When is your photograph not your photograph?

This question always popped into my head. When a photograph takes a photograph of some one else's

artistic expression, does the photograph still belong to the photographer.

 

Let me explain. Lets say some great flower arranging artist has a show of his/her flower arrangement. I go

in and photograph all the arrangements and come out with some beautiful photographs. I can certainly

claim that I have created beautiful images in 2 dimension from the 3 dimension flower arrangements from

this artist. So that is fairly cut and dry. I should claim credit to my photographs even though I did not

create the flower arrangement.

 

Same with a lot of 3 dimensional art pieces.

 

The line starts to get blur when I start taking photograph of 2 dimensional art pieces. Lets say I go to the

museum and take a photograph of Mona Lisa and duplicated it perfectly (not a chance in reality but for the

sake of debate). Can I lay claim to the photograph of Mona Lisa?

 

More blurry will be taking a piece of high contrast black and white art and simply running it under a copy

machine and I come up with something that is exactly the same as the original. Did I just committed

forgery?

 

I ask this because I have taken photographs in a orchid show and came out with some images. I have also

seen some members here posting flower images that may be from a flower show. When the photograph

get ratings should the rater consider that if the photographer actually did the flower arrangement or not.

Aesthetic is fairly easy but what about originality?

 

Thoughts?

Hansen--

 

Here's the way I look at it. I didn't create the tree I photograph. I didn't build the house or

bridge I photograph. I didn't give birth to the people I photograph. To me, a photograph is

a picture of anything taken with a camera. With any subject (whether another's work of art,

something man-made, or something found in nature), we have the ability to photograph

on a spectrum from as close to "representational" as possible to an extremely subjective

interpretation. The photograph belongs to whomever took the picture unless it's been sold

or the rights to it have been signed away. When photographing someone else's artistic

expression, you might consider it a collaboration or you might not. That would be up to

you, your situation, and what you are attempting to do.

>>> Thoughts?

 

It's still your photograph.

Copywork of a painting is not your photograph. It requires skill and care, but it's not your photograph.

If you took the picture without obtaining a property release from the owner of the object, yes it's your photo, but you can't sell it or use in your portfolio or for anything to do with monetary gain.

<i>Copywork of a painting is not your photograph.</i><P>So if you take a photo of a Rembrandt painting, whose does it belong to? Rembrandt? That dude is dead, so it isn't his. The painting is in the public domain, so there are no copyright issues. So whose is it?<p>Once you look at it this way, you understand, it does belong to the photographer, but its usage may be limited. However, you can use it in your portfolio especially if it's Rembrandt's painting. How does anyone show an artist the photos of artwork they took when looking for a job?

I suppose there are implications to the nature of the photograph as to how much involvement the photographer has toward the end result. Obviously if you take a picture of a famous painting, nobody will credit the photographer for doing the painting. On the other hand, a still life of fruit is assumed to have been carefully arranged by the photographer along with the light set up.

 

If the still life is really a display in a museum or store window, it would be honorable for the photographer to acknowledge the fact rather then imply full credit for the total creation.

Did the florist make the flowers too?

At the flower show, if you shoot photographs of the flower arrangements the photographs are yours. You selected the camera position and handled the technical details of the photograph.

 

At the flower show, if you shoot photographs of the flowers, not the arrangements, that express something about the flowers, the photographs are yours. The difference is that you have a photograph that is a personal expression and has much more of the photographer invested in the process.

 

If you shot a photograph of the Mona Lisa you have a nice art catalogue photograph of the Mona Lisa. If you shoot a photograph that includes the Mona Lisa of someone?s reaction to the Mona Lisa you have a nice photograph that tells a story. Either way the photograph is yours. The difference is how much of you is put into the photograph.

 

My wife specialized in photographing works of art. There is more talent required to photograph even a flat painting than most suspect. She was paid handsomely. The photographs were hers even thought someone else did the art.

 

?Should the rater consider that if the photographer actually did the flower arrangement or not?? Only if they are rating the flower arrangement.

 

A photograph is not the subject. It is a separate entity from the subject and in all cases should be judged on it?s own merit as a photograph.

 

Unfortunately if seems difficult for a lot of people to grasp the difference. Therefore, like the flower arrangements you mention, the photograph is too often rated on the subject, the arrangement or the physical appearance of a young lady, rather than on the photograph. Ratings are meaningless unless the rater is able to separate the photograph from the subject.

I have thought about this myself. Years ago, I was a photography student at an art school,

and I had an assignment to learn strobe lighting, so I dragged the lights around campus

looking for a subJect and found a sculpture in the ceramics department and took its

"portrait". I never found out who the sculptor was. Today I still feel like the photograph is

a collaboration and I feel I owe something to the sculptor. I posted the image on my flickr

page and said that if anyone knows who the sculptor is to please tell me and I'll give them

credit and send them a print or two. The composition and the way I lit it were creative

decisions and feel safe taking some credit for that, naturally, but I feel a great respect for

the artist and gratitude for such an interesting portrait opportunity.

