So I suddenly find my self being asked permission to use my photos on some small media site, (nowpublic.com) in an article about a grandmother who was legally strong-armed by Syncrude to pull photos she had taken. I decided to check this out a little bit, to make sure I wasn’t aiding some crack-pot site/grandmother. Seems fine, other than I think Syncrude was justified in getting her to pull the photos. You see, she was on tour of the site, and they generally have bans on photos on the sites. I’m sure that taking photos while on a Syncrude tour is no different.
Well, when I pull up the nowpublic request to check it out, I find I have another email from a rental site, www.canadarentals.net. It seems the site owner would like to decorate his site with some photos of Ft. Sask, and he thinks mine are really nice. Considering what I wrote about the lack of beauty in Ft. Sask, and the general grey day I took the photos, I find this somewhat amusing, and ironic considering I thought the photos to be kinda blah.
Perhaps there is an angle here a photographer could use to make a career – find towns that have as little charm as possible and take the best photos you can there – businesses and the town government will be looking to buy your works to help spruce up their image.
Maybe the same person is involved with web development or content development for both websites?
Congrats, Ralph. Now don’t give away the homeworld.
I don’t think so – the messages came from two different flicker accounts, who have different photo tastes, but then again, it could be some diabolical plot to inflate my ego by creating several flickr accounts to make it look like more people want to use my photos }:)
I think there might be a business model there for taking pictures of small towns.
Sites like mine need those photos to build creditability for their sites with the use of pictures.
I took a syncrude tour and all kinds of people took pictures. We did sign a form, but nobody mentioned the ownership of photos or what you would do them, and I didn’t read the fine print.
It seems a bit strange, syncrude is all about PR, and this is bad PR, and judging from the descriptions of the photos that were removed they were just photos of various aspects of the mining operation.
It makes it seem like there is some big dark secret at Syncrude, that they are trying to hide.
I suspect Syncrude isn’t worried about photos on there own – they are worried about bad publicity – so they have some fine print that attaches strings to the photos – something along the lines of we can control them if we choose to