Art – the dilemma of the photographer

The perennial dilemma of the modern photographer – should I photograph that bit of art I admire?

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We are faced with this daily – from photographing sculpture, architecture, industrial design or paintings to painting someones photograph (now that’s one you hadn’t thought of!) or sculpture or industrial design or architecture.

There are also potential copyright issues. The simplest way to look at the problem is to consider if it is a derivative work and you’ve added something to it. So a photo of a sculpture needs to add something to it – a person examining it, some interesting light that makes it unique, the interaction of place, time and light. How about a photo of a hood ornament on a car? A teacup? Someone else’s photo of a tea cup?

Some places & countries even go to extremes and forbid commercial (and probably amateur) photography of buildings, panoramas etc without permission. A debate raged earlier this year as Europe tried to standardise the copyright of Freedom of Panorama (see this DP review article). Have a look at the Wikipedia page link above to see where you can take pictures safely. The conclusion was a defeat of the proposal – you can keep taking photos of the buildings of Europe (sort of).

But if you change or interpret the original, you are deriving something new. And that I think is the crux of the argument.

There are many discussion on the web about the topic (the World Intellectual Property Organisation – a part of the UN – has an interesting article applicable to photographers; the Creative Commons licence system;  the US governments Copyright office definition of derivative work or the American Society of Media Photographers discussion) and we are adding to that in the latest Camera Clips, where the opinions of camera club judges, photographers and legal experts have been canvassed.

Have a read and form your own opinion.

Cheers

Chris 🙂