As a semi-professional photographer in the niche DJ industry, I’ve dedicated a significant amount of time (years) and money (thousands) to learn and practice the craft. And in that time I’ve created a hefty portfolio of distinctive work to support the reviews that we publish on DJWORX. You can see this body of images on Flickr here and here.
Bar the occasional commercial shoot, the images have been taken with no financial gain in mind. I just want our content to be as detailed, informative, and eye-catching as it can be, and frankly it was fun to learn a new creative skill too. I love that people enjoy the images, and it’s an area that I plan to expand in the very near future.
One thing has become clear over the years though, and it’s that my images are used by a great many people outside of DJWORX. I’m deeply flattered when people ask if they can use images as desktop pictures, university dissertations etc, and only ask for an image credit in return. Sadly, many do not ask or credit.
But if it’s for commercial use — i.e. you’re in business and use my images to support your money-making project, then there is a small licensing fee to pay, or at the very least a clear credit must be given. But adding a credit is not enough — permission MUST be granted for you to use the image in any circumstances. If it isn’t, then in my book it’s stealing my work to enhance yours.
Of course, sometimes it’s entirely innocent, and I’m a very understanding kind of guy. But when the watermark is cropped off or removed (sometimes badly), or the image is edited to disguise the origin, then I’ve got an issue. Paraphrasing a famous quote — it’s definitely better to seek permission than to ask forgiveness, especially where my work is concerned.
Please note — I’ve yet to see what is legally described as “fair use” of my work. Using that as an excuse isn’t going to work with me.
MY LINE IN THE SAND
Given that part of my future business will be offering my services to the industry as a professional photographer, I need to draw a line in the sand, and here it is:
- ALWAYS ask for permission to use my images.
- If it’s non-commercial, I’ll probably grant it but will still need an image credit for my work.
- If the image use is supporting the scene in the wider sense, I’ll almost certainly give permission and just want a prominent image credit.
- If you’re a business however, and want to use my images, then we’ll need to come to an arrangement. Money is good, but sometimes goods are a workable substitute.
- ALWAYS ask for permission to use my images. I don’t think I can be clearer about this.
Think of it this way — the internet is my shop window. But if I had an actual shop, would you steal my product from it? To me, as the creator of said product, it’s exactly the same thing, online or not.
So please consider this a very friendly reminder to be nice. Support our work just as we have supported the DJ scene for a decade and a half.
Thanks very much.
For the 99.9% of us that just read this page as a news source (and have zero purpose to copy images) I have to wonder if this merited an actual article for us all to read.
It absolutely did. The headline made it clear what it was about, and serves notice to those that have used images, and equally to those that might too. Now everyone is aware.
For the 99.9% of us that need to make sure our job pays us, this is relevant.
People that make comments like these always fail to consider that they didn’t have to read the article altogether. You clicked through, didn’t like the content because it didn’t fit your narrow expectations, and then wasted your own time further by complaining about it. Good job.
narrow expectations ? I did not realise it was for content full of crying over there own selfs and being butthurt…. i thought it was for DJ reviews not crying nobodies trying to claw back revenue after all nobody would waste this time for free theres revenue somewhere thats a fact.
Truth be told by the time it makes it here we have already seen it. Social Media has made this possible and getting involved in beta’s only adds to this. I get that credit is wanted for time spent etc. though.
I’m talking specifically about my photography and my artistic interpretation. With increasing regularity, the industry resorts to renders. I prefer to deliver a more realistic view, balanced with more eye catching creative views.
Why not put a bigger transparent watermark?
“Given that part of my future business will be offering my services to the industry as a professional photographer”
Do you think soliciting work and/or being commissioned to do work for a company is a conflict of interest when reviewing products produced by the same company??
ordering a set of pictures of a mixer doesn’t give you editorial control over the review of the same mixer. one is a commercial service, the other is freedom of speech.
I’m just gonna be real honest here. If you don’t want your work to be infringed, don’t put it online. Period.
I get it. You have a right to be paid or at least credited for your work. You also are working to cover a field that was essentially created by sampling. It’s not a realistic goal in today’s setting.
I say this as both a designer, a producer and an artist.
I’m grateful for our copyright laws, but in this digital age, in “our” field of music, they don’t mean much anymore.
“You also are working to cover a field that was essentially created by sampling.”
If youre talking hiphop then that certainly wasn’t created by sampling.
It was perfectly legal for a DJ to play break after break. No sampling there.
Then when hiphop started Releasing records for the public the labels Enjoy and Sugarhill had their own house band that covered the RnB and Funk songs.
(Again no sampling)
Years later when hiphop was already worldwide established the sampling era started with the help of the SP12 and MPC60.
I get the point you’re making, I would add this.
Back in the day, sampling was new and people largely just ripped what they wanted and made money from it without paying the original artists. But artists soon wised up, and you now either have to get permission or pay. In this respect the laws mean everything and are generally enforced, sometimes for significant sums of money.
More than anything, it’s just bad manners, and speaks about the character of the people doing the stealing. It’s just disappointing that people won’t send me an email saying that they love my work and would I mind granting permission. Instead, they take and hope they won’t get found out. One will get a positive response, the other less so.
As a professional photographer myself (among many other things), I view this post as essential. “Fair Use” is not some catch-all to allow you to use others work for free, and it should be expected that you need to ask permission before use. It may not be practical to chase up every image used in a meme, but commercial use especially should be followed up every time, if for financial gain then just to reinforce that permission is always necessary. – Soba
watermark them then ? and like others say if your getting butthurt over people not saying thanks or whatever then don’t diarrhea all your work online then like the other billion photographers in this oh so ‘niche’ are where millions do it…. Bye DJWORX u get too emotional and butthurt these days
I’m intrigued. Has this post triggered your emotions enough to join Disqus just to post some negativity and tell us that you’re leaving? Why is that?
Have you thought about licensing the photos with a Creative Commons license to simplify this? It seems like the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license matches what you want.