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A Rant For Courtesy… Just Ask.

Daryl Meek

On August 14th I helped organize the photowalk in New York City because Trey Ratcliff was coming to town.  Trey asked me for some assistance since he lives on the other side of the world.

Well, the photowalk was a success with over 200 people attending, walking from the World Trade Center area down to Battery Park in the Wall Street section of the city.

As the sun set and people began to scatter, I decided to have some strobe fun.  For the walk, I had with my the Leica M9, 50mm Summicron f/2 lens, the LumoPro flash and two PocketWizards.  The goal was to take some fun night portrait photographs of people who wanted it.

So it began… and it was a lot of fun.  I asked friends to act as my human light stands and in turn, taught them some new stuff about flash photography.

That is what a photowalk is all about!

The photograph you see  here is of my friend Daryl Meek.  Not only was he a human light stand at one point, but also a subject.

Now, it is days later and I came across one of the portraits being used in a social media profile.  I was shocked.  I could not believe that another photographer would use the photograph I shot of without a word being said.  Now yes, that photographer has the right to use it because it was not done professionally, no model release was signed, no contract – nothing.  Yes, there is the right to use it because the photograph is of that photographer.

However, even if the photo was taken (for fun) during a photowalk, to me it is common courtesy to just say “Hey Scott, I’d love to use that photograph you got of me during the photowalk, for my social media profile.  Do you mind?”

Why would I say no?

So to conclude my silly rant…  just ask.

Thanks for reading and happy shooting,

Scott

Side note: Daryl already has permission to do what he wants with the photo… because he asked

By Scott

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383 comments

  1. I agree Scott, I came across 2 of my images on someones instagram stream last week, got to looking more and every photo he had posted was stolen. Some people will do anything. Needless to say they removed his account.

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