UK-based filmmaker Philip Bloom created this beautiful video of Monument Valley, Utah. Blending regular video and timelapse footage, Bloom builds a serene and powerful portrait of the place. Bloom used a plethora of gear to capture the footage, including five cameras – one Canon 5D Mark II to capture video, another 5D Mark II, two Canon 7D, Canon 1D Mark IV, and a Nikon D3s for timelapse. Whew!

You can read more about the photo shoot, see behind the scenes photos and listen to a commentary on Philip Bloom’s blog.

The Royal Family is really getting into social media: in addition to their YouTube channel, Twitter, and series of iTunes podcasts, the Family now has a Flickr account which went live to the public this morning. Currently, the British Monarchy’s photostream contains 683 uploads of both recent and older historical photographs. According to an announcement from the Royal Collection, photos will be continually added to the account. The Flickr account launch was scheduled to coincide with the summer opening of Buckingham Palace. Some of the images featured on the photo-sharing site are to be featured in the exhibit, The Queen’s Year, which opens tomorrow at the Palace.

Police in England recently raided a Bowdon house to find 22,000 fake camera cases worth an estimated £500,000.

Messenger Newspapers reports that the cases were branded as Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, Pentax and Kodak. A 40-year-old man at the residence was also taken into custody.

His downfall came when Canon discovered the counterfeit bags being sold online and conducted a number of “sting” purchases, passing on the information they discovered to authorities.

Something else that caught our eye about this story was that the police also discovered counterfeit camera lenses at the residence. All of us have obviously heard of fake bags before, but counterfeit lenses? I’d like to see one of those.

(via Imaging Insider)

Image credit: Camera case by Peter Hellberg

Earlier this month, the Daily Mail published some photos taken at a Dalston polling station during the British General Election by Emily James of Just Do It.

James’ photos were originally uploaded via TwitPic. Later, they were republished on several other sites, including The Guardian and Times Online, initially without permission or compensation. However, The Guardian and Times both offered James retroactive compensation. The Times offered £250 for using one photo, along with a brief emailed apology for using the image without permission.

The Daily Mail, however, initially incorrectly credited the image to someone else, then removed the credit line altogether.  James sent them with an invoice for £1170 — a rate set at £130 and multiplied by three per image to compensate for their lack of knowledge or permission.

The picture editor at the Daily Mail responded, saying:

Thanks for the invoice.

Unfortunately we cannot pay the amount you have requested, these images were taken from twitpic and therefore placed in the public domain, also after consultation with Twitter they have always asked us to byline images by the username of the account holder.

We are more that happy to pay for the images but we’ll only be paying £40 per image.

James, aware of the difference between TwitPic and Twitter Terms of Service, responded to the Daily Mail:

I’m afraid that you are wrong about the terms of publishing on Twitpic. If you read the terms of service you will see that copyright is clearly retained by the poster:

http://twitpic.com/terms.do

Third parties who wish to reproduce posted images must contact the copyright holder and seek permission.

You should have contacted me if you wanted to use the photos, as every other news outlet did. had you done so, you might have been in a position to get the photos for £40’s each.

However you didn’t contact me, even though this would have been very easy to do, nor did you inform me that you had used them. Instead, I had to uncover that you had used them, that one of them was not credited even with the correct twitter account, and that none were credited as I would have asked them to be.

James and the crew at Just Do It Films say they are still waiting for full payment and an apology.

This seems to be a similar issue that photojournalist Daniel Morel has with news agency AFP over whether images distributed over TwitPic and Twitter warrant free public distribution.

(via British Journal of Photography)

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)

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)

More good news for photographers in the UK. A week after UK’s terror tsar called for the abolition of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, UK’s Crime Minister David Hanson has new statements assuring photographers that anti-terrorism legislation should not be used to hinder photography. He is quoted as saying,

I recently met with Austin Mitchell MP, members of the Parliamentary All Party Photography Group and representatives of the photographic press and the Royal Photographic Society to discuss the issue of counter terrorism powers and offences in relation to photography.

I welcomed the opportunity to reassure all those concerned with this issue that we have no intention of Section 44 or Section 58A being used to stop ordinary people taking photos or to curtail legitimate journalistic activity.

Guidance has been provided to all police forces advising that these powers and offences should not be used to stop innocent member of the public, tourists or responsible journalists from taking photographs.

These powers and offences are intended to help protect the public and those on the front line of our counter terrorism operations from terrorist attack. For the 58A offence to be committed, the information is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

I have committed to writing to Austin Mitchell MP to reinforce this message and to follow-up on the representations made.

