If you’re suffering from post-World Cup withdrawal, this might cheer you up: models frolicking on a soccer field. Actually, these women are doing much more than than that in fashion photographer Giuliano Bekor’s behind-the-scenes video of the Bebe 2010 World Cup campaign. Shooting and directing by example on the turf of the Los Angeles Memorial Stadium, Bekor pushes his models to the limit. These ladies are doing things I’d certainly never attempt in a dress and stiletto heels — running on grass, for one.

(via Fstoppers)

Portuguese photographer Antonio Simoes was in South Africa to shoot the World Cup when he was robbed at gunpoint in his hotel room yesterday morning.

Two men entered his room at the Nutbush Boma Lodge at about 4am, pointed a gun at his head, and stole roughly $35,000 worth of camera equipment. Two other journalists staying in the hotel were also robbed that same morning.

Simoes, who works for Portuguese sports newspaper O Jogo, tells the Associated Press:

One of the guys pointed a hand gun at my head, and then they took all my gear — cameras, lenses, laptop. Then they told me to lie on the bed and they covered me with a blanket, pressed the gun against my head and told me to sleep.

$35,000 worth of gear… Wow. Any guesses to what he was carrying that adds up to that figure? If you’re going to be photographing in South Africa this summer, be careful.

(via PDN Pulse)

Image credit: The Robbery by gcfairch

At just 3 years old, young photographer Ruby Ellenby captured the attention of her hometown last month with her first solo exhibition in San Francisco. Tonight, Ruby’s story was featured on NBC Nightly News. The piece offers a mini behind-the-scenes peek at how Ruby goes about shooting, and some of her fans share their thoughts. Cute!

(via NBC Nightly News)

The British government recently commissioned photographer Simon Roberts to create a public photo collaboration called The Election Project. In short, Roberts is creating documentary-style photography that follows the 2010 UK General election, and he is organizing a website to which people all over the UK can submit their own photographs of local political activities.

Roberts will also be traveling the country for three weeks in a motor home to document the election on the local level, with emphasis on the relationship between politicians and voters.

Community involvement is key to the project. Visitors can submit photos and “vote” (add favorites) for photos via the project’s Flickr photostream. Roberts wrote on the project site:

The General Election is, by definition, a democratic process. Your contributions will add a vital collaborative and democratic dimension to the project. This will undoubtedly be the most photographed election in British history.

Many of the posted public photos have a charmingly amateurish quality to them, a rawness that Roberts says he prefers: “The public’s images will also help to provide an antidote to the more stage-managed photographs increasingly seen of the campaign trail,” the photographer wrote.

It’s a fairly interesting glimpse of the elections thus far. You can see the batch in The Election Project’s gallery – which might take a while to load, since all the photos are currently posted on a single page. Pagination, much? Maybe it’s all in the name of equal representation.

(via The Photoletariat)

Photojournalist Daniel Morel shot an iconic image of a shocked woman looking out from the rubble moments after last January’s earthquake in Port au Prince, Haiti. Within an hour, Morel jumped on Twitter to share 13 high resolution images he had uploaded on Twitpic. By the next day, the photo of the woman was picked up by Agence France Presse (AFP) and Getty Images, was run on the cover of several publications and websites.

But Morel said he never authorized the news wires to distribute his images. In fact, several of his images were credited to another person, Lisandro Suero of the Dominican Republic, who reportedly has no photographic background. However, Suero tweeted Morel’s images without the photographer’s permission, and claimed copyright as his own:

And so began a legal storm.

Now Morel is being sued by AFP after he sent them cease and desist letters that the agency calls an “antagonistic assertion of rights.”

According to court documents, AFP claims that they did not infringe on Morel’s copyright and is suing Morel for “commercial disparagement,” as well as “demanding exorbitant payment.” AFP says that Twitter’s Terms of Service allowed for them to use, copy and distribute the image, and that Morel did not specify limits on how the photo should be credited.

Morel responded, saying that he was not familiar with Twitter’s TOS, and maintains that the images were stolen from his account without his permission, distributed and sold by the agency, which then “induced” other publications to violate Morel’s copyright. In a counterclaim to the agency’s complaint, Morel’s lawyer, Barbara Hoffman wrote:

To the extent that under the circumstances a specific intent in posting the images on Twitter can be attributed to Mr. Morel given the circumstances, … he posted his images online and advertised them on Twitter in the hopes that his images would span the globe to inform the world of the disaster, and that he would also receive compensation and credit as a professional photographer for breaking news of the earthquake before the news and wire services.

Some publications, including The Wall Street Journal, NBC, and the Associated Press contacted Morel to exchange compensation for his permission to publish. Others did not.

In order to enforce his copyright, Morel sent several cease and desist notices to several publications.

It seems that the case really boils down to the semantics of the Twitter TOS.

What might be worth noting is that the court documents from AFP frequently cite Twitter’s TOS, which mostly regards the text in Tweets, and does not extend to content linked to (otherwise, entire sites’ content might be considered royalty-free). Morel uploaded on TwitPic, which has a separate Terms, and is an entirely separate entity from Twitter.

Media Nation blogger Dan Kennedy posted PDFs of AFP’s complaint against Morel and Morel’s answer.

Whatever the verdict, this suit may change the manner in which photographers and journalists transmit their data via social media, even in difficult emergency situations like post-quake Haiti.

Do you have legal insight, experience with copyright infringement, or any thoughts about social media and the TOS?

