Rob Haggart at APhotoEditor.com has been on a roll lately: Ask Anything – Does a photographer need a rep and do they really get you work?, The Value Of A News Photograph, Ask Anything – Should You Tell Your Clients If You Are Pregnant Or Have A Life Threatening Illness?, the editorial staff’s perspective on Negotiating The Editorial Contract, Ask Anything – How Do You Get Started Photographing Fashion?, Photographers- How To Deal With Infringements, a survey of Commercial Photographer Income, Ad Agency Guide To Photography Usage Terms, Ask Anything – Should Photographers be Unionized?, Ask Anything With Amanda And Suzanne – How Not To Blow The Face To Face Meeting, Ask anything with Amanda and Suzanne – How Much Money Do Commercial Photographers Make?, and especially the most recent post, Stop Accepting $200 Assignments. All well worth a read, discussion in the comments usually is worth a look, too.

Image results searching for Che on bing.com

The Guardian has an interesting, if brief, backstory on a photographer’s heir trying to enforce copyright on the ubiquitous iconic image of Che Guevara seen on t-shirts, posters, and messenger bags the world over (above).

“For decades the Argentinian-born Guevara’s adopted spiritual home of Cuba did not recognise copyright. It was only following the collapse of the former Soviet Union that Cuba joined the World Trade Organisation and legalised copyright.” -Row rages over iconic image of Che Guevara in the Guardian

It’s now been 50 years since Cuban photographer Alberto Díaz “Korda” Gutiérrez, who died in 2001, made the image. Now Diaz’s daughter has been going after advertising companies in an attempt to recoup license fees for widespread usage of the image.

I always love knowing the stories surrounding iconic images…

(via Politics, Theory, and Photography)

The Copyright Corner

I haven’t gotten a chance to look through the site too much, but it looks like The Copyright Corner will be a useful resource. From the site:

As an artist or designer, you are passionate and serious about your work. You should be just as serious about learning about copyright, because copyright allows you to protect your work, or to share it with others, if that is your preference. This site, dedicated to the creative spirit, aims to be a source of accurate information, and a corner for debate and dialogue about copyright and other important intellectual property issues.

File this next to Stanford’s Copyright and Fair Use Information Center, Carolyn E. Wright’s Photo Attorney blog (and see her recent guest post at A Photo Editor on dealing with infringements), The Copyright Zone, and Matt Slaby’s Legal Left, Meet Creative Right column.

Changing Ideas - Getting photographers and NGOs together

‘You must also ensure you show the effect of the NGO’s work rather than just the vulnerable members of society and their stories,’ [David Graham] says. ‘Providing such context is extremely important as otherwise you are just picturing misery without suggesting a solution – which in this case is the work of the NGO.’ -Telegraph “Common Goals“

The Telegraph has an interview/feature with David Graham, the photographer behind Changing Ideas, an organization which works with NGOs and photographers to develop communications strategies for the organizations. As we’ve mentioned previously photographers working with NGOs is relatively new and unexplored terrain. As NGOs fill the gap left by news media in funding and using photojournalism, Changing Ideas‘ mission will become more important.

With all the layoffs we’ve seen in the industry in the past few years, what surprises me most, however, is how common it is for a staff photographer to be “surprised” with the news of their own layoff. They are very often leaving themselves totally unprepared for life as a freelancer. -Grover Sanschagrin/Photoshelter

Photoshelter’s recently posted a useful list of 10 things all staff photographers need to do right now (and also 10 things a recently laid-off photographer needs to do right now), covering the basics of getting ready for life outside a newsroom. It’s some common sense information–get your own gear, grab copies of your clips, establish your freelance rates, decide if freelancing is right for you–but it’s worth repeating. Be sure to watch Photoshelter’s blog; they periodically post practical and useful information and tips for working and aspiring-to-be-working photographers.

Freelance Switch is another great resource for making a freelance business work.

Duwei, drummer for the Nanjing-based punk band Overdose, rests in a park with friends before a gig at the small YuYinTang rock club in Shanghai, China.

I’m excited to announce that one of my prints, above, is on the block in Daniel Cooney’s iGavel Emerging Artists Auction. The reserve is US$200. The auction began Jan. 14, and will continue until Feb. 4.

The rest of the auction is worth a look, too. Among the photography, I particularly like the photos by Jody Ake, Ina Jang, Shane Lavalette, Wayne Lawrence, Nicole Lloyd, Michael Marcelle, Kelli Pennington, Irina Rozovksky, Jake Stangel, and Lyndsy Welgos. If you’ve got some spare wall space (and some cash burning a hole through your pocket), make a bid.

D ernière victime de la crise des agences de presse photographiques, L’Œil public déposera le bilan en janvier 2010.” – Le Monde, Dec. 23, 2009 (google translation)

There’s sad news this holiday season. Oeil Public, a small and very interesting French collective photo agency, will file for bankruptcy in January 2010 (original French). The reasons are familiar: declining assignments, declining fees, shrinking space for photography in print, etc. It’s sad to see this one go. The collective showed much promise over the past decade and had a great roster of photographers. Thoughts of a Bohemian has some analysis.

