Who has the rights to the pictures? + Genevieve Magazine Pink Ball pictures | Welcome to Linda Ikeji's Blog

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Tuesday 26 May 2009

Who has the rights to the pictures? + Genevieve Magazine Pink Ball pictures

If you take yourself to a studio, and PAY a photographer to take pictures of you; who has the rights to the pictures? The photographer who took it or the person whose image was taken?

In all my years of modeling, I never had any photographer tell me I can't use my own pictures without their consent. A lot of models tell me that some photographers do that to them and I sincerely used to think they were joking...well it jokingly happened to me recently.

I took some pictures recently and the photographer tells me I can not use MY photographs that I PAID for without his consent. He calls it his intellectual property.


I'm looking at him like you have got to be kidding me...I AM your intellectual property? Somebody get me out of here...;)


I preach RIGHT OR KIND and I believe so much in it, but this time I wanted to Kindly slap his face...;) but instead I said 'How about I use my pictures for whatever I want to use it for...and you sue me?"

He eventually consented and now I have full RIGHTS to my OWN images. Isn't he so kind? lol

But seriously, a lot of models are faced with this problem, and when they come to me, I really don't know how to react to it. I sincerely don't think the photographers have any rights to the pictures but I might be wrong, so I really want to know. Do they? Especially when you paid them for it?


Genevieve Magazine Pink Ball pictures

The annual Genevieve Magazine Pink Ball held last Saturday 23rd May

Check out some pictures from the event...



Grace Egbagbe, Florence Ita Giwa, Funmi Iyanda, Genevieve Nnaji


Betty Irabor, Eyimofe Atake and wife Dorothy and Kate Henshaw Nuttal

Pics thanks to celebratingjustu.blogspot.com

Will get you more pictures later...


Photo of the day
Linda's new gadget...
Shizeeeeehh!!!! ;)


A few weeks back, a very good friend of mine said 'You're always on the internet Linda, let's get you an internet phone'.
I got it today!
A T-Mobile G1 phone with Google
I can't get over it!
I'm now a confirmed gbo gbo bigz girls
You know, as in, it's like, I mean...
lol

Naija Ent. news coming next
Stay with me people
Catch ya...larer...
Kisses!

21 comments:

Temi Aj said...

As long as you paid and you didnt sign any contract, the Images/pictures belong to you. Also, the photographer cannot use ur pictures without ur consent, even if you didnt pay for it. Take it to any court in the world, you will win. He only has consent to it if you sign a contract stating so. THE PHOTOS ARE YOURS. I will like to represent those models that are in this situation.PS, give me the photgrapher's name and number, let me ask him where he got the "INTELLECTUAL CONSENT" so I can shove my foot down his ass.

nosa said...

Absolutely, they don't have the right over your property. You took the picture for a purpose (any purpose) and since you have paid you have 100% right.

Icepick said...

That's an ugly-ass photographer.

Generally speaking the copyright of an image belongs to the photographer.

This situation is weird (since you paid for it) and usually a contract should have been drawn up stating that as this is work-for-hire the copyright should belong to you the paymaster.

But it's murky and can be challenged in court (especially since money changed hands).

There may be local variations, but this is the way it is internationally.

Anonymous said...

lol i feel ur pain but as a student doing intellectual property law unfortunately d photographer is right....i know d law can be a total ass sumtimes lol. so d best thing to do is b4 or after d pics are taken u shld get him to waive his copyrights to d pic, and if u want to b extreme it shld be a signed document lol

but yeah that is d general law although it is rarely practicsed as it seem so absurd lol

Ameh said...

now.this is interestin.intellectual property? can wait to read the opinions on this.

chayomao said...

the photographer cannot use ur pictures under any circumstances... they are rightfully yours. it's your freaking picture, with your freaking image on it. not his!

Q'dance said...

Thank you Anonymous, i thought no one will talk about that, ok as a dancer myself, i have had argument with people over similar issue, but one thing i realized is mutual respect, so lets take the paying or not out of it, cos when it comes to paying for the right of an INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY we won't be talking about 10,000naira.

As a dancer i realized that my own INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY is my performance on stage, if i had not agreed to him making photos of me, we will not even get to the stage two of who get right or not. However, the result of the snapshot he made, to my own knowledge is his INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, but like i said its all about MUTUAL RESPECT cos no man can clap with one hand.

Anonymous said...

thanks for the pink ball pics linda, xxxx

chi said...

Love funmi, but wtf is she wearing?

Chris Ogunlowo said...

Hey bigz girl, you may want to do something good to that gadget. It's called cupcake update.
It's not necessary if the software version is already Android 1.5.

Seriously, you got something nearly as sexy as the iPhone3G ;)

Here:

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/05/23/android-ota-15-cupcake-download-available-now/?awesm=tcrn.ch_2Up&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_content=techcrunch-sharebutton&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=direct-tcrn.ch

Bunmi said...

