Beyond the obvious

In layman's terms photographic plagiarism occurs when one photographer copies the work of another photographer, by making a new image that is so similar to the image being copied that any viewer looking at the two images is struck by their overwhelming correlation. You'll soon see what I mean when you look through the examples in the articles below. Having seen blatant plagiarism of my wife Magda Indigo's work on Flickr I decided to write a blog on the topic. However I soon discovered that the subject of photographic plagiarism has been covered extensively, so I refer you to a selection of articles which I found interesting... Getty Images wins plagiarism appeal Visual plagiarism Plagiarism in photography Visual plagiarism strange case of Rosie Photographer gets plagiarized then censored When does similar become too similar Plagiarism in 2008 Madonna turns to Cowboy Kate for ‘inspiration’ There is nothing better than coming up with something new. To stand out from the cro...

Police helicopter keeping an eye out for trouble in the city. I photographed this through our studio skylight. What is copyright? Despite numerous articles spread across the internet, discussion in books, on TV and in magazines some people still do not seem to understand copyright. So in a non-legalistic jargon free way I am going to explain it again - because judging by how many pictures get stolen many people still do not seem to get it. How do you get copyright? The moment you take a picture you automatically own copyright to that image. You do not have to register it. You do not have to do anything at all. It is yours. There are no exceptions. But you can choose to give up your copyright by for instance signing a contract with your employer, an agency or an individual to pass copyright over to them. The point is you have to enter, or have entered a legal agreement, to give up your copyright. What does having copyright mean? It means that nobody can copy your image and use it witho...