For Photographers

Changes to Canadian Copyright Law

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A few days ago, Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act, received Royal Assent. This means that Canadian photographers will be treated the same as all other Canadian creators and they will finally have similar rights to photographers in most other countries.

The new law is not yet in force but for photographers, here’s a quick look at some of the changes to the Copyright Act.

[Update: Much of the new law became law on November 7, 2012.]

Author and Copyright Owner

Section 10 has been repealed. This section used to say that the person who owned the film or memory card was the Author of the pictures. Now the photographer is the Author. Only the Author has Moral Rights.
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Air Ball

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Ranaan Katz, a minority co-owner of the NBA’s Miami Heat, filed a lawsuit last year against a blogger who was critical of Katz’ commercial real estate business.

Two weeks ago, Katz filed a copyright infringement suit against the same blogger for publishing an unflattering picture of him. The photo was apparently taken while Katz was standing courtside at a Miami Heat game. He’s also suing Google for refusing to remove the photo from the Web.

Katz is claiming that he owns the copyright to the picture without offering any proof.
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Bottom Of The Ninth

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Some photo assignments can be challenging in one way or another. But a professional photographer should welcome such assignments as an opportunity to build customer trust and enhance the photographer’s reputation.

Any photographer can show up, shoot a few business portraits, and deliver photos a few days later. However the photographer didn’t really prove anything to the customer except that the photographer was competent.

But if. . .
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Spray and Pray

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On a sports photography forum, photographers were discussing the best ways to handle the thousands of pictures they each shoot during a game.

On a wedding photographers forum, one person said he usually shoots over 3,000 pictures per wedding. Another said he often does 5,000 pictures.
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Basket Of Eggs

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Another example to show that it’s not wise to put all your eggs in one basket or all your digital files on one hard drive:

According to a CBC story, a lawyer in British Columbia is suing Apple Canada after his backup hard drive, an Apple “Time Capsule”, failed after three years of use. All of his data were lost.

The hard drive included pictures of the birth of his first child.

A sad fact of our digital lives is that all digital storage is inherently unstable. Hard drives will fail. Discs will become unreadable.

There’s a reason why most professional photographers back up their work at least in triplicate. A backup for the backup of the backup. There’s a reason why most top-end cameras allow for duplicate recording of pictures as they’re being shot.

Photographs are very valuable, especially irreplaceable family pictures. So why not spend a few cents and make extra backups? Blank CDs and DVDs are about 40¢ each and external hard drives might run 25¢ per gigabyte. It’s cheap insurance.

When, not if, your basket falls to the ground, will you lose all your eggs?

 

Dress Code

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Media accreditation information for the upcoming 2012 World Football Challenge was sent out a few days ago. In this case, “football” means soccer.

One of the rules stated: “Media who are approved for credentials should not wear apparel supporting any of the competing teams.”

Normally one would assume that this rule is so obvious, it need not be said. But the fact that this professional sports event had to actually mention a dress code means a problem exists.
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Photography Pricing Resources

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Here’s some resources for learning to price commercial photography. But I’m not vouching for any of these. A photographer would be foolish to base their business practices on numbers from someone else’s web site. Use these for informational purposes and to help understand the underlying principles.

— The News Photographers Association of Canada Cost of Doing Business Calculator (CODB) is a good place to start. You may be surprised at your CODB.

— The Canadian Association of Professional Image Creators has a PDF listing suggested minimum usage fees (i.e. licensing fees only). Main page > Useful Resources > Resources > Reproduction Fee Schedule. The site has other useful information.

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