Be sure to check out Oeil Public’s 2009 Photos of the Year.

(via Thoughts of a Bohemian)

Remember to always have multiple backups in separate locations. Kort Duce was recently reminded of that rule the hard way:

I lost everything during that blaze. My Apple Mac Pro desktop and laptop computers, external hard drive, Canon printer, Lacie DVD duplicator and all my camera and studio equipment. Everything. Gone in a blink of an eye. Almost $50,000.00 in gear. Luckily I have insurance and the equipment is replaceable, but the lost images are not – especially the years of family photos I had stored on my computer.” -Kort Duce

Ideally, you’ll have two sets of backups or more in addition to your harddrive archive. One backup should be easily accessible where you are should you suffer working harddrive failure and the other should be at your parents’ house or your friend’s house, in case of fire, flood, and other freak of nature. In Duce’s account, he mentions RAID as a possible backup solution, in addition to other strategies. That’s advice I hear a lot in photo communites, and I’d advise against using RAID as a backup. RAID is not a backup. A RAID array is useful for maintaining uptime when a harddrive fails. However, RAID will also duplicate any bad data you put in. If you accidentally delete a file or directory, the RAID array will go ahead and delete that file or directory on each of the discs in the RAID array.

Remember these 3 things: Always backup. Backup in multiple locations. RAID is not a backup.

(update 12/28: Kort Duce wrote in to clarify some details in this post. He does not advocate RAID as a backup and he did not lose “everything” in the fire. Duce maintains separate backups in his home office.)

Bad Contract: We’ve got a number of readers in Australia, and perhaps this is old news to them, but it’s instructive to freelancers everywhere. Reader’s Digest Australia has just foisted a new contract on its contributors, and it’s a doozy. Take a look at this clause:

RDA shall have the exclusive right set out in section 2 herein [exclusive worldwide rights to publish and distribute], for a period of 24 months which shall commence from the date of publication of the photos and thereafter the rights set out in secton 2 shall be read as non -exclusive for an indefinite period.

Lightstalkers (email me or comment here if you need an invitation, by the way) and Kenneth Jarecke have a clause-by-clause analysis of the contract. The best thing to do with contracts like these is to just say “no.” There’s no way to make a living releasing work compensated at normal editorial day rates with such expansive rights being relinquished.

Bad payment practices: Time Warner’s payment vendor, JP Morgan, has unveiled a new payment plan for all suppliers. Essentially a codified 2/10 net 30 payment program, all suppliers are required to pay a fee to Time Warner if they want to be paid on time. Ranging from 4 percent fee for payment within 3 days to a .5 percent fee for payment in 25 days. John Harrington also notes that the fee is for an acceleration of approved payments, rather than an acceleration of payment. So, you’ve still got to wait the 30-90 days for the payment to be approved and then you’ve got to pay a fee if you don’t want to wait another 30 days on top of that. JP Morgan sees this model of payment, that is, exploiting small vendors’ need for cash as a way to make more money, as a “lucrative tool”. From JP Morgan’s explanation:

“There is another large pool of suppliers…the non-strategic suppliers. These suppliers are typically small to mid-size suppliers…they are also the hungriest for cash and much more likely to accept discounts versus strategically sourced suppliers. Understanding your supplier’s need for cash is a key to success.” -JP Morgan article

Gawker’s report, with interesting discussion, points out: “Given how desperate freelancers are to be PAID NOW, largely because companies like Time Inc. never pay them on time, this is a pretty genius idea.” John Harrington’s Photo Business News & Forum has good analysis, as well.

For commiseration: Check out Clients from Hell and ClientCopia, growing collection of client horror stories from designers and other creative professionals, this short about what would happen if the vendor-client relationship occurred in real world situations, and this brilliant exchange between a designer and a client who wants him to work for free (the client in that case is none-too-pleased with it being published and claims it is a hoax, by the way. Others see no reason to believe either side.).

OpenGoo

Pictures are the easy part. A great deal of success as a freelancer is figuring out how to efficiently run one’s business. It’s a constant struggle keeping track of clients and leads and deadlines and tasks and invoices and estimates and late payments. A number of fee-based websites can do this, and Google has Calendars and Docs and Wave.

I’ve just found out about OpenGoo, and it seems like an extremely useful tool, especially for photo collectives, independent one-off festivals and exhibitions, and other endeavors lacking considerable financial backing. It installs on a webserver using the same technology as an average blog, supports multiple users, and handles calendars, tasks, contacts, and documents, among other features. It’s still actively being developed, but it’s already a pretty robust office management system. Definitely worth a test-drive.

None of this solves the problem of invoicing. A simple wordprocessor only works for so long. Blinkbid’s great, but tough to use if you need to access invoices on the road and it’s on another computer. I like SideJobTrack, which unfortunately no longer allows new signups. Here’s a decent survey of online invoicing systems. Invoice Journal is one free online invoice system, and a few open-source installable invoicing systems exist, as well: MyClientBase, Simple Invoices, and Bamboo Invoice all seem promising.