July 6th, 2011
Everyone is stoked about Google+ and it looks like it has some very cool features. But, Scott Bourne, over at photofocus.com, has a great article that professional photographers should read before posting photos on Google or FaceBook. Were you aware that when you post photos on Google and FaceBook you are granting them rights to pretty much [...]
February 14th, 2011
Over the years we’ve had a lot of heated discussions here about ethics of image modification in the context of real estate photography. I think the subject is important enough that I have a separate page dedicated to summarizing the consensus that has evolved out of these discussions over the years. Here is a general outline [...]
August 11th, 2010
Iran Watson started a thread in the PFRE flickr group about shooting acreage so I jumped in and described how on a large land listing we had I had used Photoshop to make a put a transparent surveyors map layer over a Google satellite map layer so that buyers could see the vegetation, the streets and how the newly subdivided [...]
August 19th, 2009
Thanks to Scott for pointing out a great story of how you can stand up to unauthorized uses of your images without spending big money on legal support. Here is the story in the words of the photographer Christopher Boffoli. And here is Carolyn Wright’s legal analysis.
July 15th, 2009
While cleaning up the blog I ran across the summary of a series of posts and discussions from two years ago on the subject of ethics. Two years ago this was a fairly heated discussion with opinions all over the map so what I did was attempt to summarize the general consensus of how readers [...]
June 25th, 2008
Via: Thomas Bliss’s IAAP site and Carolyn Wright’s Photo Attorney blog: “Liz Ordonez-Dawes, an accomplished architectural and interior design photographer, recently was awarded more than $12 million dollars for copyright infringement of seven photographs. In brief, the court found that the defendants distributed Ms. Ordonez-Dawes’ photos of high-end houses to various third parties for advertisements [...]
June 19th, 2008
About a month ago I did a post highlighting some background on the The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 legislation pending in the house and senate. Thanks to Carolyn Wright over at photoattorney.com I just noticed that there is a petition to sign registering sentiment against this legislation.
May 30th, 2008
If you haven’t noticed Congress is on it’s way to passing some legislation that will radically change the way copyright law works. Photographers owning copyrighted material will be effected by these laws if passed. I suggest taking the time to understand what is about to happen with copyright and if you don’t like it, express [...]
January 29th, 2008
After participating in a number of discussions about photo licensing with real estate photographers I’ve realized that there is a disconnect going on between real estate photographers licensing and MLS photo usage rules.
August 13th, 2007
I hesitate to do another post on photo editing ethics again since we have pretty much beat this subject to death in the recent past. However, the Real Estate Trends + Technology Magazine of the California Association of Realtors have a pretty definitive article by John Edwards, titled Have you crossed the line? I think [...]
July 21st, 2007
Do your clients think they own the photos that you shoot for them? Mike over at www.martinvirtualtours.com told me about an misunderstanding that he recently had in which he shot a tour for a new construction agent where he included some neighborhood photos in the tour. Later, he provided the same neighborhood photos to a [...]
April 17th, 2007
Jason Soles commenting in the last post poses a great question: “Does anybody (photographers or agents) have/use some sort of written code-of-ethics for these situations?” Since as a RE photographer you are working for the REALTORS® I think the NAR ethics should set the ethical guideline. As a REALTORS® I knew that the National Association [...]
April 16th, 2007
Drew from NJ just pointed out an interesting recent article on yahoo.com/real estate by Vanessa Richardson of Bankrate.com titled- Altered Photos: Taking the Real From Real Estate. The article bottom line is that according to John O’Brien Chairman of the Illinois state Real Estate Lawyer Association: “Advertising is held to be boasting and bragging, not [...]
January 7th, 2007
Back in May of last year I pointed out that there’s a blog ( photoattorney.com ) that covers legal issues associated with photography. A few weeks ago Carolyn started shipping a book on the subject called “Photographers Legal Guide”. I purchased the e-book ($9.95) version and allthough I haven’t had time to read it from [...]
