Photographers are ANGRY with Ariana Grande | Should they Be???

Photographers and press organizations are upset with Ariana Grande’s tour photography contract. TMZ posted a story where you can read why they’re upset.

The gist is this, in order to photograph her current tour, you need to sign a contract. The contract says you give the rights to your images to her touring company. You can only shoot three songs from a designated area. And she must approve all images before they can be posted one time.

My take is simple, don’t shoot the show. If you don’t like the rules, don’t sign the contract. I am mostly on her side this time. She’s one of the biggest if not the biggest touring musicians today and doesn’t need your newspaper coverage. It’s true, she doesn’t need basic snapshots to help her sell more tickets. She probably has her own tour photographer who could supply the papers with even better photos than they would be able to capture on their own.

This isn’t even a new policy in music. I’ve gotten 30 seconds to photograph Beyonce. Stephen’s had to have the lead singer of the Killers Brandon Flowers personally stand over his shoulder to approve images before they can be used. Bob Gurin who I interviewed a long time ago told me a story of when he shot Gun’s and Roses. He had to give them the undeveloped slide film which they processed and sent back only one or two approved images.

At the end of the day, if you don’t like the contract, don’t sign it…. Or do what I used to do, sign someone else’s name to it because the PR people never checked.