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From: "Bob Dial" 
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Subject: Re: left field/Karen
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 15:22:02 -0600
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----- Original Message -----
From: 
To: 
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2003 9:30 PM
Subject: Re: out of left field


> -> What's for sale is your adaptation of a particular view or event, not
the
> -> equipment used to capture it.  
> ->
> I agree, but I feel I have more control selling a print than a digital
> file.

If you restrict it to selling a print there's no difference called for,
methinks.

Selling an original (or copy) of a digital file is equivalent in my view to
selling negatives from conventional cameras.  I've done that by prior
arrangement when contracting to do a given shoot but normally not afterward.
When we do color transparencies that is what the customer is buying so it's
agreed in advance.  This view isn't etched in stone and I'd probably make an
exception on negatives, too, if the price was right.  But, in the absence of
a contract of exception, courts hold that negatives are legally the sole
property of the creating photographer (or the business for whom the
photographer worked), and they are not considered to be an integral part of
the purchase to be included in the sale of prints.

Sometimes I've sold only the film and didn't even develop it, first, on
assignment for some of the major magazines.  Just shoot the event they wish
covered and put the raw film on the next flight direct to their publication.
While this isn't a normal situation by any means it does indicate that
dealing with the film or negatives is a different animal from the sale of
prints, which the customer usually receives.

I figured you were merely contemplating the difference between having to pay
for film and processing in order to deliver a print to the buyer.  That may
become a factor at some point in the future but for now consider it to be
one and the same with digital files and negative.  Your sales prices are not
necessarily a product of the cost to produce prints.  Output of your talents
is what establishes the value of your pictures.

As I understand it, if you deliver that customer a print from a digital
camera's origin they are entitled to use it in the same manner as those from
conventional sources, no more and no less.  In so many words, a customer
would have to be willing to pay the equivalent value for a file as for a
negative, and it is up to you to set its value.  I'd feel presumptuous to
offer a suggestion there so about all I can tell you is that 10 times the
value of a print is a general idea of a starting place.  Much depends upon
the subject and potential market, so it could easily climb to much more than
what a routine 'average' shot is worth.

> I guess I'd need some sort of contract for sure, that says it's to
> be used only for that specific purpose.  It would go to a man in another
> country (yours) where I'd have less chance of knowing what's really
> happening with the image than I do when it's used locally.  This offer
came
> out of left field, as the subject line says....totally unexpected.

Someone familiar with the applicable laws would be able to tell you, for a
modest cost, and that might be the only way to know the details of the fine
print having to do with such issues.  In most cases that exercise would
likely be unnecessary, but failure to do it in advance of the transaction
could prove to be a sticky wicket if some sort of dispute did arise at a
later date.  It's your option to learn the law and be thus guided or just
hope for the best and let it ride.  At the rate your work is attracting
people with purchase offers I'd think it to be money well spent to get a
legal foundation, first, and then stick to it. 


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