Why I signed the FOO FIGHTERS Photo Contract: RAWtalk 142

Over the past month or so there has been a lot of concern over many larger bands photo contracts. One in particular is the Foo Fighters photo release you must sign before shooting them. Yes the contact is over the top, yes it discusses turning over the copyrights but no it’s not really as big of a deal as you think. What’s going on is people are blowing the release way out of proportion. You have a choice, you can sign it and shoot or you could do neither. It’s no skin off the bands back since you would simply be shooting the same photos as everyone else.

What you have to understand is the contract doesn’t say you can’t use the images, it doesn’t say they will take your ownership right from under you. It says they have the ability to do whatever they want with your images if and only if they ever ask you for them. Do you see any spaces on the contract that asks for contact info, NO.

So why did I choose to sign the contract? One, I was work for hire, meaning I was getting paid to shoot the photos. Two if someone is paying me to use the photos they need the rights to use the photos. Three, what else would I be doing? Sitting at home wishing I was shooting something opposed to actually putting myself in a position to be successful.

I never expected to end up shooting backstage, it just happened. But the truth of the matter is I can not share those images without permission. You know what, I am fine with that right now because I was work for hire. I shouldn’t be able to just share the images without permission in this one case. I want to share them but our agreement said I needed them to sign off on it.

The moral of the story is by me going out and shooting, aka doing my job, I may have opened up some very important doors. Am I guaranteed anything further, nope. That’s okay with me because guess what, I already got my foot in the door, I did the work and they LIKED IT, the liked it a lot.

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Stephen brings us this weeks photo stories and much much more. While Todd fills his chair and we test out “Todd cam” with the new GoPro Hero4 Session.

Gear of the week is my very own I SHOOT RAW ThinkTank Photo Retrospective 30 bag. If you’re in the market for a shoulder bag, this is the one bag you will own for many years to come. It fits everything I need on a shoot and is built to last. You can pick up a bag right here http://bit.ly/rawbag

Thank you to all our sponsors and everyone who checks out the show each week. LEXAR is the official card of RAWtalk.

Here’s all of Stephen’s photo news stories in detail:

Can’t Cover The Foo Fighters’ Show? Send a Sketch Artist!

More on the Foo Fighters this week: another newspaper has jumped on board with the Washington City Post and refused to shoot the band live because of their strict photo release. Instead, they sent a cartoon sketch artist to cover the show. The Quebec paper, Le Soleil, sent cartoonist Francis Desharnais to the gig to simply draw what he saw. They say, “when the Foo Fighters claim rights to pictures of them in concert, they do not do it halfway. Not only could accredited photographers at the show yesterday not publish their work once, they had to give up all rights.” Check out the sketches below and full article here. (via PP)

New Browser App Visualizes Your Lightroom Catalog

A new browser based app helps you visualize your Lightroom Catalog data & “understand your most common photography habits.” The app, called Lightroom Dashboard, is free to use and since it’s browser based, there’s no software or plugins to download and install. All you need to do is drag and drop your LR catalog into the browser. Photographer and developer Cheyne Wallace says it’s, “a useful tool you can use to determine if you really need that new 16-35 lens or if you would actually that new f/2.8 lens.” It shows your average monthly photo volume, what cameras you’ve used, what focal lengths, apertures and ISOs you use and in how many images, what lenses you’ve used, what resolution your images are saved at, and much more. The developer notes that Google Chrome is the preferred browser for this. He says large catalogs, especially those 2GB and up, are problematic due to browser memory limits so if you have a big catalog file, it’s not even worth trying… (via PP)

If Your Photography Website Is Flash-Based, You’re In Trouble

If your photography website is Flash-based, you might want to think about changing it quickly to a non-Flash-based site. Firefox and Chrome both blocked Flash last week in response to news that hackers were exploiting known security bugs to target computers. The decision was made to block Flash after documents leaked onto the internet with information regarding a flaw in the latest version of Flash. Now Adobe did push out an update with the fix shortly after. In response, Firefox re-enabled Flash by default in its browser just a few days ago. What’s your website powered with? (via WSJ)

