The printed image is being devalued

I have written here before about social networking sites attempting to hijack photographers images and claim rights over them because they have been posted on their servers. This worried me to such a degree that I have now been forced to include a ‘non-social network’ posting clause in my contracts to try and keep the rights to my photographs.


A few weeks ago I read an article in one of the trade magazines that some highly regarded photographers were being consulted by the government with the view to updating the copyright act. This at first seems like an ideal opportunity to tighten up some loop holes and clearly define what is acceptable and what is not in the digital realm (the current copyright act, last updated in 1988, makes no reference to digital display at all, in fact in 1988 the UK internet was only really used by some Universities and CERN to store and transfer documents) but with the current trend of government taking a good opportunity and doing more harm than good I await their findings with bated breath.


This morning, while I flicked through my RSS feeds, I read an interesting article over on Vincent Laforet’s site. It talks about Time Life and Getty images releasing their work for free viewing over the internet. Like the governments willingness to ratify the current copyright laws, at first free viewing of Getty images seems like a great step forward but when you think about the precedent this sets the outcome may not be so rosy. Vincent asks is this move is further devaluing the printed image and giving social networking sites Carte Blanch over our digital images. I’m not sure the move goes that far yet but as with everything, the seemingly good intentions are easily twisted into something less palatable.


The value of the printed image greatly outweighs an image on a monitor or screen, the investment you have to make both in time and money to display a photograph or print gives it an inherent value. It is very easy to load up a memory card, slide it into a digital photo frame and let it cycle through hundreds of images but compare that to picking out a single image, getting it printed, choosing the correct frame then placing it in a prime location or hanging it on the wall, the two do not compare. This is the very reason I do not offer ‘digital only’ packages for weddings. I know a lot of photographers offer this service (no printed photos or albums, just the images on a disk) and they can make a lot of money from such a package as they tend to charge the same amount as they do for a package that includes an album but without the associated costs. Those types of packages, for me, devalue the printed image as well as the skill of laying out a beautiful album, not to mention the skill in crafting a bespoke, hand made album. I think the digital only option is embracing wedding photographs as a commodity and not celebrating it as an art form.