It happens all the time, but does that make it acceptable? According to a court decision this week, what Current TV’s vice president Michael Streefland calls “standard practice in digital media” is legal after all.

Current TV and photographer Ken Light have been entwined in a legal debate over an image which belongs to Light but was used without his permission on the media company’s website.

Light brought his case against Current TV to small claims court, charging the company with unfair competition. The photographer won initially, which included $500 for compensation and $88 for court fees.  Soon after, Current TV appealed the decision, which was subsequently reversed by a San Francisco Superior Court judge.

According to Light, the court’s change of heart stemmed from the technical details. Current TV’s chief technologist testified that the site used in-line linking to the image on the New Yorker’s site, and did not technically copy the photo.

Furthermore, the court ruled that the image qualified as fair use, and the root issue was over the photo’s copyright, which is a federal court case. Light told PDNPulse that he is at the end of the line in state court and doesn’t know whether he will  proceed with a copyright suit.

Although the case may not make it out of the state, the suit has garnered national attention,  including a piece in the New York Times. Times writer Scott James wrote in favor of Light, calling the case a “David vs. Goliath” situation, and suggesting:

“Imagine if Mr. Light’s photograph had been in a frame — few would say it was O.K. to borrow it without permission, deny the artist credit and exhibit it and collect sponsor fees.”

In spite of the loss, Light said he is pleased with the widespread publicity and ensuing discussions the case has sparked. He says he hopes the case sets a precedent for other photographers and journalists to fight for due compensation.

“Yes, I lost, but I think waving the flag is important,” Light said. “We have to keep [pushing] this until we get some protection.”

Got an assignment? Hire an AP photographer!

The AP announced a new program allowing outside sources to hire some of their top photographers for regional assignments. AP Director of Photography Santiago Lyon said in a press release that the deal is pretty straightforward:

If a particular publication or media outlet wants to use one of our staff photographers for an editorial assignment — photographing Easter festivities in Spain, for example — and it would fit into the photographer’s scheduling and our commitments, we would assign that shooter to the story.

There are 25 elite AP photographers on board with the new program. Their names and bios can be seen on the AP Editorial Assignment page.

The AP hasn’t released price ranges for assignments, but it’s likely they will vary case by case.

It would seem that the AP is rapidly expanding and personalizing its agency services; they recently added AP videos to their imaging collection, and they offer image research services. The agency also currently allows their photographers to be commissioned to shoot commercial style and stock images for AP-owned PR Newswire.

On Monday afternoon, just hours after the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced, Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer Kim Komenich was standing at a Wells Fargo bank in San Jose, California when he noticed the man in front of him hand the teller a note. As the teller began to empty a cash drawer, Komenich proceeded to wrap his arms around the robber in a stifling bear hug.

San Jose Mercury News reports that,

Police found Komenich and Fernandes still entwined in their awkward embrace. They quickly arrested Fernandes and his two suspected accomplices, who had remained in the customer waiting area. They were later booked on robbery charges. No gun was ever found.

Komenich, an assistant professor at San Jose State University, is no stranger to dangerous situations. In 1987, while working for the San Francisco Examiner, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Spot News Photography for his coverage of the Philippine Revolution and the fall of Ferdinand Marcos.

(via Gawker)

The Digital Economy Bill has passed in the UK with a vote of 189 to 47. In spite its initial controversy, many photographers are breathing a sigh of relief.

Before its passage, the bill had stirred up a great deal of unrest in the photo community with a clause that threatened photographers’ copyright ownership, but now many photographers are celebrating the defeat of Clause 43.

Clause 43 alarmed several photographers who feared that their work could become classified as “orphaned work” – a label given to work whose author or owner could not be traced. If a work is “orphaned,” it can fall under Extended Collective Licensing, and thus be legally and freely redistributed.

Given the nature of the digital world in which dissemination of information, particularly photographs, many photographers questioned how easily their work might suddenly become free and available to the public.

Following their victory, the campaign organization stop43.org posted on their blog:

The way is now open for photographers and other creatives to present new thinking enabling the legitimate use of our genuine orphan works for strictly defined non-commercial “cultural” purposes in a way that will satisfy the needs of the cultural sector, to prevent the future orphaning of our work, and to redress defects in current copyright law.

(via Amateur Photographer)

A video released on WikiLeaks.org shows disturbing footage taken in 2007 from an American apache helicopter as they circle and fire upon a group of people they identify as armed hostiles in the street.

As it turns out, the two men who appear to be armed are actually working Reuters employees: photographer, 22-year-old Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, who was 40. The two men were walking in the street with camera straps hanging from their shoulders. One of the men has a long lens, misidentified as an RPG.

According to a New York Times article published yesterday, Reuters had heard of a military raid in the area — the same raid that the military was attending to, and the two men went to investigate. Their mere proximity to the raid proved to be fatal.

The military fired upon the men and other individuals, who were later confirmed to be civilians, among them two children and the two Reuters employees. The attack killed 12, including Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh.

In a United States Central Command report:

“[The men] made no effort to visibly display their status as press or media representatives and their familiar behavior with, and close proximity to, the armed insurgents and their furtive attempts to photograph the coalition ground forces made them appear as hostile combatants to the Apaches that engaged them.”

Reuters news editor in chief David Schlesinger said in a statement:

“The deaths of Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh three years ago were tragic and emblematic of the extreme dangers that exist in covering war zones. We continue to work for journalist safety and call on all involved parties to recognize the important work that journalists do and the extreme danger that photographers and video journalists face in particular.”

(via New York Times)