PhotoWalkPro

Yesterday, Flickr added to their collaboration with Getty Images by allowing its users to now place a “Request to License” link under he license on the image page. If someone wants to use the image, they can click on this link and a Getty representative will send a Flickr Mail to the owner, letting them know that someone wants to license their image.

In order to set up this feature, you must go to the Privacy & Permissions section of the Your Account settings. Located at the bottom of the Global Settings section, you will see Make you photos eligible for invitation by Getty images. Click on the edit tab and then select the Enable the “Request to License” badge section and then save your changes.

Now if someone clicks the license link on your photo page, they will end up at a page that looks like the one below, which explains the process to the person wanting to license the image and then gets them rolling.

Once Getty receives a request, the requester will be put in touch with a Getty representative who will help handle details like permissions, releases and pricing. As the owner of the image, if the price or terms are not agreeable to you, you can simply say no. But if everything looks good, you can end up making a little scratch from your photo through very little effort on your part.

The only thing I don’t like about the License Link is that it is Global in nature. This means that if you turn this feature on, it’s on for all of your images, not just the ones that you would like to make available for licensing. That means someone can contact you about licensing your Thanksgiving photos just as easily as they can for you Landscape work. Not perfect, but then again, maybe I want to make a few bucks off that picture of Uncle Ed carving the bird. Just make sure that everyone at the dinner table signs a release before dessert.

Photo by dullhunk

There was a lot of response to my post yesterday, so much so that I wanted to pass along a couple of things that were left in the comments as well as emails that I received. First off, let me say that I in no way was blaming my iPad for the app’s ability to download images from Flickr. I also was not blaming Flickr either, although I have to say that their default/suggested settings do make it easier for images to be downloaded and improperly used.

Is it wrong to download someone’s image for personal use?

That’s a tricky question and one that I’m sure will have supporters on both sides. Let me ask you a slightly different question. Is it wrong to illegally download music if you are the only one who is going to be listening to it with no plans to share or distribute? The law says yes. Funny though that we don’t see a lot of arrests being made for folks downloading an image from Flickr to use as a screensaver, even if it has a copyright symbol right there on the image. There is just a different attitude about things like that, even though there really is very little difference.

Why does Flickr allow this?

Hey, Flickr is a photo sharing site, emphasis on the word SHARING. They are all about making it easy for you to let others see your work, and if you are putting your images there, you probably want your work to be seen. Also, if you have friends or family that look at your images, you might want them to be able to download and or use your images as well.  There are all sorts of reasons that people want to allow images to be downloadable. Another big reason is that photographers want to share large versions of their images (just because they look better that way). The only way to actually display a large version of your image on Flickr is to make it downloadable to others. Then, and only then, will you see the All Sizes link, which leads to the larger size images, and more importantly, the Download link. This is one of those settings that I would love to see Flickr change. Why you can’t display a version larger than 500 pixels wide without the download option is beyond me.

Clicking the All Sizes icon leads to these options -

So are programs that use the Flickr API just evil?

Nope, in fact the use of the API is how a lot of photographers get discovered. For example, the photographer who’s work I found the other day that spawned yesterday’s article, Danny Irvine, is an incredibly talented photographer and I might have never discovered his work had it not been for the API. The fact is that there are tons of programs using it for a myriad of reasons, from blogs to simple Flickr discovery programs. In fact Flickr has a whole page dedicated to websites and programs that are using the Flickr API called the App Garden. Many of them simply comb though Flickr looking for popular or new images and then present them for viewing using a non-Flickr application. Usually clicking on the image will take the viewer directly to that phorographer’s Flickr page, but not always.

So is there any way to keep the API from using my images?

Supposedly there is an API opt-out that will keep your images from being used by the Flickr API. If you look in the Your Account section of Flickr, under Global Settings, you will see one of the options labeled – Hide Your Stuff From Public Searches. By editing this option, which is set to No by default, you should be able to hide your images from 3rd party sites using the API. I say supposedly because I have had some folks tell me that there stuff still comes up occasionally.

What if I don’t mind if someone uses my pictures?

Hey, that’s a personal decision and one that only you can make. Something you might want to consider is using the Creative Commons license, which has gained a lot of popularity over the past couple of years. The image you see at the top of this blog post is actually one that I found using a Creative Commons search in Flickr. With the Creative Commons, you can assert different rights and restrictions for your images from “May be used with attribution” to “Non-Commercial use only” and a few other choices as well. All of this can be set up within the Flickr account settings.

So should I even use Flickr?

I do, as do hundreds of working pros and amateurs around the World.  It is an amazing site that offers numerous ways to communicate, share, learn, teach, inspire, and get inspired.  What you should do though is decide how you want your images to be used/viewed and then take some time to really explore all of the settings and options. Don’t just opt for the defaults without even looking and then complain when someone uses your image in some way that you didn’t approve of.

After all, if you don’t tie your food up in the tree, you can’t really blame the bears for eating it.

Probably not but it’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. The other day I was browsing through Apps on my iPad and came across one called Explore Flickr (also available for the iPhone). The description of the app says that it will allow the user to browse hundreds of the top daily images on Flickr, find beautiful wall paper and lock screen images, view photo details and browse photo comments right on Flickr.com from within the app. And then there was this one other feature that really caught my eye, “Download high definition images direct to your iPhone or iPad photo library“. This last item seemed a little curious to me so I downloaded the app to check it out. It was free after all.

