Successful professionals -- that is, people who make most of their living as photographers -- have a kind of global view of their career. They behave as though marketing and contract negotiations and digital workflow are all just as important as composition and lighting.
If you've ever worked in commercial photography, you know how complicated relationships with brands, agencies, and sub-contractors can be. In this 11.5-minute video, photographer Chris Hau details how he almost got sued as a result of those relationships and what he has learned since.
On March 12, 2020, the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) held a webinar with General Counsel Thomas Maddrey entitled “Potential Business Ramifications of Coronavirus (COVID-19).” Maddrey covered a variety of topics, including cancellation clauses in photographer contracts.
Nothing seems to be a more tedious task than the need to fill out paperwork. Especially if the paperwork has to be sent back and forth between you and a client multiple times. Luckily, Agree.com is a website that aims at making contracts easy to compile and sign for photographers (and videographers, designers, and more). Let’s take a moment to try out the service and is if it delivers on its promise of simplicity.
The Washington City Paper recently decided to boycott the Foo Fighters' restrictive concert photo contract by buying photos from fans instead. Now a different paper is protesting that same contract in a much different way.
This past weekend, the Quebec newspaper Le Soleil decided to send a cartoon sketch artist to cover a Foo Fighters' concert instead of putting a photographer in the media area.
Over the last couple of weeks, the matter of photo contracts has once again been debated. First came Jason Sheldon’s blog post, calling Taylor Swift out on her hypocrisy when attacking Apple for demanding musicians give away their music for free while doing the exact same thing to concert photographers in her photo contracts. If you’re reading this, you’re probably well aware of that whole ordeal, so there’s no need to get into it further other than to say that I fully support Sheldon’s views.
When musicians sign contracts to perform in major concerts, their documents often contain riders (more commonly known as addendums). These are a series of special requests made by the band or musician, and outlines specifics of what they're expecting when they arrive.
Photographer Henry Hargreaves noticed that riders often contain strange requests for the foods and drinks requested, so he decided to turn the requests into a photo project that offer a glimpse into the lives of famous musicians.
If you're looking to make money from your photography, it's important to have the correct legal forms signed by the correct people, whether it's releases by models that pose for you or contracts with gallery owners who will sell your work. To get you started in figuring out what your contract needs to say, legal contract service Docracy offers samples of some of the most common and important legal forms that photographers use.
There has been a lot of discussion regarding social media sites and their scary-sounding terms of services that always …