so what image was it?

i'm sure there are plenty of people out there that don't even ask if they can use photos that you too, so at least they asked you if they could. personally, all i would want is credit for taking the photo.

Tricky question, and an interesting one: too interesting for a quickie comment, I'm afraid (except maybe over at 2 blowhards). We're very in love with the act of the moment, in this replicable age, and it's one of the reasons that intellectual property is so strange and wrong. It should be obvious to all at this point that it's twisted to require royalty payments for "Happy Birthday," or to cede control to Disney when it comes to passing images of Mickey Mouse.

Once in a TV movie the crew asked me to come back in and reshoot my scenes - I was an extra! what a waste of time! - because I was wearing a Humphrey Bogart t-shirt on camera.

I think there's a golden age waiting to burst open, and it won't come until intellectual property is released and rationalized. Which, given the power of the hands rinsing in the money stream and the ignorance of the people overall, may never happen. But a guy can hope.

i wonder what street artists think of the matter. in my eyes, as long as it's not for profit, it seems okay. it's like those weird rules (spoken or unspoken) about photographing people in crowds...

this stuff doesn't keep me up at night, but it's interesting to think about.

i took some photos of the Calvin Klein billboard on Houston/Broadway when I lived in NYC.. I think I had 2 or 3 photos of different CK ads that were up there and I published one on my site. The others went unpublished. So then a while later this woman contacts me about publishing my photos in a book she's working on.. a book about billboards? I'm fine with her using my photos but some of my friends who are artists said that the publisher of the book would have to clear it with Calvin Klein. So I told this lady who wanted to use my photos this and she said that she would be sure to do that. I only sent her lo-res versions of the photos and told her to let me know when she got that approval and POOF she was gone. Guess that was too much to ask of her.

Rachelle was smart in her dealing with "the woman" making a book.

If you ask me, making street art kind of is like automatically slapping a creative commons license on it from the get go. I think it's very in the "spirit" of street art for you to creatively capitalize on it. After all, it's kind of, de facto, public domain. I mean, what are street artists expecting?

I know this probably goes against your instinct, Corie, so perhaps you can resolve the issue by insisting that the street artist, if known, receives partial credit and, if you receive any sort of royalty, you share it with the artist, if possible. Use whatever means necessary and available to seek him/her out and give a portion of what you make to him/her.

That's what I suggest, anyway.

Part of me agrees with what Linus wrote regarding intellectual property, but also I think that at the moment there are a lot of unscrupulous people and intellectual property laws can possibly protect struggling artists or "content makers" of any sort from being totally ripped off.

I personally think that any publicity is good publicity and if your idea or work gets out into the world, it's almost always a good thing. I haven't heard of someone really losing out from this situation, but I could be totally wrong.

Cory Doctorow just published his second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe, (which I'll review on my reading site some time in the very near future). It was the second novel to which he granted a creative commons license at the time of publishing. According to him, it's the smartest thing he could have done. There's a lot of discussion of the results of doing this on the page that outlines his first book.

I know this might seem only tangentially related, but I think the relationship can be drawn in you think about it. Street art is public domain. The artists want it to be seen by as many people as possible with no expectation of renumer(muner?)ation. If their work gets published in some book -and one that will probably be distributed over much broader geographical lines than whatever the physical location of the original art- than their art is seen by a much larger audience.

It's not often that an artist can claim to make art simply for the sake of making it, but I think street artists might be close to it, because they truly give up rights to it by putting it in public spaces. Indeed claiming authorship of street art is admitting to a crime, right?

OK, I've rambled waaaay more than I meant to.

Corie brings up a lot of issues, but the reality is there is nothing wrong with you taking a picture of someone else's work and then selling that picture. Case in point: The Statue of Liberty. Ditto with virtually every other piece of public property out there. In fact most photographers spend their whole lives/careers taking pictures of other people and other peoples work and there is really nothing wrong with that.

With regards to street art, there are more than a few books that document the world of graffiti and street art. Most famously the books by Harry Chalfant and Martha Cooper. In both of their cases their careers have been made by documenting the works of others. And no graffiti artists that I know of has ever taken issue with that.

I think part of the confussion some feel stems from the relative ease of digital photography compared to film/print photography. It's so easy that you forget what you're doing. Which is taking a picture and preserving history.

In the great scheme of things, the graffiti artists need the documentarians. It's basically publicity for them and their work. While traditional artists make their living selling their paintings in a gallery. Graffiti artists do the art for art's sake and most know that the work they do is their resume. And they all know that at best their work is ephemeral so they appreciate the time/effort others take to keep tabs on their work. And the more their name/work gets out the greater chance they'll get legit gigs. Case in point: ESPO has gotten gigs with Calvin Klein thanks to years of his work.

In the case of SWOON, the decay of the piece is something the artist cares about. But that does not mean taking a picture of a SWOON piece--esentially freezing it at a moment of time.

So when push comes to shove, you are doing a job as a documentarian. And there's nothing wrong with that. Taking a fee for being a photographer is legit and understood.

SIDE NOTE: Regarding the Creative Commons liscense lets face facts. Most people "agree" with it because it's implemented easilly with their blogging software. And the vast majority of bloggers who proudly show off their Creative Commons liscenses really have nothing on their blogs that most people would want to touch anyone. While a great idea in theory and in a rights/permissions utopia we don't live in now, the Creative Commons liscense is really a joke at best for anyone who seriously makes a living in which copyright protection is needed. There are exceptions to the rule--such as Cory Doctorow--most creative professionals would never be able to pay the gas bill if they adopted the Creative Commons towards their work.