Rights of Photographs

[ACDCROCKS]

Last year (and still am) I was shooting photos for the High School Yearbook ( I'm 17 and on the High School yearbook Staff). One of the teachers ( Not part of Yearbook) used them with out asking me for permission and put them onto a video. (this teacher hates plagerism and teaches Research and is strict about plagerism, whats the difference in stealing/ asking for permission for pictures . What are my rights here? Example: You let me borrow your car, I drive off and have some one with out your permission, drive it, making a chance to crash it. Should I put a 1 time Re-print notice on the pictures? All photos were taken on my equipment, time, and expenses, Legally mine right? Photos were intentially for yearbook ony.

Thanks
-Confused.

[danedel]

I ran into this exact same issue....well my photo's were used in a pamphlet...a very crappy scanned image out of our HS newspaper was in question.
I fought the issue for a wile, but considering that I used the schools darkroom to develop and print the image, I probably would have lost had I pushed it :-(

If you were at a school sponsored event, and are a school photographer I would be willing that they may have a trick agreement with your yearbook class teacher that photographs taken, by students, of students, for students...will be just that.
The year I left they started making out photographers sign a waver of all images taken at school funded events, making them school property, glad I wasn’t around!
Why would you not just confront the teacher who used your image, at lest you could call her hypocritical…It is only High School, it will be over soon. Being on a collage newspaper staff is no joke though, so have some fun wile you still can ;-) I know I did!

[IndyJeff]

Before I would confront the offending teacher, I would check with the yearbook sponsor (teacher) to see if permission was granted by the sponsor for the use of the images. You'd feel like an idiot if you confronted this teacher and she fired back that she did in fact use the images with permission.
Now let's say you ask the sponsor and permission was not granted, then confront her with the sponsor. Don't do this alone, it will just get ugly and you could get hit with most of the ugly.
As far as who owns your images, without any knowledge of a copyright arrangement, I am going to say the yearbook owns the images. It would be consider a work for hire, same as if you were on staff at the local paper.

Now might be a good time to establish a policy at your school about images created for the yearbook and who actually owns them. Personally I don't think you can come out of this owning anything you shoot for the yearbook. At best you may walk away with co-ownership with the yearbook. Chances are there will be no othere use for which the images may have value but, you never know.
What if you have a shot of the baseball star and later on someone contacts the school and asks for images of this kid playing baseball because he will be the # 1 draft choice? Now if the school owns the image outright, they may very well give the images away. If you are co-owner, maybe they may ask for payment and you will split it with them.
I would push for co-ownership, especially if your using your own equipment and insist on a photo credit for any use outside the yearbook.