snapshots to Great Shots and here is the description:

“This group was inspired by Jeff Revel’s book Canon 50D: From Snapshots to Great Shots. Its for people just getting up and running with the Canon 50D to give them the opportunity to share, learn and be inspired by others with the same camera. Let’s see some great shots!“

So if you are the owner of a 50D, why don’t you stop in and join and then upload some of your great shots to share.  I would love to see them.  Here’s the link.

The deadline for posting images for prize consideration is now over.  Now the hard work is upon the World Wide Photowalk leaders.  We now have the daunting task of choosing 1 winner from among all the great images in our Flickr pools.  In my case, I have to select 2 winning photos because I hosted 2 photowalks.  This means I get to sort through over 1100 images, yikes!

If you have spent any time on Flickr you know that it’s easy to look at a few images but trying to quickly look through a large batch of photos can be rather time consuming.  This is why I use a great web browser plug-in called Cooliris.  Cooliris, formerly known as PicLens, allows me to view all of the images in a pool of photos using a great 3-D photowall.  I don’t know why but it just has a real Apple feel to it.

So while looking at a wall of thumbnail sized images is great, it’s not the only feature of Cooliris.  If I see something that really catches my eye and want a closer look, all I have to do is click on the thumbnail and Cooliris will zoom into that image and load a higher res version for me to look at.

I can also navigate quickly in this mode by using the keyboard arrow keys to move left, right, up, and down.  Each move focuses the next image into the center as an enlarged version.  And if I really want to get a good look, I can double click on the center image and get a full screen version.  This is not always the best way to view Flickr images since it sometimes displays the image at a size that is greater than the uploaded original. This makes the image look a little soft but it is a great feature nonetheless.

Which ever viewing method you choose, one thing is certain.  Cooliris is most definitely cool and it is hands down the best way to view a large group of images.  If you would like to download Cooliris for your computer, just follow this link.

Finally today, I would just like to take a moment to thank everyone that responded to my help request yesterday.  There were a lot of great suggestions posted in the comment section and hopefully one or more of them was helpful to our service member in need.  This is just one more example of how great the photo community is and why I love hosting photowalks.  You guys are the BEST!

Do you use Flickr or Picasa to share your images? Do you add your copyright info before you upload? If the answer is no, we need to talk. If you answered yes, you should still make sure you are getting the most from it.

So what exactly is a copyright? Well, the U.S. Copyright Office defines it as such:

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works.

Copyright allows you to; reproduce your work in copies, make derivative works based on your original, allows you to distribute your work through sale, rent, lease, or transfer, and to display your work publicly.

You may have read on the web that even though your image is copyrighted the moment you take it, it doesn’t mean that you will be able to effectively claim your rights to your images if you don’t have them registered. Some lawyers won’t even touch copyright infringement cases for images that aren’t registered.

Copyright Registration:

In general, copyright registration is a legal formality intended to make a public record of the basic facts of a particular copyright. However, registration is not a condition of copyright protection. Even though registration is not a requirement for protection, the copyright law provides several inducements or advantages to encourage copyright owners to make registration. Among these advantages are the following:

• Registration establishes a public record of the copyright claim.

• Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U.S. origin.

• If made before or within 5 years of publication, registration will establish prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.

• If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney’s fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.

Obviously the internet is making it easier for you to display your talents for everyone to see. Unfortunately it is also making it easier to steal your art without you getting your due, whether that is a byline or a paycheck. So what should you be doing? First and foremost you should be adding copyright data to your images. I know what you’re thinking, “Hey Jeff, I use a fancy Flash program to display all of my images so you can’t right-click and download them.” And I say, “Have you ever heard of a screen capture?” A lot of image theft is for the purpose of web publishing so if your images are being displayed at a decent screen resolution, then they are prime for a screen capture. Grabbing your image is one short keyboard shortcut away on a Mac (Cmd+Shft+3 or 4).

So what should you do? If you import your images using a program such as Adobe Lightroom or Bridge, it is relatively easy to set up default copyright information so that it can be added to every image you import; information such as your name, email address, web address, etc. When you enter your copyright/author name, add your email address to the end of it so that it is listed right there in plain site. Sometimes you can’t see all of the extra IPTC information in the metadata that is entered for an image such as the web address and email for the owner, not unless you include it on the Author section. Below is the Info from an image that I had uploaded on Flickr. I then downloaded it to see what information would be displayed in my simple Preview viewer on my Mac.

Here is the information displayed in Photoshop for the same image.

As you can see, Photoshop shows the complete IPTC metadata including the web page address labeled as Copyright Info URL, but this information is not available in the image viewer in the first image. If I had not included an email address, there would be no contact info, just a name. Sure, someone could do a Google search in hopes of finding my name and then an email address but why make them hunt. Just put it right there with your name.

So now we get to the unscrupulous individuals that don’t really care what info is embedded in the images they download because they have no intention of contacting the owner. This is where the registration of your images comes into play. It is possible to collect damages from an unauthorized use of your image but you will probably spend more in legal fees than you could ever recoup. However, if your works are registered, then you have established that you are indeed the owner of the copyright and this allows for the much easier prosecution and obtainment of compensation with little financial commitment from you.

So how do you go about registering your works? There are a few methods available from the U.S. Copyright Office (click here). You can submit (also called a deposit by the Copyright Office) in several hardcopy or digital formats but the most appealing method I have seen is the fairly new electronic submission option which is still in beta. The electronic Copyright Office (eCO) is a web-based system that actually costs less than traditional registration ($35 for the eCO as opposed to $45 for a traditional submission) and, once registered, can help streamline the process for you. The cost is per submission, not per image in case you were wondering. To see a great evaluation of this system, check out this post by professional photographer Joseph J. Delconzo. For even more information about copyright and your rights as a photographer, go check out Carolyn Wright’s always informative Photo Attorney blog.

By the way, I downloaded multiple images from Flickr and less than 5% had any copyright in the metadata. I wonder who they belong to? They must be free, I mean I found them on the Internet.

I had mentioned in yesterday’s post that a new Flickr group had been started for folks to show off their before and after images from using the Scott Kelby 7-Point system for Photoshop. The group was actually started by an editor at PeachPit Press. They are the publishers for most of the Photoshop books you see on the market, including Scott Kelby’s. There weren’t very many images there as of last night so I threw 3 or 4 sets in just for good measure. I was looking for something to put in the group that I hadn’t previously posted so I began to comb through my older images. I found some shots from a trip to San Francisco of the coastline near the city and decided to process one a-la the 7-Point System. The two images below are the before and after versions. Granted, it’s not the most spectacular of images but I think it shows how much you can improve a pretty boring image and breath a little life into it using the system.