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Self-marketing Rights-protected Photographs Part 4 |
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Written by Richard Weisgrau
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Wednesday, 19 July 2006 |
 It took some time to find that I was not going to be able establish a dialogue with the prospect I wrote about in Part 3 with the hope that the company would be interested in a prominent use of my photograph as a corporate ID image. As a result, I tried another prospect on my list that had the word “Archway” in its name. After a few email exchanges, I could not make the sale. There were two reasons for it. One was, I believe, surmountable, but the other was not.
The surmountable reason was because the photograph was an image of a feature of an historical building in the same country as the prospect. There was a fear that some law might prevent the company’s use of the image, and that they might end up being sued. Personally, I don’t think there was much likelihood of that, and I think there would be no legal basis for such a suit because you can’t identify the historical building with certainty from the photograph. No one is likely to ever know where the photograph was taken unless they see a caption disclosing that info with it.
The reason that could not be surmounted was much more realistic, and I had no real counter to it. If you read part two of this series, you know that I licensed the use of the photograph to a European poster publisher for use in their 2008 line of posters. I had to disclose that fact to the prospect. Not doing so would have been unethical and probably would have been illegal too. Once disclosed, it was a deal breaker. Understandably, the prospect did not want to invest in a logo image that might also be seen on a poster by anyone of the many thousands of people that see the company logo each year. They felt, and in retrospect I think rightfully, that their logo ought to be theirs alone. That really makes sense, and I felt a little stupid for originally trying to sell the image as a logo – bad decision.
I thought about how else the image might be used on a limited exclusive basis. No prominent uses came to mind. It looks like the poster is it. Maybe if I hadn’t licensed the poster use, I would have had a better chance licensing the logo use. Who knows? Not me. Consequently, I have decided to give up aggressively trying to sell the protected rights to the image. If such a sale finds me, I’ll be delighted. If not, so be it.
I did learn one thing from the experience, proving that one is never too old to learn. I learned that before I act on the impulse to push the sale of an image that I have an idea of an application for, I should first take the time to list every idea I can think of that might call for all or limited exclusive rights. Then, I should start with the most valuable of those uses and work my way down to the less valuable. That way I won’t do to myself again what I just did. Learning is a valuable exercise. I just wish I hadn’t learned this one from experience.
It is summertime. I will be quiet for a few weeks as I vacation, shoot photographs, and use some time to process the few hundred images that I promised to send my stock agency before August 31. I hope all of you have an enjoyable summer.
(c) 2006 Richard Weisgrau [contact] [bio]
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 19 July 2006 )
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