Photo District News recently published an article “Why Photographers Love Tumblr.” What do you think of the open access to photographers’ images? Ā Do you find the issue of copyright troubling?
The photographer Brantley Gutierrez’s success with Tumblr is discussed in the article. Ā On the right is Gutierrez’s photograph of musician Mike Einziger.
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Please post your responses by Thursday, September 22.
When it comes to photography, tumblr’s an amazing site. It’s a platform to very easily share not only photographs, but also thoughts. Being a website, with a search function, it allows for easy access to almost any subject matter.
Personally, I think the open access is a good thing. It gives people with similar interests, ideals, and thoughts a way to expand said interests, ideals, and thoughts. It could be just viewing the image, or even interacting with the artists, it gives the viewer an opportunity to learn more about their own personal interests.
Yes with the ease of viewing, and reblogging comes the issue of copyright. However, as stated in the article, after being posted for the first time, a particular (image or text) piece will forever bear the author/artists name, as well as original post date. So if a member saves the image, and reuploads the same image, their’s will show a later post date. This feature leaves me worry free about copyrighting.
I don’t use Tumblr; heck, I haven’t even been on the site. But from what I hear and read from the article, it seems like an invaluable site to any photographer or anyone interested in the matter.
I think of photography as a powerful social art-form and deserves a Facebook-like type media to give it it’s full potential which is what Tumblr is (i.e. comparing Tumblr “hearts” to Facebook “likes”). People take photos of things that pertain to their life and of what gives meaning to them. They share these experiences to discover others who share their views and maybe, just maybe get discovered like Brantley Gutierrez.
Regarding the copyright issues, the article debunks that with the re-blog function automatically crediting the author, so there’s not much I can say about that except that it’s a great idea on Tumblr’s part. Thumbs up.
Only going by the overall praise of the article, I like Tumblr.
Read why this guy doesn’t like Tumblr (I was bored waiting for my next class):
http://zachinglis.com/2010/why-tumblr-sucks/
And his follow-up post:
http://zachinglis.com/2010/why-tumblr-sucks-followup/
I like the idea of sharing images but I don’t feel very comfortable uploading high resolution images. As a wedding photographer, when I meet with brides I take my work and I get hired based on personality, quality of work and price. It would definitely be nice to attract more clientele through sites such as Tumblr but I’m still debating on why it has to be high resolution. I’m not sure what kind of person would take credit for someone else’s work but I don’t doubt that they are certainly out there.
Carlos
I donāt use Tumblr, even Iāve heard this around me for times, so I am not sure how it works actually. But, from what I read, I could tell that is a quite working social media for interactions of photographers and their fans. Not only it helps the photographers to promote themselves, it offers a platform for people to share how they see the world and what they find interesting in their life.
Nowadays, for artists, photographers, and designers, Internet becomes the most common and easy way to promote themselves to the world. Even they donāt have Tumblr, most of them would at least have their websites. That means, even you donāt share your work in such popular space like Tumblr, as long as you publish them online, there must be some people who can have access to your work. So, thereās definitely a trade-off if you want to promote yourself online. As a freelance photographer, Iāve already had the experience that people just stole my images on my website, and made them for personal use. That is expected. Thus, what I can do is just not to upload high resolution images in order to prevent the images to be used for any commercial purposes.
Based on the article, the reason why photographers love Tumblr is because it is an easy way for them to share their art work and hopefully receive a reaction from his/hers followers. Though, it is also use as a marketing aspect. The photographer might just share some of his work, so that the public see his originality and quality in his images.
On the other hand, I believe the open access to photographersā images is a good deal, because, as Hanif mentioned on his comment, it gives people with similar interests expand their likes and also critique each other work.
Finally, as far as the issue of copyright goes, I donāt find it troubling. The article states that tumblrās has a āreblogā function, where it can track down who likes or shares an image. Therefore, photographers should not worry where their work is displayed. However, we never know what will happen on the long-run. So, if a user doesnāt feels comfortable with the reblog function, just donāt try uploading an image of a big value to you.
Personally, Tumblr is a fantastic and a creative way to put your work and/or thoughts out there. Not only are you able to express yourself but you are able to meet and follow people who share and appreciate the same interests as you. Another great advantage is that you will be worry-free from the issues of copyright that means that once you have uploaded an image or make a personal post Tumblr will credit you as the original author and it saves the time and date in which the image and/or post was published. Which makes it easier for people to recognize that you are the original photographer/writer of the work that is being published and reblogged around the site. It also stores an archive of all the work that is visible in your blog site, making it more efficient to keep your work organized and much like Myspace you are able to show off all your HTML savvy skills. So basically Tumblr it’s an open blog site to show all you artistic abilities !
It’s great that these sites exist as it allows photographers to reach out to a greater audience than they normally could. If owners are troubled by copyrights then they should not post their work on the internet and look for different methods. Personally, I would not be worried as long as I take precaution in preserving the original high resolution file. For example, owners should post a relatively low resolution image on the internet therefore if legal action is required to claim ownership then the true owner should have the original file.
As soon as I read this article, I went straight off to explore tumblr for the first time. I noticed the amount of artists and creativity there was in the site. I also immediately noticed that tumblr keeps track on the original image of every repost done of that image. It is a simple way of advertising your work to the millions without loosing credit and also keeping track of where your image has been posted. With the correct captions, you can be found by many. Some might feel that adding no captions to the image itself would allow others to simply copy the low-res image and use it somewhere else as their own, but as Watson commented above, you can always bring up the original high-res image if you’re ever caught in court.