Indeed, news of photographers being stopped unreasonably has died down in recent weeks, so it seems as though things are becoming more photographer-friendly in the UK. If you’re in the UK, have you noticed any improvement?

(via Digital Photography Now)

Image credit: Shooting the Man by neate photos

Last December an amateur photographer named Bob Patefield was in Accrington town centre shooting photographs of the Christmas celebration when he and his friend were stopped by police for suspicious behavior. He and his friend refused to provide the police with personal details (since they were not obliged to), and were stopped a total of three times before Patefield was finally arrested. His friend complied, provided his personal information, and was released on the spot.

After being detained for eight hours, he was released without charges.

Patefield asked if the officer had any “reasonable, articulable suspicion” to justify him giving his details.

She replied: “I believe your behaviour was quite suspicious in the manner in which you were taking photographs in the town centre … I’m suspicious in why you were taking those pictures.

“I’m an officer of the law, and I’m requiring you, because I believe your behaviour to be of a suspicious nature, and of possibly antisocial [nature] … I can take your details just to ascertain that everything is OK.”

Patefield and his friend maintained that they did not want to disclose their details. They were stopped a third and final time when returning to their car. This time the officer was accompanied by an acting sergeant. “Under law, fine, we can ask for your details – we’ve got no powers,” he said. “However, due to the fact that we believe you were involved in antisocial behaviour, ie taking photographs … then we do have a power under [the Police Reform Act] to ask for your name and address, and for you to provide it. If you don’t, then you may be arrested.”

What would you have done in this situation? Would you simply have given your personal information and walked away, or would you have refused?

Caught on camera: Lancashire police arrest amateur photographer (via The Guardian)

Image credit: Screenshot captured from video by The Guardian.

Photographers have been buzzing about the Digital Economy Bill, which is expected to shortly become law in the UK. The controversy revolves around the vague provisions for “orphaned works”, which many claim will give the government control of licensing for any photograph deemed “orphaned” after a reasonable search for the owner has been conducted. In the section “Licensing of Orphan Works”, the bill reads,

The Secretary of State may by regulations provide for authorising a licensing body or other person to do, or to grant licences to do, acts in relation to an orphan work which would otherwise require the consent of the copyright owner.

The bill proposes an “orphan works register”, to which anyone can submit photographs they find on the Internet after completing the following steps:

(a) to carry out a reasonable search to find or, if necessary, to identify and find, the owner of the interest,
(b) after the search, to publish notice of the proposal to enter the interest in an orphan works register, in a way designed to bring the proposal to the attention of the owner of that interest, and
(c) to keep a sufficient record of the steps taken under paragraphs (a) and (b) and of the results of those steps.

Once in the register, the photographs can be licensed by the government and used for commercial purposes. Essentially, this means that any photograph found on the Internet can be licensed by the UK if the person who wishes to use the work cannot find the owner after a “reasonable” search.

Here’s some further reading:

• Simon Crofts: Undermining Digital Britain
• A Photo Editor: UK Close To Approving Orphan Works
• Boing Boing: Brits: write to your MP, get transparency on secret copyright treaty!
• Copyright Action: UK Gov nationalises orphans and bans non-consensual photography in public

Let us know your thoughts on this in the comments!

Image credit: Police guards by italpasta

This past Saturday, over 2,000 professional and amateur photographers gathered at Trafalgar Square in London to protest recent cases of anti-terrorism laws being used to stop public photography. The protest, organized by the group I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist!, was against section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which allows officers to stop and search photographers without needing any “suspicion” if the photography is occurring within certain areas.

After a number of high-profile incidents in which photographers — some award-winning — were stopped, searched, and even detained, memos have been circulated among police forces advising them to exercise more discretion in their duties:

Whilst we must remain vigilant at all times in dealing with suspicious behaviour, staff must also be clear that:
- there is no restriction on people taking photographs in public places or of any building other than in very exceptional circumstances
- there is no prohibition on photographing front-line uniform staff
- the act of taking a photograph in itself is not usually sufficient to carry out a stop.
Unless there is a very good reason, people taking photographs should not be stopped.

Officers should be reminded that it is not an offence for a member of the public or journalist to take photographs of a public building and use of cameras by the public does not ordinarily permit use of stop and search powers.

However, stories of officers hindering photographers’ work continue to surface, prompting photographers and groups to step up their calls for more leniency and freedom to photograph without being confronted.

Were you at the protest? Have you been stopped and searched in the UK? If so, we’d like to hear from you in the comments!

Image credit: Photographs by Rion Nakaya and used with permission.