Hello Linda,

I'm a photographer myself, but i wont be biased.

He owns copyright to the images cos its his creation. But thats where it ends, he can only use it for self promotion and cannot sell it or give it to another entity for use, without your permmision or model release.

In the same vain, you can also use the images for your stated purpose and any deviation must be with his consent, unless he waives the right.

Please lets try to be objective and learn the proper way of doing things, it'll go a long way in helping the industry grow,

Most of us are just hustlers trying to eck a living(this includes photographers and models)

me said...

Another arguement is becos u paid for a CD, you can duplicate and share an artist's music as you please

Insomniac Soul said...

HAHA!!! The photographer is funny. Does he own u???? You told him the right thing jare. Infact, on the contrary, you have a right to ask that he destroys the negative/he does not reproduce the pictures again bcos YOU PAID HIM to take the photos not the other way round. BUT if you signed some agreement/a receipt where there was 'small print' that u failed to read that gave him the intellectual property rights, then it wud be different. Doesn't seem like u did.

Its almost like u paying a tailor to sew u something and they now dictate when and where u wear YOUR outfit to. Something YOU PAID good money for. Infact, ur photographer is a MONKEY for that. Kindly slap him on my behalf! LOL

wale said...

@ Icepick Lobotomy & annon May 26, 7:37 PM

you guys are right. the work belongs to the guy. however, in publicity terms he would be mad to let yoy sweat for this. apart from acres of column inches in papers he would be giving himself a bad name. linda by now you should go with your waivers docs to studios. knowing you there will always be acknowledgemnt which should be enough for the agbaya

Anonymous said...

There are more pictures of the pinkball on tansali.com. These people made money. I was expecting to see people who had benefited from the last ball. Anyway, the pics look nice

QMoney said...

@ME,haba now,how could u have compared the two?if i pay for dbanj's CD? its not mine,if i pay for Qmoney's picture,then it is MINE!!!and a cd is meant to be sold to the masses anyway,my picture isn't meant to be.
Like our lawyers in the house said,its is in the constitution.
me just thinks its a crappy law!!it just dont make sense

LADYBRILLE.com said...

Linda,

Below are scenarios at least under US law that determine the ownership of photos. To a large extent the same rules apply in Naija because Naija is under the Berne convention. However, specific to Naija Intellectual Property laws for the fashion and creative arts industry I am not as clear. Further, the legislature and stakeholders are still trying to figure in some instances how to regulate the creative arts.

FASHION/PHOTOGRAPHY LAW

Your agency/magazine/you as an individual hire a photographer to shoot you/your girls/images for the magazine. Who owns the work? Under the Copyright Law, in this case USA but the principles apply to Naija and Naija is also part of the Berne Convention [google it], the photographer AND you own the images. The photographer as owner of the image is selling it to you i.e. monies you paid to him/her for use.

Unless you have an agreement to the contrary, the use is non-exclusive. As such, this means he/she can sell you images for FMB then turn around and sell to Genevieve, True Love and gbo gbo e. Look at magazines in the States or world wide. A photographer or photo agencies like Wire or Getty images sell their photos to news agencies worldwide. The license is non-exclusive so you can see Reuters, yahoo or whomever have that same image everywhere.

Your photographer can also restrict your use depending on the relationship you got into with him/her. In California, however, models and public figures are lucky because even though the photographer shoots you and you maybe even pay for it, if they don’t have your consent, they can’t go sell your image or even put it on platforms you disapprove. That’s why I always advise photographer clients to get a consent form. For modeling agency/model clients, I also always advise you get around this by still commissioning the work you want done but have an agreement in place that transfers total ownership to you. The magic words, “exclusive.”

Remember, however, that photographers can still limit "exclusive" use to the amount of time so that the copyright expires, geographic location, certain media i.e. only magazines to narrow the scope of the transfer. So, you as the model/modeling agency/magazine what to get those rights for your commissioned work without any restrictions and depending on the commissioned work, exclusively.

NOTE: There is a distinction with work-for-hire [usually employer-employee situations i.e. hiring a photographer on staff as an employee to shoot for your magazine/agency [were you won the work pursuant to a clear agreement] vs commissioned work described above where photographer is an independent contractor.

Cheers,
Uduak

Anonymous said...

it is you property but where intellectual property place its part is if you make money out of those pics or sell it, that's piracy.

Anonymous said...

yes o! the photographer is right...he has the right.don't ask me why..it happened to me also!:-)

Anonymous said...

I think I'm the only one commenting about the Pink Ball pictures. I will say most of the women looked flawless. I'm just so impressed. Genevieve looked effortlessly fab, hands down. I just loved how all the women had their different syles and still managed to pull it off looking good.

jen said...

God has mak u bigger today congrats

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