Last week I quoted from a letter that a photographer sent to a publicist:
Contracts that limit what I can do with my work are generally intolerable, but contracts that require me to provide images without any compensation are simply insulting. There would be no request for “unrestricted right[s] to use and publish” if my work had no value. Yet, demanding these rights without any exchange or reward is essentially calling my photography worthless.
So this week I received a contract attached to an email for a Billy Idol concert in town this coming week. It is the first one I have seen that tries to address this issue. Here is what it says:
In consideration of Artist’s assistance and cooperation in the taking of photographs of Artist, Photographer agrees that he/she will permit the use of a selection of photos by the Artist for general publicity purposes, Artist website, etc free of charge. Those photos should be delivered digitally to the Artists representative without unreasonable delay.
(This is the same crap as almost every contract stipulates, and should be enough for any photographer to say no and stay home and watch television instead).
Then it goes on to say:
Should artist choose to use photos for album packaging (not including the cover), the Artist will pay a one-time $3500 fee as payment for that usage. Should Artist choose to use photos for album cover packaging and/or merchandise, Artist would pay a one-time fee of $5000 as payment for that usage.
So they actually put a value on a photographer’s work! That is the good part. The bad part is that they still will only let photographers shoot the first three songs (covered in a separate email), thus making the odds of taking CD cover quality photographs very unlikely. So this contract is very disingenuous. It holds a carrot in front of the donkey by saying they will pay you, but make it almost impossible to take good enough photographs to get paid. Meanwhile, they get to use your photographs for publicity, a job that record companies used to pay about $1000.
Maybe they need to start there, and actually pay someone to take publicity photographs.