Due Respect 101 - The very basics of sharing etiquette

Auki Henry 2011
Darwin Photos
The cropped signature edit of my original piece that was
discovered in : Darwin Photos
Being an avid photographer / videographer I am submitting work left right and centre to most mediums, including online to social networking sites such as Facebook.  It's a great medium to share and gain exposure, both for you and your models!

It's only natural that somone eventually takes a liking to your work and wants to share it and show it around.

For the most part this has been made easy by most sites offering content, you can embed video using special embed codes, sites like Facebook have 'share' buttons that allow you to link to content.  There is, in fact, little that you need to do apart from a couple of mouse clicks and you are done.  All these ways generally help to leave credit to the original creator in some way or other.

A lot of the time I find people will contact me about sharing the things I have done, almost all the time they will link back and give credit in some way.  I don't even mind if they don't leave credit as my signature is usually displayed on all online work (or in the case of videos a reference to all the people who put in the hard work are mentioned in the credits).

Although I am sure it has happened many times before, today it was brought to my attention for the first time by a good friend, that a piece of work I had collaborated on with a team of people and a model was being displayed without any hint whatsoever of the source of the material.

It is a little disappointing that this would happen as I am quite happy to share my work free, a lot of my full size landscapes are free to download if I am approached, I don't even include watermarks, just so it looks good for the framed finished product.

Perhaps it is just the pride in the work that makes it disappointing, both the model and myself discussed this shot and tried till we got it exactly how we wanted it, pose, shadows and post processing.  Perhaps it is the the amount of work that goes into a shoot.  Even a quick shoot like this took 3 hours out of an afternoon and many more in the post processing workflow.

Even if it was just 'shared' using the facebook share function that would have given me some credit for my portfolio work and that of the model as well.  After all this is how the model gets recognition for photographers who want to do shoots, this is also how I get recognition for people or organisations who want to shoot with me.

My video/photography equipment costs are reaching up into the tens of thousands of dollars now, and I think most of you would agree the icing on the cake doesn't really happen when your work is mangled and your only crediting marks are cut out of the final piece ( albeit with a sloppy yellow border ).

The lessons of due respect are learnt with having the decency to acknowledge others, and I have done all the hard work for anyone wanting to share, I've left the signature in the corner of the original!  It is far more work to have to go to any length to cover it up and hide it. /rant /lesson

For anyone wanting to share, the original web size shot is below ( with signature intact of course ).  Feel free to use it on any pages you wish as it is.  There are plenty others to share at http://photography.aukihenry.com

Photographer: Auki Henry (Auki Henry Photography)

Lan Treagus

0 comments:

Post a Comment