The Inner Path of Photography

A friend forwarded me this article today, and I think it’s well worth sharing. (Alain Briot: “They are Stealing Our Work!”)

Written by  Alain Briot, photographer,  it is a story about unaware people feeling free to use images from the web for their own creative work, a University then thinking it’s fine to use for their commercial purposes, and  a photographer ending up with no credit at the least, or financial renumeration at worst.

As well as telling his short story, Alain has great  suggestions of what to do to try to prevent this from happening, and what can be done if it does take place.

Copyright issues and posting images on the web will always be an ongoing challenge. Just like musicians, we need to have more discussion about  how we can carry out our intentions to share our creativity with others, bringing pleasure and inspiration, and also protect our creative work, the means of making a living, through copyright.

As part of this discussion, I suggest a bigger issue:

How can we increase awareness, sensitivity, and appreciation of art, and especially photography, in our country? Is there a way for us to help people to understand the value of what photography brings to their lives, and to treat it as something precious, rather than something that is just images to be used for commercial purposes?

With digital cameras, computers, and ease of printing, the person behind the photograph and the process they have gone through, spiritually as well as technically, becomes forgotten. 

More later…