 

Turning it around a bit, does it irritate you folks when someone uses someone else's

photograph as reference in a drawing or painting? I have seen drawings that try to be as

faithful to the actual photograph as the artist's talents allow, and, if this is merely an

exercise to improve drawing skills, it doesn't matter, but when you see them for sale in

galleries or at a cafe, it is not only irritating, but copyright infringement. Usually this is

done by novice artists as I think most people are intelligent enough to know better. I

worked for a couple of wildlife photographers for many years and they got a letter from an

artist saying they wanted to base drawings on their animal photographs to then make into

a calendar, and the photographers said no, that the photos were finished works of art and

not raw materials for drawings. Does anyone have anything to contribute to that topic?<div></div>

from what i understand-

 

copying 2d art is a service, the person who photographs it, copies it, has no copyright claim.

you are just copying it from one medium to another (oil to chromes).

 

3d art....i dont know...i would say a collaboration, technically the photogs image, but

depicting anothers work (kindof like a portrait, your ?, but you need their permission/mod

release to use it).

Let's say a digitographer finds your photograph on photo.net, "captures" the image and loads it into photoshop. He then adds artistic merit to the photo. The origninal photo is yours, of course, and the new photo is????

Hansen, There are a lot of lousy pictures of flowers, arrangements, etc. If you capture the essence of whatever it is you're shooting (be if flowers or whatever...), the picture did it's job.

 

Is Duchamp's Mona Lisa (with mustache) art? His urinals and other found objects? I think that's what he was supposedly tossing back at the viewer. So the idea has some history behind it.

 

I may get the guy's name wrong, but a good example of making art from other sources is Alberto Morrel's photographs of illuminated manuscripts. I tried to find examples on the web, but came up short. If anyone knows this guy's work these photographs are a worthy example.

 

Gary's right about the photograph being an entity unto itself. I do street photography and sometimes I'll try to explain that the picture was not of THEM... that they have become symbolic... an image that conveys something greater than themselves...

 

This serves two purposes. One: It sometimes leads to some sort of conversation. Two: They think I'm nuts and quickly walk away.

Photography in general, in many of its aspects is based on other works of human creations, like photographing architecture, temples , museums, churches,mask festivals( example Venice)the Egyptian pyramids , music and theater performances, kimonos( cloths) and also portraits( using models )etc, and we want to sell our work, who is the owner of the work? There are legal definitions of some ,but I think that interpretations are very wide.

 

In the 90's, and even before, there was a trend in the art world, that talked about " citation", it means take an art work or even parts of it and add something of yours, and give it a new meaning, connecting to your perception. I see it as a dialogue of cooperation ,or a junction, of my perception to theirs. There are many examples in the art world of using art works done by others, as a means of a dialogue. Anyway photographing an exact art work , the interpretation is subjective, but when selling it copy rights has to be checked up.

After reading through most of the posts, I am surprised that some find anything to photograph.

 

To begin with, there are very few photographs of pure artwork posted for critiques. Generally if it is, it seems to be the drawings or paintings done by the photographer or by someone that has requested that they take the photograph.

 

There are a number of photographs posted of artwork, sculpture mainly, that appears to be an attempt at personal self expression, documentation or interpretation of the artwork and can be seen as such if you separate the subject from the image. They are two different things.

 

If I go to a museum that allows photography and I photograph a painting that I enjoy as a memory record or documentation, does the artist own my photograph? Does the museum own my photograph? How absurd.

 

If I were to photograph the Mona Lisa I doubt seriously that I, or anyone else, would have the gall to pass it off as more than my/their photograph of the Mona Lisa. I have not damaged the artist. If anything I have paid the artist a very high complement.

 

I recently did a large number of photographs at an Air Museum. I did not design, construct or decorate the airplanes. I did not arrange the exhibits. It appears that from the thinking of some here that those are not my photographs because they made use of the talents of others.

 

I don?t follow flower photos but I do not recall seeing any that struck me as being from a flower show. But frankly, if the photographer has someone arrange the flowers, I know I would have to, how is that different from the highly paid fashion photographer using make up artists, a professionally trained models and a interior background designed by an architect and decorated by an interior designer. If you feel the flower photograph does not belong to the photographer, who owns the fashion shot? Or is Anne Leiberitz in for a terrible shock?

 

A large number of photographs that are not flowers or artwork are ?collaborations.? What happens if you see an old barn with an interesting piece of farm equipment outside. You didn?t build the barn or position the equipment. Does that mean the photograph cannot be yours? Or a unique house with a flower garden? Does that make Thomas Kincaid a plagiarist?

 

As far as usage, I and the majority of the people that post to PN are not professional photographer and some that wish to claim the title are simply wanabees, so the chances of compensation or commercial usage is a minimal issue at best and one that was not addressed by the OP.

