Shooting cars, question

photographz

At this point, this is hypothetical for me, in part because show & cruise season hasn't started up here yet. I realize any advise given here is just that, and I'll probably still talk to a lawyer to CYA if I want to persue this any further.

I've hear conflicting opinions regarding photographing cars and selling those photos (as prints, etc-basically, think smugmug merchandise). I'm a bit stuck, because I can see both sides of this. It could be IP/TM infringement on the side of the manufacturer, since you are selling images of their vehicle. On the other hand, if you are shooting for the owner of the car, is it like shooting a wedding (where the bride's dress could be made by fancy schmancy designer so and so, but it's not an issue as you aren't photographing the dress per se, but the person wearing it)?

There is recent prescedent (not legally binding) in an issue of Ford vs the Black Mustang Club and their right to produce calendars of the members cars. It ended with the BMC being given permission to create/sell the calendars because they were a club. Which made me lean towards the side saying that it would be IP/TM infingement to sell products featuring images of cars commercially. The Ford rep did state online that they had no issues with people taking and printing photos of their own cars, which reintroduced the murkiness of the idea of shooting for a client.

Basically, I see a few ways of shooting cars and I think they each have their own set of rules:

1) Shooting your own car and printing images for personal use

2) Shooting a car for a specific client (owner of the car) and offering them to that person for sale

3) Shooting cars at a show, etc and offering them for sale to the general public

4) Editioral (magazine, newspaper, etc) use of images of cars which would probably be along the same lines as the BMC's calendar

Any thoughts on the above situations? I'm quite confident #1 is fine, as you aren't selling anything and it's not commercial use at that point. I hope I made sense, I've had a sinus thing/allergies for a few days and am in a medicine induced fog...

I did read http://www.danheller.com/biz-trademarks.html but IMO it doesn't really cover #2, becaase the photographer is obviously taking the photo of the car because of the car (the relationship/good will thing), but is it also partially covered by the fact that your client owns the property you are shooting-and is it commercial at that point or not? Times like this make me wish I had a lawyer in the family :P (or my husband was more interested in this part of business ownership!!)

chuckinsocal

IMHO, Intellectual Property laws are so convoluted that even the lawyers can't agree on what applies to what, where, and when.

I've adopted cars as my niche market and I'm amazed at how people can invest many 10s of thousands of dollars plus a lot of time and labor in their custom car yet not be interested in purchasing quality photographs of the car. They seem to be satisfied with their ordinary snap shots, most of which are of poor quality and do absolutely nothing to show off the beauty of the car. But, that shouldn't surprise me since it seems from reading various threads on this forum that people aren't that interested in purchasing quality photos of their own kids playing sports either. Go figure.<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

Back to the copyright and trademark issue, Zazzle pulled some of my products from their site claiming that Ford has written them in the past claiming violations of their IP rights. So, I wrote directly to Ford and here is their response:


"Chuck:
I have found your site on Fine Art America, at least I think
that it is yours (e.g.,
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/ford-woody-chuck-cannova.html). In this regard, Ford has no objection to such completely original photographs. Just be careful to avoid giving potential buyers the impression that Ford sponsors, approves or is in any way associated with your commercial efforts. Best Regards, Bill Coughlin"

The site they found me on isn't the site in question but they seem not to care much about selling images of their cars as long as we avoid implying that Ford is somehow associated with producing or marketing the photos. So, I put a disclaimer in the footer of my SmugMug pages stating so.

If you want to write Ford, Bill Coughlin's e-mail address is bcoughli@ford.com. It took them about a week to respond so patience may be in order.

Zazzle also states that they have been contacted by Volkswagon and Honda claiming IP violations.

In any case, I've adopted the position that it's often easier to beg forgiveness than to beg permission. I think the worse that can happen is a manufacturer can ask me to cease and desist, and if they do, I'll simply cease and desist and move on. They have much bigger fish to fry.

I hope this helps some.

Chuck Cannova
www.customrideportraits.com </pre>

photographz

I believe you can make money off of cars, I know a local photographer who does so. HOWEVER, he a whiz at PS and typically inserts the cars into cool backgrounds, and he's also a long time member of the "cruising community", and a well respected one at that. I think it's just a side effect of having widely available digital cameras that people don't want to pay for pictures, and think their snapshots are just as good as any others. I'm no Ansel Adams (Anselette? lol), but I do know certain things about composition and cringe when I see parts of subjects cut off, blown out and over exposed on photos people are proudly displaying (although my biggest pet peeve are the people that leave the time/date stamp on their photos). Personally, I think cars are one of the tougher subjects, with all their curves, edges and shiny spots to mess with the camera and reflect things.

Thanks for the contact at Ford, I'll give him a shout. I had some items removed from a POD site due to IP violation from Ford (they were photos of my own car even), but didn't contact them at the time because I wasn't aware of Smugmug and knew I didn't want to try to convince said POD that I had the appropriate approval from Ford each time I uploaded an image.

I might take the "beg forgiveness" approach sometimes, but given the option they have of throwing corporate lawyers at me, I'm going to err on the side of caution. I could use a wide network of contacts in the automotive hobby field to throw a huge internet hissyfit similar to what occured with the BMC should they do that, but I value my business as well as home and cars more than attempting to avoid paying my dues up front. I am going to be creating an LLC soon, which would at least protect my personal property in case some CM/TM owner gets his/her panties in a bunch and decides to sue me.

As a side note, MOPAR is also widely known for being protective of their IP rights, as is Shelby (old #$^$%^%4. Not on the top of my list of fav car people, lol).

chuckinsocal

Does your friend have his photos on line anywhere? I've adopted the same practice of isolating cars and putting a nice custom background behind them that make the cars look awesome. I tend to keep the backgrounds simple so the viewers focus stays on the car. I'd like to see his work if it's avaliable.

