Last night's efforts
The trip to Lincoln Cathedral proved a chilly, windy one. Not great when you haven't got the sturdiest of tripods! However, I did manage to capture a couple of photos that I was happy with, including my first successful effort at light trails:
Light through the Gate by MJM Images
With gloomy rain outside at the moment, I think it may be a night inside rather than capturing new year's eve though.
To license or not to license
The great thing about the internet is the ability to disseminate material to a wide audience. I can stick a photo up online and get comments from all over the world, and similarly have access to photos covering the globe. The downside? More people can steal my work. I doubt that has happened yet, but having had other friends find their photos being used on blogs and sites without recognition, I decided to look into licensing properly.
Like most people when they get into photography, I started wondering if I could make any money from it. The problem of course, is the sheer scale of the market these days; everybody with a DSLR thinks they're only a few shots away from going pro. For example, when 500px added the ability to sell your photos, I jumped at the chance. A year on and no sales has tempered that enthusiasm (I'm not surprised or disheartened though!). Now, 500px has added the ability to use creative commons, I've given some more thought to how I'd like my photos to be licensed.
Creative Commons is a series of licensing options for photos, ranging from somebody being able to pretty much do what they want to your photo through to only using in non-commercial situations and without any tweaks. The key to all, however, is the need to attribute the photo to you, regardless of what they do to it.
Do what you want, as long as you tell people about me
I opted for 'Creative Commons Attribution' after a lot of deliberating. This allows people to use my photos (even commercially) and tweak them as they like, so long as they at least credit me first. Chances are the watermark I stick on my photos will put pay to most people doing that, but if somebody was to contact me for a cleaner version I'd happily oblige.
What I came to realise is I'd rather get my photos to a wider audience and at least get credit, than battle on trying to make money (at least for now!). Will everybody behave and credit me if they use them? Probably not, but at least somebody felt my photos were good enough to use for something.
No comments:
Post a Comment