BIG NEWS!! All versions of Flash are blocked by default in Firefox as of now. https://t.co/4SjVoqKPrR #tech #infosec pic.twitter.com/VRws3L0CBW

— Mark Schmidt (@MarkSchmidty) July 14, 2015

Canon Brings Radio Transmission to the 430 EX Flash

Canon has announced an upgrade to their 430 EX flash with the 430 EX III-RT, which is both smaller and lighter. The flash is the first in the 430EX lineup to offer radio-controlled wireless capabilities too, the 600 also does this but it’s much more expensive (~$500). The 430EX III-RT can work with both radio and optical transmissions, but it’ll only receive signals as a slave for optical signals. For radio transmission, the flash can trigger other units as a master which is great. It now has a built-in Color Filter for balancing color, along with a Bounce Adapter. Also, it has a new control dial, a shorter recycling time, and faster firing. The new flash will be available this September for $300. Will you be upgrading?

Scoutt Helps Photographers Scout Out New Locations

A new location database website will help you scout out locations for photo shoots. Introducing Scoutt.com: It’s a free community-driven location site that features a searchable world map with pin points of photographers’ favorite spots to shoot. Here’s how it works: the map is searchable by area, address or keyword. Users can also simply browse the map freely if they want. Once you have a location picked, you click on the pin which brings up a preview of the spot and an image taken at that location by contributing photographers. Regarding contributing, photographers can share their favorite shooting spots with everyone (which I’m not sure is a good thing). The site offers personal profiles, where users can upload their photos and locations, which will then show up on the public map. The site is currently in Beta, but it is free to use until it is out of Beta. (via FS)

DxOMark Reveals Sensor Scores for the Canon 5DS & 5DS R

Canon’s new 5DS and 5DS R were tested and ranked by DxOMark’s sensor tests. Scoring an 87 for the 5DS and 86 for the 5DS R, the cameras received the highest scores ever achieved by Canon sensors. However, the D810 and a7S are still on top and beat the 5DS and 5DS R in color depth, dynamic range (at low ISOs), and low-light performance. DxOMark says, “if dynamic range is more important to you than 50.6 megapixel photos, there are better alternatives out there.” Do you believe in these tests?

The People Have Spoken: Anti-Freedom of Panorama Proposal Gets Rejected

An update on the anti-Freedom of Panorama proposal that we talked about a few weeks back that threatened to restrict the photography of copyrighted buildings and sculptures from public places. Good news, the European Parliament voted with a majority of members voting against the plan. Only 40 of the 751 members voted to pass the proposal. This comes after 540,000 people around the world signed a petition on Change.org to petition the European Parliament. At the same time, an amendment that attempted to extend the Freedom of Panorama to all European countries wasn’t passed, meaning that specific countries like France, Italy and Greece will still be able to restrict the use of photos showing copyrighted structures in public places. This is 2015 people… (via AP)

New Modular Control Interface for Lightroom Will Speed Up Your Editing

A new modular control interface for Lightroom is now available called Palette. The system was initially launched through Kickstarter and succeeded after completing their goal. The modular system features a set of sliders, dial and buttons that connect via magnets to the “core” and serve as a universal controller to help you quickly edit in Lightroom and other Adobe editing programs. Palette will support most of the Adobe Creative Suite, including Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects, Illustrator and is currently in Beta in Premiere Pro and In Design. By sliding the slider, pushing the button, and turning the dial, users can now make fine tune adjustments. Once they program Palette with their favorite adjustments and shortcuts in a specific program, like Lightroom, the modular system is ready to edit with. in LR, Palette lets you control any Develop module sliders, work with different tools and features, toggle presets, and much more. You can now preorder Palette with pricing starting at $199 for the Starter kit (4 modules), $299 for the Expert kit (7 modules), $499 for the Professional kit (14 modules) and $899 for the limited edition Wood Professional kit (15 modules). Individual modules can also be purchased separately. They’ll start shipping in November of 2015. Since they are an official Adobe partner too, users can get a 20% discount from the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan when they buy a Palette kit. Check out a preview video of it in action below:

Nikon Issues Another Service Advisory For The D750

Nikon has issued a new service advisory for the D750. The advisory warns users that some cameras may have a shutter defect that causes shading in a portion of photos. The affected Nikon D750 cameras were manufactured between October and November 2014. To address the issue, Nikon is offering free repairs, regardless of whether or not the original warranty has expired. They have a new site dedicated to the service advisory where D750 owners can simply type their serial number into too, and it’ll let you know if your camera was affected. Was yours?

NASA Unveils Clearest Image of Pluto Ever

NASA unveiled the clearest image of Pluto thus far, which was taken by their New Horizons spacecraft. The image took nine years to get, after the spacecraft traveled three billion miles to finally reach the dwarf planet. The image was captured during a flyby, when New Horizons was 476,000 miles away from Pluto. According to NASA, the vehicle is in information gathering mode currently, and they should have a clearer picture of other images captured sometime this week. The initial images were taken by the New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). Check out the image below along with another recent post by NASA that features a close up of the icy mountains on the surface; amazing how far we’ve come. Also, find a Flickr album here dedicated to the announcement.

Zoom into Pluto & discover mountains, seen during yesterday’s @NASANewHorizons #PlutoFlyby: http://t.co/6QLXLxiW0o https://t.co/toJQ0j7wB6 — NASA (@NASA) July 15, 2015

Copyright Info Section in Camera Helps Photographer Find His Stolen Gear

Photographer Joe Grundy lost $15,000 in camera gear after it was stolen from his home, but was able to identify the thief and recover his equipment after seeing his name in the copyright info of images posted online. The whole incident happened last year when he was selling two lenses online. He was then contacted by photographer Bryce Wilson who was interested in buying them. After giving Wilson his address, Wilson suddenly back out of the deal. Only a few days later, his house was broken into and $15K of gear was stolen. The next month, Grundy noticed that Wilson had posted a photo on Instagram showing his “new” Canon 5D Mark III and Canon 35mm f/1.4L — both of which were stolen from Grundy’s house. Then, In October of 2014, Grundy was contacted by a photographer who had noticed his name listed as the copyright owner in the EXIF details of Wilson’s photos. The police then got involved and the serial number was found to match the stolen camera’s–another reason to use Lenstag! Wilson was then arrested and charged with burglary on Oct. 16, 2014. Wilson later pled guilty to burglary and was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and Grundy received all of his gear back. Now Grundy reminds people to always put their names in their camera’s copyright settings to not only prevent copyright infringement but also catch potential thieves. This obviously occurred a few months back, but Grundy says he recently started bringing this story to the public’s attention after he discovered that Wilson was still promoting and profiting from photos that had been captured with the stolen gear. Do you have your name in the Copyright section of your camera? (via TDM)

Photographer Showcases the Homeless in New Photo Series

Photographer Aaron Draper has a new photo series that documents the lives of the homeless. The project, called Underexposed, hopes to, “make the homeless as visually appealing as possible in a society that is visually demanding. When it comes to social activism, you achieve greater public awareness by communicating hope as opposed to hopelessness. Hope sells.” He says he hopes to, “bring them into the light and out of the shadows for others to view and appreciate.” Check out the images via his website, which feature a homeless man in a library getting educated, a man playing music, people with their pets, their mobile homes, and more. Draper says, “I use lighting as a way to interest the viewer in the subjects shown,” and “I hope to enable people to gain a more humane view of the homeless.” He finishes with, “If I’m able to affect the way that one person views the homeless, I will have considered my series a success. And that gives me hope.” (via PP)