 

A photograph taken by a photographer belongs to the photographer. To think otherwise is ludicrous.

 

A photograph is not yours when you have, most likely for compensation, transferred that right to others.

 

It?s time to get past the PC and the meism and start to enjoy photography.

It may be a special situation, but I make giclee prints for several artists that are, when framed under glass, virtually indistinguishable from the (watercolor) originals. Although I consider the digital files to be mine, I believe it would be illegal or at least immoral to offer those prints for sale as mine, even though they wouldn't exist in that form if I hadn't created them.

What if you were to scan another's photograph? It would then technically be your photograph, since you pushed the button to take the image. If not, how far would you have to go to make it your own? Zooming in very slightly, almost microscopically? Now that you have changed the image, can you claim it? Even though the change isn't visible to human eyes?

Jeff objected to my view that your copywork is not your photograph.

<p>

As I say on so many threads, I'm an amateur. When a dear friend of ours died a little while back, we had to catalogue his art collection so that an auction house could make an initial determination of value, allowing his family to decide what to do. To make sure his family didn't have an expense for this initial evaluation, I made the photographs. Some of the pieces were beautiful, and I worked hard to make good reproductions. I still can't claim the images as my own.

<p>

Many years ago, my wife and I were making a gift of one of our favorite paintings to an institution, and wanted to have a copy. The painting was huge, and we decided that the copy should be photographed in large format, to retain the greatest possible detail. I have never shot in large format, and would have had learn quite a bit, as well as rent a camera, lens, focusing magnifier, etc. I got wonderful advice on how to do it from photo.net members. However, our best local specialist in copywork, who does all the copying for our museum of art and many of the local galleries, was less costly than the equipment rental. Despite the advice from photo.netters, I was more confident of having the job done well if he did it. He provided the negatives because, in his view, there was no issue of copyright.

<p>

As a penultimate example, if I go to a gallery where you have one of your photographs hanging, and the gallery owner lets me photograph your photograph (or worse, doesn't notice my setting up my tripod, lights, etc.) is it my photograph? The physical copy may be mine, but I wouldn't show it as my own.

<p>

And as a final example:

<p>

When my love says that she is made of truth,<br>

I do believe her though I know she lies ...

<p>

Just because I wrote the last two lines from memory doesn't make them mine. They're from Shakespeare's Sonnet 138. Even if I put them on a piece of paper, they're still his. Even if I wrote them to show off my penmanship, I would have to admit that they were not mine. Even if you disagree, read the sonnet, I think it's his best. It would be my best, had I written it.

A lot of the conjecture and opinion in this thread disappears if one re-thinks the problem of subject matter. Popular perception is that things, paintings, sculpture, buildings, trees, etc are being photographed but they are not. What is actually being photographed is the real optical image in the back of the camera.

 

The stuff out there, the "things", are merely a source of photons but it is the photographer who organises this spray of unruly photons into an image and causes this image to embed itself into a sensitive surface.

 

If you MAKE the image, the entity actually being photographed, you OWN the picture which may result.

I photographed one of nurses in the sculpture across from the Viet memorial. It was raining and tears were running down her already anguished face. It turned out to be a good picture and I wanted to show it. I contacted the sculptor and got her permission to show it and credited her for the art. I have only shown it once for a specific purpose. Morally, it is not now and never was my art or my creation. Legally I own the picture and other than that one time I show endeavor to show my own work.

For anyone who wants to understand just how complex the copyright issue, I recommend checking this out:

 

http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/02/photographs-and-derivative-works.html

It is still your photograph. I work with a very talented makeup artist. The models I choose are also very talented. However, the creation of the image doesn't end after the makeup is applied and the pose struck. In fact, most of the work occurs later either in the darkroom or in Photoshop.

 

If you simply make a snapshot of someone else's work, that's a different story though....

http://picasaweb.google.com/morrishome3/SanDiegoJuly07/photo#5109107346411651458

@CE,<p>My daughter spent 6 weeks at a ranch in Abiquiu, NM taking a for-credit college b&w landscape photography course.<p>The framework was to study Ansel Adams, find locations on the ranch that he actually shot from and, using modern 35mm equipment (but 100% manual - say a Canon old F1) try to <i>duplicate</i> his photographs.<p>Of course this is a sisyphean task - lens selection alone was an intellectual exercise - but the object was to learn the properties of contemporary equipment, developing and printing processes, and chemicals and paper (and those of Adams) and attempt to come as close to his image as possible.<p>Was she stealing Ansel Adams' images, or creatively applying her acquired skills to the production of her own images?<p>From the earlier philosophy thread, what is a photograph? Was she making her own photographs or those of her client, the teacher, or was she copying Adams?<p>FWIW she received an A and made some wonderful 11x14 archival prints.

"When a photograph takes a photograph of some one else's artistic expression, does the photograph still belong to the photographer."

 

 

http://masters-of-photography.com/D/doisneau/doisneau_versailles_full.html