After installing, I opened the app and was greeted by a screen full of thumbnail images fed by Flickr.

I have to admit that there were a lot of great looking images and I was enjoying tapping on the individual images and seeing large, beautiful versions of them. After all, the iPad does have a kick-butt screen. As I explored the images, I noticed that there was a small gear symbol up in the corner so I gave it a tap and up popped a couple of actions; one said Save to Photo Library and the other said View Photo on Flickr.

I also noticed something on the particular image I had opened. There, at the bottom of the image there was writing, which read Danny Irvine Photoraphy ©. Seeing that, I couldn’t help but wonder why it was that I could just download the image and use it if Danny had clearly marked it as copyrighted. I decided to use the option to view the photo in Flickr, which opened up the Flickr web page for this image. When the page opened I discovered two things. First, Danny Irvine is an extremely talented landscape photographer. Second was this statement below his images, which read “All images are © Danny Irvine Photography, All Rights Reserved. You may not use, replicate, manipulate, redistribute, or modify this image without my written consent“

So if it plainly states that Danny’s images can’t be used for any purpose without his permission, how is it that I was able to download it directly to my iPad? It’s actually due to the Flickr API. For those that don’t know, an API is an Application Programming Interface, which allows a software program to interact with other software. In this case, the Explore Flickr program is using the Flickr API to locate and display images from the Flickr pool. The problem is that this app, like so many others that use the Flickr API, can bypass the photographer’s wishes by ignoring copyrights.

So how can you fight this sort of problem? Well, the first thing you should do is to make sure that you have asserted your rights within the Privacy & Permissions section of Flickr. Under the Defaults for New Uploads section you can set your license to All Rights Reserved.

Next, and probably most importantly is to set your download permissions. Under the Global settings section you should set the Who can download your stuff option to Only You.

If you have this option set, the only one that can download your images is you, while signed into Flickr. This was apparent when I selected a different image on my iPad and saw the message below.

With so many many stories of folks having their Flickr images used without their permission, it only makes sense to lock them down as tight as possible so that they can be enjoyed but not taken.

By the way, I want to give a huge thanks to photographer Danny Irvine, who gave me permission to use his image for this article. You can check out all of his work on his Flickr page or visit his website to see more of his fantastic photos.

I was reading a story over at A Photo Editor about how Haitian Photographer Daniel Morel is suing APF (Agence France Presse) for using images that he uploaded to Twitter after the earthquake in Haiti.  Actually, Morel, who was in Haiti at the time of the quake, was one of the first photographers to document the destruction.  He quickly set up a Twitter account and used TwitPic to upload pictures.  It seems that some unscrupulous person claimed ownership of the images and then AFP used the images, which were then distributed by Getty, all without Morel’s permission.  The whole story is very sorted and AFP is trying to claim that they did nothing wrong, especially since Twitter’s TOS states that any images posted in Twitter are fair game.  The problem is that Morel didn’t upload images to Twitter.  He actually used the TwitPic service, which links to images in Twitter and maintains that contributors maintain all rights to their images.

The story is very interesting and will probably have a lot of implications on photographer’s rights in the world of social media.  There is another angle to this story and that is how to prevent something like this from happening with your images.  If you read my buddy RC’s post yesterday over at Photoshop Insider, you know that watermarking your images is probably a fruitless effort.  What you can do is edit your Exif data to make things easier for people to get in touch and strike a deal for your images.

I did a little experiment yesterday afternoon.  First I took an old image of mine and opened it in Photoshop. Then I opened the Image Info by clicking File/File Info, which brings up the Exif dialog box.  This is where you can append your image with a ton of data that will be saved with the image.

There are actually a lot of ways that you can do this besides using Photoshop.  You can set up your Lightroom to automatically embed the info during file import, or even have it included at the time of capture by setting up Copyright Info right in your camera (this option is included with many newer dslr cameras).

Once I had the info saved in the file, I uploaded it to TwitPic.  Then I did a simple right-click on the image in TwitPic, downloaded it to my computer, and opened it in Photoshop.  When I checked the file info, I was pleased to find that all of my copyright and contact info was still there. You don’t even need to use Photoshop to do this, here’s a screen grab of the info screen using Apple’s Preview.

As you can see, anyone that wanted to contact me about my image would have no problems.

Of course many of you use Flickr to get your images seen by others and it is a very fertile location for anyone searching for usable imagery.  The problem is that most people don’t set up their Flickr accounts to protect their images.  The first thing you should do is to open the Privacy&Permissions section of your account and set it so that only you can download your images.  Also, make sure that only you can blog your images.  Setting these two simple options will ensure that anyone that wants to use your images will have to contact you first.  You should also set your import settings so that your license is set to All Rights Reserved. I know that the Creative Commons license is pretty popular but if you plan on selling your images you want to make sure that you are claiming all rights.

Sure, there will always those that take your images by doing things like screen grabbing but if you give the honest ones a way to get in touch, they may not pass you by.

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.