Tag Archives: portraits

Portrait Photography Legal Issues Explored

Richard Wanderman poses the question of what he can legally do with his photographs of other people, one in particular of the musician Antonio Hart

When I took this picture of Antonio Hart at The Blue Note I posted a question in a technical thread on Flickr: could I print and sell this image of Hart without his consent.

Last night I was at The Blue Note in New York and shot a number of pictures of a famous jazz band, mostly of individual players like this one of Antonio Hart: Antonio Hart Soloing at The Blue Note My question for all of you pros and semi-pros is: what can I do and not do with a picture like this? I know I can post it here. I know I can print it for personal use, but can I sell it? Can I publish it in a magazine?

A good conversation ensues, covering aspects I would not have thought of like what the venue would have to say about it. I also did not realise a press pass is not a silver bullet solution in many cases, just giving you a few extra feet of proximity a lot of the time. It seems, as with pictures of the public, a lot of the decision would come down to “reasonable expectations of privacy”; the dude was on stage at a promoted event open to the public so really shouldn’t expect to be invisible, right?

Regardless, Richard did the right thing and asked the subject of the photograph his own opinion on the matter.

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Posted in Legal Issues, Ethics, Model Releases, News and Commentary, Photography Business, Selling Photos | Also tagged , , , , Leave a comment

Merge Good Bits of Bad Photographs

Scoble points to a new piece of software from Microsoft Research that allows you to take the good bits from bad photographs to make one great shot. For example if you have taken two snaps, one where someone blinked and another where someone is pulling a face, you can take the open eyes and the smiles and make a new good picture!

Microsoft Research Group Shot

MSR Group Shot helps you create a perfect group photo out a series of group photos. With Group Shot you can select your favorite parts in each shot of the series and Group Shot will automatically build a composite image.

You know what? The results are pretty good! Below is a composite of several truly awful pictures where there was at least one person in each pulling a face. Even though I am still not entirely happy everyone is smiling properly it is a heck of a lot better than the originals!

Thanks Microsoft!

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Posted in Photo Editing and Digital Workflow, Photography Techniques | Also tagged , , , 1 Comment