Category Archives: Legal Stuff

Permission to Shoot: When to Use Model Release Forms

©Jaimee Todd 2012

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are a lot of photography contests out there and many of them these days are requiring entrants to have a model release form if they submit an image with a person in it. All of these requirements compels the question: Is it always necessary to have a model release form when photographing someone?

Well, as with most things in life, it depends on what your purpose is.

First of all, a model release form is a liability waiver that the person who is the subject of the photograph signs, granting permission to the photographer or publisher to use their image.

When you’re using someone else’s image for commercial gain, you’re going to want to use that release form to be legal. This would mean images used for brochures, websites, catalogs, ads, tradeshows, kiosks, etc. Because model release forms pertain to privacy, using one for commercial purposes protects you from civil liability.

In contrast, if your image is appearing in an art exhibition, a trade publication, magazine or newspaper, a model release form isn’t necessary because those contexts are considered to be for educational purposes. It’s also unnecessary to use a model release form for casual photographs, such as for street photography. There’s no expectation of privacy when you’re out in public so there’s no need for the form so long as you’re not taking that picture to specifically promote a product or service.

Additionally, if you’re a photographer and want to publish such an image on your website that is for sale, you still don’t need to a model release form. As of this blog post, whether it’s required to get a model release form for publishing an image on the internet is being debated in 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. I’ll be sure to post an update when there is a decision.

In the meantime, if you are going to use a model release form, it’s helpful to have one exclusively for adults and one for minors. You can get a very simple sample release form right here.

So if you’re ever unsure whether or not it’s okay to shoot people, get a form for it. Wait…that sounds really messed up.

But in all seriousness, if you’re unsure, always err on the safe side and get the release form.

Happy photographing!

Don’t Take My Picture

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©Jaimee Todd

So yesterday I went to see the amazing Gordon Parks’ exhibition at the Schomburg Center in Harlem. If you live in New York, or are planning to come visit, GO to this exhibition. It’s modest in size but the portraits are beautiful and intimate photographs of black life during the 1940′s in Harlem and Washington, D.C.

Feeling inspired by casual photographs of Harlem, I set out to photograph the neighboring streets of the area. I wandered around the brownstone-lined streets and came upon an older gentleman casually leaning up against a gate. I managed to surreptitiously snap a street scene with his image with my phone but I decided on a different approach. Inspired by how Gordon Parks would ask his subject matter if he could photograph to capture the sentiment he was trying to convey and the fact he kindly nodded and smiled at me, I walked up to the older man and asked politely if I could take his picture.

“No, no, no!” He said vigorously, shaking his head. The smile vanished.

I politely nodded and kept walking and deleted the picture that I had of him. Technically, I still use it for whatever I wanted. There’s no privacy expectation of taking pictures of people in public so I wasn’t doing anything illegal, even I wanted to use the image, but I wanted to be respectful of his feelings and won’t use it.I didn’t want to exploit that. (I’ll write more about privacy expectations and photography in a later post).

I mention this little anecdote because it reflects back and forth feelings I feel when doing street photography, particularly when people are involved. Although I usually use my iPhone to take pictures of people that I encounter or see in passing, there are times when I feel I’m being a bit of a voyeur, that someone’s moment of innocence or solitude is just being splashed around for the world to see.

I guess this is all a part of the comfort zone that one as a photographer has to grow into. Aside from capturing what is just aesthetically beautiful, there also seems to be some sort of responsibility to document one’s surroundings and the world at large. To me, this responsibility gives way to those intrepid photographers that take shots in dangerous and challenging circumstances. It’s also how those important stories get told, such as when Gordon Parks used his camera to shine a spotlight on racial and social inequality in the United States and poverty in Brazil. Then again, I’m sure that in during these projects, Gordon Parks came across his share of rejection too. He probably had to develop a pretty thick skin as a photographer.

I can’t help but wonder if the advent of social networking like Facebook and Instagram make people feel wary of being photographed and possibly having their image shared with thousands of people. Sometimes all this digital “interaction” can make people feel wary of being exploited; not everyone is craving to be in the spotlight.

