College newspaper stole picture

[Obey]

Heres what happened:

I took pictures at a college paintball tournament and one of the colleges wanted to use a picture to put in their school newspaper. I said 'thats fine, just make sure the watermark stays or I get credit'. He then writes an article and also mentions me in that. He also tells the newspaper what I wanted.

When the newspaper came out, my watermark was removed and the special thanks to me written by him in the article was also removed. And no credit was given to me.

What should I do? It is a free newspaper that goes around to a college with over 12,000 students.

[sspellman]

Obey-

Send them an invoice at competitive rates.

-Scott

[hijinks]

Originally Posted by sspellman

Obey-

Send them an invoice at competitive rates.

-Scott

And register you picture today.

[primoz]

Ok seriously... did you really ever believe special thank you for photo will be published in article? I mean come on, you really can't be that naive. This make me laugh when I think on how article should look like:
"Michael Jordan was leading his Bulls to another victory, which was shoot by great photographer Primoz, whos photo you can admire bellow... Oh and in case you are interested, Bulls won the game with 90:80"
Really... don't work for free and you won't need to bother with such things in future. Sell them photo, and then it really doesn't matter if byline is there or not. At least I don't care about that anymore.

[cskn0125]

I just noticed one of my pictures on a website cropped with the watermark removed. The people I deal with, I know well so I think I'm just going to send them an email with prices.

What did you end up doing obey?

[ssim]

I do a agree with Primoz on this to a certain degree. We have seen so many of these threads lately and while the offenders are definitely wrong the victims are making it too easy for it to happen. There is too much weight being placed on the hope that the photo credit is going to bring in tons of future business. I just finished reading my morning paper and I can recall the a pretty neat shot in there but do you think I can remember who took it, nah. I always read the credit if one is there.

In this age of the internet making it so easy to grab images and we are the ones that should be making sure that it is hard for them to use them. I went through your gallery and you really do have some great shots. In my opinion though, your watermark that resides in the bottom right hand corner is so easily cropped off that the images are still extremely usable. If we are going to put out images on the net and we are concerned about unauthorized use then put a watermark in the middle. These can be done so that anyone can still see the original integrity of the image. Sure these can still be cloned out but if you do it right it will take literally hours to do so. If someone wants to go to that length then I guess they can have it.

If the credit is so important to one then I suggest that when you send the image to them, put a proviso in your email that if the image is published without credit that there will be an invoice for use charged at nnnn.00. I don't advocate telling someone to lift it off my site, send them the image with the terms.

Sometimes we are just our own worst enemies. I've been burnt by my own foolish assumption that persons said they would do it one way and it turned out nothing like that. You live and learn. I now send a terms and conditions with any image that I release. I don't release for credit anymore (I think everyone has done that at some point in their career) as it just isn't worth it.

I would say let this go and take it as a learning experience. You could push them to perhaps give you a complimentary advertising spot in an upcoming issue of the newspaper. This has way more lasting effect than a photo credit. Was it your intent to try and sell images and/or services to some of those 12K students?

[Spearin]

I just finished a year as Photo Editor at a university newspaper.

Don't expect any money from a student newspaper. If you're looking for money, go to a paper with a real budget. I agree that credit for the photo is due.

The purpose of a student newspaper is for any budding photo/journalists to gain the experience working in that sort of environment. It's not for making money. As an editor, I was paid, but it sure as hell wasn't enough for the amount of time and effort that I put into it. But that was my decision. I had a number of photographers taking photos for me weekly... they weren't paid anything. They did it more for the experience than to see their name in the paper (although I know that is nice to see).

That is just coming from my experience, and it probably differs greatly from the way that the college paper you're dealing with operates.

My advice is to just let it go. There likely was miscommunication (happens often) between the layout person and the editor dealing with the photo (whether it was a photo or section editor) and credit was missed. If you're looking for money, don't go to a student newspaper.

[primoz]

I guess this is not really my problem, but I don't see much of difference between your time and someone else's time. Why your time was worth more then someone elses? And it obviously was worth more, since you were paid for it (even if not enough).
I would say whole idea about worthless photos and photographers starts from something like this. Someone being journalist or editor is paid, and there's always budget everything else, while photographers are "working for experience". And why do we hope it will be anything different in real world? When people get ideas like that in school already, they certainly won't change their mind later on, and we will always be those idiots who are happy to work for byline.
Sorry for this rant but...