cjboffoli

As both a collector of fine art photographs, and a photographer who is represented by fine art galleries, signatures and titles are ALWAYS in pencil.

Great question. I'd love to have my very first 35mm camera back. It was a fixed focus point-and-shoot Canon Snappy with graphics from the 1984 Olympics. My (extremely parsimonious) father must have found it in a closeout bin in December of '84 so he decided on it for a birthday gift for me. I shot many hundreds of bad pictures with that camera until I upgraded to a Minolta a few years later. But those cheesy images were the foundation of a lifetime of images to come and (something I would never have imagined) a full time career as a fine art, commercial and editorial photographer. That Snappy is what started it all for me and I'd love to have it back.

Actually, it's the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that gives Pinterest Safeharbor from prosecution. They are not responsible for the infringement of their users so long as they remove those infringements (in a timely manner) when they are reported to them. The thing is, if they don't take them down or miss some of them they can be used for copyright infringement. I should know...I've sued them.

I sell my work around the world and as such I find it convenient to user trusted production houses in various places. In the UK I've had good experienced with both Genesis Imaging and Spectrum. Alternately, Whitewall does very high quality work (in Germany) and ships at very reasonable rates to countries around the world. PS: In some countries, fine art is exempt from import taxes. So you might do a bit of research on H.M. Customs website to verify.

Having read through the above this appears a general mix of good, bad and odd information. (PS: tommarcus might be well served to learn the difference between 'your' and 'you're' before dispensing further legal advice.) As a photojournalist working in the US, my understanding is that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place. So you are allowed to photograph people, places and things on public property. It also is actually lawful to photograph private spaces that can be seen from a public place (eg. into a private yard or even through a window into a private space that can be freely seen from a public sidewalk or road). Of course, there are gray areas with nuances and exceptions. Some of those things might fall under federal law (copyrights, trademarks, likeness, right of publicity, etc.) some might be local (peeping Tom laws). For instance, you might be within your rights to photograph Julia Roberts on a sidewalk in NYC but you might not have the right to put her face on merchandise and begin selling it. You cannot stick your camera up a woman's skirt in a public place. And while it might be totally legal for you to go to a park and photograph random children, for instance, this might make people very uncomfortable and stir trouble. So you should always use your best judgment. Of course in the USA one can be sued for anything, regardless of whether the plaintiff has the law on their side or not. But one also shouldn't conspire with their own fear and worry about the legality of everything. If you plan to commercialize your work in any way, say, offering images shot in public places to stock agencies, you might need releases for people who appear in the images. There has also been case law for situations in which a photographer has gotten into trouble selling prints of pictures they made of public artworks. Privately owned spaces are, of course, a different matter. And that includes spaces that appear to be public (like the outdoor areas of Rockefeller Center, for instance). Or maybe a shopping center or mall. There some exceptions in this area too. For instance, some local laws provide additional access to journalists to make images and video in private places when first responders are on the scene as there is a public interest in what is happening. Many years back I was covering a fire on private property and the private security tried to have me removed. But as long as the police and/or fire department are present I had a right to be there as an accredited journalist. That doesn't mean that I haven't been threatened, intimidated, screamed at by all manner of people: business owners, victims or perpetrators of crime, first responders, etc. In 2020 Americans are hyper aware of and uneasy about cameras. Cameras can be very powerful. In my work as an independent film producer, there were times when it would have been impractical to get releases from everyone who appeared in our shot...say at a restaurant or winery where we might be filming. In those cases we'd put signs up – in conspicuous places – at all of the entrances, which warned people that filming was going on there and that by entering the area they gave their consent to be filmed. So there may be other mechanisms that might unburden you from having to get releases for everyone. Lastly, never hesitate to seek legal advice from a local attorney who is better equipped to advise you on your legal rights and responsibilities as it relates to the kind of photography that you want to do.

I had a membership with PPA for a couple of years but had to cancel it as they were too aggressive in their marketing (and selling my information to third parties) despite my repeated requests for them to not do that. One shouldn't have to ask five times not be treated like a commodity. In the end it just was not worth it for me.

My New York gallery (Winston Wachter Fine Art) recommended Baboo a few years back and I've used them until recently when one of their acrylic-dibond photographs spontaneously began to fall apart. How they've responded has been disappointing in the extreme. Though they pretended to be concerned in the beginning and said they wanted to go look at the piece, after they did that they disappeared. They stopped returning calls to my gallery and have not responded to my attempts to contact them directly. I now feel like a fool for giving them years of business that they clearly don't value. Even more troubling is that they seem to clearly be propping up their online ratings (in the wake of honest reviews I have posted about this experience) with reviews that are shills. I no longer think that the owners of Baboo are professional nor the "experts" they claim to be. I wanted to post about my experience here to be sure that other know about it so they can make their own decisions if they want to deal with a tremendous hassle if anything goes wrong with their order, which is usually when the true quality of a business is revealed.