Ironically, on my way home, as I was taking a picture of the Lenox Lounge facade, some random guy deliberately jumped into my frame and started posing. After having to listen to him try to rap and enduring a few random pick-up lines, I began to wish that would’ve been like the guy who rejected my offer to photograph him.

Artist Turned Lawyer Turned Artist

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I recently did an interview with The Law Insider, a legal blog that was created by one of my fellow Miami Law alumni, Preston Clark. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

As both an attorney and an artist, which was a passion for your first?

Creating art was always my passion as I’ve been painting and drawing since I was very young. I often took art classes on the side during my academic studies in high school and college. I gravitated towards law school because I majored in Latin American Studies and Business and thought I would end up going into international law. Interestingly, once I did get into law school, my creative side went dormant and I barely did anything artistic at all. I think it was because since I was using my left brain for all that legal analysis, there really wasn’t room for anything else, even though art had been always an outlet for me. It wasn’t until I graduated from law school and moved to New York that my creativity returned.

You can read more of the interview by clicking here.

Bad SOPA!!!

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I would be remiss as an artist and a lawyer not to post something about this horrible SOPA tomfoolery that is currently on the table. When you get into its implications, you can’t help but see how poorly thought out this act is. In their heavy-handed attempts to stop piracy and intellectual property infringement, corporations are stifling expression and creativity. Interestingly enough, I suspect these same corporations will be screwing themselves because if they succeed in stifling sites like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, it will have a serious adverse affect on their own interests.

WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show did a segment on SOPA that I thought was very worth sharing because it helps simplify and breakdown its implications. Listen to it right here and then spread the word!

Beware the Bite Off

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1. Bite off: (verb)-Term used to describe someone copying something or someone else.

Example: Aw, I know you aint wearin the same turtle neck I got on right now. Daiyam, quit BITING OFF me, dawg! (source Urbandictionary.com)

Today I got an email newsletter from fellow New York artist, TMNK (The Me that Nobody Knows), about his own experience with the bite-off, or as he alleges, possible copyright infringement. TMNK, with whom I had the pleasure of doing a group show a few years ago in the East Village, recently wrote about an upcoming documentary called Art as a Weapon which was directed by Jeffery Durkin and features a logo designed by Shepard Fairey that looks eerily similar to TMNK’s. In addition to the logo, the documentary title is also pretty close to his slogan “art is my weapon”, which I remember being part of his mystique ever since I worked with him nearly five years ago. TMNK also goes on to question whether Fairey also bit off of his style in several of his paintings as well. According to him, he was never contacted by the movie director nor Shepard Fairey regarding his artwork or how he uses his work as a vehicle for youth mentoring and outreach. To read more about this, you can visit TMNK’s blog here.

Several months ago, in an post on the art blog The Abundant Artist, Cory Huff artist talks about how artists are pretty much left out in the dark when it comes to protecting their copyright. In short, he cited several examples of artists whose work literally got jacked by big-wig corporations, such as Urban Outfitters, and the lengths they tried to go to defend their copyright. Essentially, the artist gets left out in the cold because they really can’t protect themselves when it comes to copyright due to the high costs of litigation.

Also, as Cory notes, another aggravating factor is that copyright law is pretty inadequate. It’s vague and often ill-defined and subject to interpretation that can be difficult to apply to mediums that are themselves intangible and also subject to interpretation.

Add to that, when it comes to creating visual art, a lot of it is built on “stealing” ideas. Artists often look to other artists for inspiration and frequently build upon and re-interpret an idea, which compels one to ask, where do you draw the line? Copyright law regarding fair use and derivative work tries to answer that question, but as I just stated, that can be a grey, vague area.

So what’s an artist to do?

One option is to do as TMNK and some other artists have done and raise a big stink via social and other electronic media in the hopes that loyal followers will get the word out and shame the offending party into behaving properly.

Another option, as Cory writes, is to find a way around the inadequacies of intellectual property law so that artists don’t have to worry about constantly protecting their copyright and people don’t have to worry that they’re ripping someone off.

Either way, copyright protection and use is a very important topic that we artists have to address and work around because sometimes slapping a copyright symbol on all of our works and sending a threatening letter signed “Esquire” aren’t always enough.

What are your thoughts?