This book won’t help you set the right exposure for a shot, nor will it help you compose, add filtration or do a later digital clean up when all has gone wrong.
Authors Greenberg and Reznicki deal with the legal side of picture-making in its 126 pages: copyright, model releases, asserting your rights, pricing your work, chasing defaulting clients etc.
The manual is published in the USA, so the info within its pages applies to the situation in that country; many of the topics may have different legal shades and interpretations in your own country, however the over-riding message within its pages are the same the world over: be careful, know your rights, know the boundaries, know the ropes.
If they were not of such importance, the examples given in the book carry much caution.
Like this one: A bank asks its employees to stay back after closing so that some shots can be taken for promotional purposes; there is no obligation to stay back and no releases are signed.
Some workers remain and end up in the shots made by a photographer, assistant, makeup etc. The staff members pose and the shoot takes several hours. Ads and promos come out. Some employees, having never signed releases, claim violations of NY law. They win!
And on copyright in times past. Well before copyright law came into being some ‘artists’ used drastic methods to state their rights: Shah Jihan who commissioned the Taj Mahal used one extreme method to deter anyone from making a reproduction of his amazing creation: as the workmen finished their tasks, the Shah ordered one of their hands to be cut off. Have you seen a second Taj Mahal? Drastic but it worked.
Author: E Greenberg & J Reznicki.
Publisher: Lark Books.
Distributor: Capricorn Link.
Length: 126 pages.
ISBN: 978 1 906672 420 5.
Price: Get a price on the Photographer’s Survival Manual on Amazon (currently 28% off).
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