If you want, you can see my most recent and best (IMHO) efforts at www.customrideportraits.com/fquick. The work has been evolving over the last 5 months or so.

Thanks.

Chuck Cannova
www.customrideportraits.com

photographz

I'm sure he does, but I can't recall the name of his business...He uses backgrounds like an old gas station, what appears to me to be somewhere along the Pacific Coast Highway, a old drive in sign...basically, places people probably will never get to drive their car and photograph it anyway. That bridges the gap between their snapshots and his "portraits"-at least IMO.

I tried emailing that person at Ford and it bounced back (spam filter). Did you originally email a general "contact us" email?

claudermilk

I suspect that selling owners photos of their cars for personal use is fine. It's when you start selling other products in general that it gets sticky. I know the Black Mustang Club ran afoul of that with Ford for their club calendar last year--to Ford's credit they apparently got things worked out & BMC got to run their calendar. Also, note the lack of badges on the cars in ads like Armor-All's, same issue, so they debadge the cars even though we all know it's a Mustang or Vette.

chuckinsocal

My initial e-mail went to myoun135@ford.com which was a link in Ford's Public Affairs Department web page. It got forwarded around and cc'd to several people including crcfmc@ford.com, tvivian1@ford.com, rsletten@ford.com, and finally wcoughli@ford.com who responded as mentioned yesterday. The phone# they gave for him is 313-322-7726 if that helps any.

Claudermilk's comment about the badging is very interesting. You might want to ask them about that.

Chuck Cannova
www.customrideportraits.com

photographz

Thanks for the repost of the email addy, I sent it to the first one starting with B not W. I resent it to the one you posted above earlier and already received a reply with an ok from him.

I think I will do the same with the other of the Big Three (mopar & gm) as well. I'm printing the email and keeping it in a safe place just in case lol.

chuckinsocal

WOW ... quick response from him.

Could you copy and paste his response here. It's probably something we could all learn from.

Thanks.

Chuck Cannova
www.customrideportraits.com

claudermilk

I'd be interested too. I'm no expert, but I had noted the debadging of the cars in Armor-All's ads a while ago (always thought, "yeah, like we can't tell it's a Mustang with the little horse gone from the grille"); after reading of the BMC's troubles, a light went off in my head. Logical conclusion: avoiding legal trademark infringement troubles.

photographz

Sorry, got lost in other stuff for a bit there. I deleted the email after I printed it to keep in my files. Basically, he said they had no problem in terms of selling images to clients (like shooting a wedding). I think the legal pitbulls get involved when it's commercial use, like just selling images on tshirts in mass quantites.

Side note, I have thought a little about what you said, that you were surprised people wouldn't buy pics after spending a lot of $$$ on their car. The photog I know that is fairly successful here is not only a photog, but also a hobbiest himself. He drives a 57 Chevy. You'd be hard pressed to attend a local show or cruise where a majority of attendees didn't know him. It is kind of a tight knit group. I'm not sure it is like this everywhere, but I think one possible key to getting this to work is getting into the "community". My husband and I are already, with a newer Mustang and a classic we are restoring. I swear, that car is more well known that we are! She's a bit of a diva, lol. Anyway, even if you don't have a cruiser or show car, check out your local scene. Attend lots of shows & cruises, and see if there's a local message board. If so, post. Get involved. Build a trust-it will also go a long way to referrals. I can go to the Woodward Dream Cruise and run into people we know (there's approximately 10,000 cruisers there). Once you start building that web of contacts, I think it will build your business up. I can't tell how many people will ask other cruisers for recommendations on places to do certain things (hey, who did your paint? Where did you get your headliner? Who does good powdercoating? Stuff like that). You might even think of getting a booth at a show that has them to display some work, or bringing a laptop with you when you shoot at a show, to let owners see what they could be buying.

claudermilk

photographz wrote:

...I swear, that car is more well known that we are! She's a bit of a diva, lol...

Kind of freaky, isn't it? I got a little creeped out when a couple of people mentioned they came to a local show to see what had been done on a project car I'm involved in. :dood

SamirD

photographz wrote:

Side note, I have thought a little about what you said, that you were surprised people wouldn't buy pics after spending a lot of $$$ on their car. The photog I know that is fairly successful here is not only a photog, but also a hobbiest himself. I'm not sure it is like this everywhere, but I think one possible key to getting this to work is getting into the "community". Attend lots of shows & cruises, and see if there's a local message board. If so, post. Get involved.

I ran across this thread kinda randomly, but since I've shot cars for a few years now and practially ran the whole car scene in our area, I'll give my perspective.

It definitely is a very close community and is a culture within itself. It helps to be as car crazy as those you are shooting for. You'll find that coming into your photos and creating some utterly stunning shots.

I have found getting people to purchase pictures to be a challenge. People are more opted to buy pictures from a custom shoot than to purchase random shots at a show.

On the legal issues, I've never ran into any problems so far. I've shot at every type of event imaginable from drag racing, to car shows, to autocross and track events, and even illegal street racing. When my site was up in full form, I had one of the largest collection of car pictures on the Internet. And not once did I have a problem with IP/copyright issues (other than people stealing my shots, but that's another topic). I even put together a promo for Fast and the Furious 3, and no problems.

Bottom line, first and foremost, respect the car and the owner. Understand the rules of how and owner wants their car respected, and follow those rules. Then see if you can please the owner with your photo artistry. Maybe he or she will love the shot enough to get a poster to hang in their garage.

Here's a link to the Fast and Furious premiere. There were a lot of companies there, and this gallery was seen by thousands of people on the Internet--still no IP/copyright issues:
http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/1571116#75974090_CjP8t