Organiser denies you selling photos...?

Georgespyros

Hello,

I cut to the chase.

I am a sports shooter, in Greece.
Up to now, and for more than 50 events i had no problem taking mass photos and selling them in various athletic events, mainly public race photos.

I am always carefull, not to conflict with races that have an official photo agency, who has maybe paid or not to get this permit.

Now a race organiser threatened me legally, that i have no right to exploit commercially his event by selling photos from there.

He would grant me permission if i would give them free....
He had no other photographer assigned to the job, meaning i am not making somebody other lose money from my actions.

What is your experience?

jbakerphoto

Why wouldn't you want to just contact the race organizers any way and ask to be the Official for these? That way you get the benefits of being the official. Just saying....

Georgespyros

1st of all, it is gone now, the event is in the past. In the future i will be more carefull.

More importantly i have no way of being sure that i will make a profit, and what else photographers will be around (other amateurs, friends and family etc).
So even if i took the risk and become the official photographer (meaning that i would pay something to the organizers of course), i would skyrocker the price of my photos...

just saying.

GerryDavid

im not a lawyer and have basic understanding of this sort of stuff, but I would think that if the race is in a public place taken from a public location then you can take what pictures you want, but you do have limited use of them, as in if you can see their face you cant sell that image to an advertising agency with out a model release, but you can sell the pictures to the people that are in the picture. At least here in the states.

The main response you will probably get is "ask a lawyer".

Georgespyros

GerryDavid wrote: »

im not a lawyer and have basic understanding of this sort of stuff, but I would think that if the race is in a public place taken from a public location then you can take what pictures you want, but you do have limited use of them, as in if you can see their face you cant sell that image to an advertising agency with out a model release, but you can sell the pictures to the people that are in the picture. At least here in the states.

The main response you will probably get is "ask a lawyer".

Well i came down to this, after some lawer discussions, although even them were not 100% sure and said that a court you never know what side will take. Maybe the 2 lawers i asked were not the specialists in this field and i need further advice.

I came down to this. There is no such thing as i permit you take photos but not sell them. Here in EU, with copyright laws we have total control on our work (excuse the wrong legal words, english is not my native language). Our work can be distributed, sold, etc in whatever way we want to. We the photographers own every right to our work.*

The organiser has to either pursue you for taking photos under a photo-restricted event and thus harm him financially (no such claim can be done it was not a photo restricted area, no signs, no terms no nothing...) or he cannot pursue you at all. There is no middle way, i.e. that in a photo-allowed area you took a photo that you can use for selling, since the sole owner remains you, not the area owner.


* of course the model release is a different matter, which also applies in our case but is pretty irrelevant. I want to sell the picture to the same person he is pictured, not to make publicity out of him.