Blue Planet Photography

I’m in Oregon, spending a couple days in the Portland area before picking up my participants in my Oregon Coast workshop on Thursday. We’ll be heading to Seaside and Cannon Beach, then south down the coast over the next 9 days to Depoe Bay, Newport, Yachats and Heceta Head. I’ll post an image or two plus some thoughts each evening (if I can get internet access. One process step I’m working into the logistics of planning a traveling workshop is making sure our lodging has free wi-fi and/or where there is nearby wi-fi access on location). So, this is actually a day later, since I arrived in Portland (Troutdale, actually) on Monday evening. I spent the day yesterday in the Columbia River Gorge, visiting a couple waterfalls.

I spent most of the day at Multnomah Falls, and hiked up to the overlook at the top (brink) of the falls. Other falls visited were Wahkeena and Horsetail. The trail to the overlook is about 1 mile from the base of Multnomah. The trail is paved and is up all the way, at a more or less constant grade. If you have bad knees or are not used to walking hills, this might not be the walk for you. Today, I’m off to visit the Portland Japanese Garden. This is one of the Multnomah Falls images.

It’s difficult for me to decide to cancel or postpone an event. Today I canceled the PhotoCrawl scheduled for today at Idaho City. Storms came in last night and this morning I woke to thunder and rain. The location for today’s PhotoCrawl is about 40 miles out of town, so travel time has to be taken into account as well as the comfort level of the participants. This isn’t a photography boot camp. Because of the travel involved, an early notice was necessary, which exacerbated the problem since the weather can change here rather quickly, despite the predictions of ongoing rain all day. As I write, the sun has come out and there is a large chunk of blue sky, at least in my part of town. 40 miles away, who knows?

We were supposed to gather at 2pm at Idaho City and I made the call around 10:30am. It’s 11:45 now. I would have been more inclined to keep to the schedule if we were going to a local spot where people could show up at the last minute or leave without having spent an hour or so getting there.

I think I made the right call, which was verified a few minutes ago when I called a restaurant we were going to eat at to let them know not to expect our large group. It was still raining there and the area was without power.

Funny how things work out. It’s now 3:20. As I was finishing this up (or thought I was) I received a phone call from a local construction company who needed someone pronto to photograph some storm damage for insurance purposes. Apparently, all their adjusters, etc. are out of town for the Boise State football game. Yay, Broncos! So, I rushed out to get that done.

Now I’m back and need to process these photos and get some product photos completed, both for delivery tomorrow before I leave for my Oregon Workshop on Monday.

Found today at aphotoeditor.com, a story about 3M appropriating an idea from a Flickr poster after not accepting the license fee offered by the owner of the image. The image in question is a Jaguar car covered in multi-colored Post-It notes. According to the article linked from APE, 3M contacted the photographer after the photo became very famous on Flickr and requested the use of the photo in an ad campaign. The photographer, to his credit, did his due dilligence in researching an appropriate license fee. However, 3M chose not to accept the reasonable fee and selected to reshoot the concept themselves. I don’t know what recourse the photographer has in this instance, I’m not a lawyer nor have encountered this type of situation in my own business. But, on the surface, it looks like an infringement of copyright because the 3M image is so similar to the original.

Social networks like Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, etc. are certainly resources for corporations lacking in original ideas. It’s almost like having a staff of millions, brainstorming crazy stuff about anything and everything. Just pick the most popular and run with it. And, these sites are for sharing, right? Plus, those people would be ecsatic for a big company to select their work as worthy for a major advertising campaign. Think of the bragging rights. And, since they’re posting to sites that promote free use, they obviously wouldn’t mind not getting paid for supplying the creative input and the source imagery for a major advertising campaign.

What a shame.

The sad thing is, this is not an isolated incident. Check out this NYTimes article from July 2008: When Advertisers Borrow Imagery from Artists
One of these days, the tables will turn and the folks now willing to get paid with a credit line, or even just the knowledge their concept was used in a national campaign, will wake up and realize they’re being taken to the cleaners for a song (or less). Is a revolution coming?