andrewlighten.com

I like it!

These days it seems that any time you read or talk about digital media the issue of copyright and rights management isn’t far behind. For a long time I’ve sat on the sidelines and pretty much ignored the issue. Music I download from iTunes, for example, is soaked in DRM, and to be honest, I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t share of that music anyway.

One thing I have been very liberal in sharing though has been my photography. For a long time my flickr account had a creative commons licence applied to all the works there. This licence allowed for non-commercial use with attribution. That is — you can’t make money off my stuff, but use it for whatever else you want as long as you attribute to me. Here’s an example.

This year, however, I’m making a few subtle changes. I’ve changed all my flickr work to “All rights reserved“. I’ve also put a copyright tag on every photo.

I’m not big on new year’s resolutions, but one goal that I did have coming into 2008 is that I want to start earning a little money from my photography. It’s an expensive hobby (in terms of time and equipment) and I’d like to see some return from the investment.

I’ve still got a lot to learn about the art (and like everyone, I’ll continue learning until my days are done) but I’d like to think that some of the stuff I’ve got is perhaps worth something. I’ve signed up with one of the microstock agencies and I’ve got a few as yet unpublished photos that I’ll start pushing in that direction. I’m also going to approach someone about framing some of my work because I already have a venue lined up where framed work is displayed and sold.

This might well fall flat on its face. This time next year, if I’ve made $0.00, I’ll have to accept that I’m just an average hack, and I think I’ll be ok with that. My hope, however, is that works of good quality do start to provide some income. I’ll need to make a few changes to the thought process behind my work (and workflow), and that’s already in place.

I’m hoping to remain very much open to having people use my work for what they want, but I just want to start having a little more control over what that use is, and where appropriate, see some return. Someone who snaffles a picture from flickr to use as a background, for example, will continue to have my blessing.

Stories like this, however, worry me. My work isn’t at Rebekka’s level of quality or followed nearly as closely, but the web is an ugly place these days, and getting more so every day. I’ve decided to seriously rethink how much I give of myself into an environment where everything is considered to be free.