5 reasons to always use Photo Meta Data
photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography
Back in the days of film photographers would use sticky labels to show a transparency or print belonged to them and copyright and contact info. Literally stuck on the slide mount or the reverse of the print. With the advent of digital there was no longer a physical object to stick these on. CDs could be labelled but once your client took those images off your CD and save them onto their machine your data was separated from your images.
So how do we protect our images out there in cyberspace?
Enter Meta Data. A way of storing text fields invisibly inside a file be that PSD, TIFF, JPEG or other digital file types.
If you have Photoshop you can use the many Meta Data fields by opening an image and then selecting File from the top menu and File Info from the dropdown. This opens the image Meta Data fields window. Then click on Description. This field is the most widely used with Headline, Description & Keywords plus Copyright info fields. This is an Adobe field and maps its data to the IPTC Status and IPTC Content fields. Take a look at those too.
Photo Meta Data is underused. Way underused. Yet it could be the way that photographers get round the planned “Orphan Works” laws in the pipeline in the US and UK where companies who can’t identify the owner of a photo will have the power to use it for free!.
Meta Data was standardised by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) who developed the various Meta Data fields used as a way of being able to read data across all the major news image providers and users. Back in the infancy of digital communications the “IPTC fields” in an image showed the Caption, Description, Licence and copyright information of an image transmitted across the newswire.
Imagine the chaos if a busy newsdesk received a load of wired in images all without captions and locations! From there it grew into an effective way of showing ownership and the rights attached to a digital image.
The Photo Meta Data project has created a site all about Meta Data called www.photometadata.org Bookmark it now as it will turn into a great resource with tutorials and links to free MetaData resources, readers and tips.
Rather than repeat the comprehensive information on photometadata.org I thought I would list 5 reasons why Photo Meta Data should be in every single image you publish:
1) Without data showing you are the owner and that the image is subject to copyright your image may be treated as an orphan and used without your consent. It’s widely held that images with no “owner” are often seen as fair game by publishers. Make sure yours shows the image is controlled.
2) When delivering files to a client make sure that you fill in the Rights Usage Terms field (found in IPTC Status). State the terms of the licence for the reproduction of your image. It will remind your client and/or anyone else coming into contact with it that it is licenced and only to be used in the manner stated.
3) Make sure you put your name, address, telephone numbers, email address and website address in the IPTC Contact field. I also put these at the end of the Description field. People who need to contact you about usage of your image can then do this easily and not use “I couldn’t find them to ask” as an excuse.
4) It can lead to a nice surprise. An image of mine I had long forgotten about was “found” by a newspaper picture desk and used in a weekend edition. It had been sent to them by a client I had shot it for as part of their PR strategy but this second use some years after was totally unrelated to PR and therefore billable. I received a phone call from the team marking up the image uses and a cheque followed. I had marked the IPTC Rights Usage Field with “only for use in connection with Acme Inc. PR – all other uses chargeable”.
5) IPTC is there for a reason, it’s for you to put your ownership into that image. In the current digital “one click copy” era and with unauthorised uses on the rise can you afford not to use it?
PP
Tags: copyright, credit lines, Getting paid, intellectual property, Photography Business
