Look What They Did to My Pictures, Ma!

It's a fact of photo-life: If you're a shooter-4-hire, someone else is going to mess with your work.

I sometimes have mixed emotions about this. On one hand, I realize it's simply the nature of the beast. On the other, my natural inclination is to protect my work, i.e., protect my signature style--assuming I have some sort of signature style--but assuming I do, I'm inclined to be a bit protective of it.

This isn't to say that the people who mess with my stuff necessarily do so poorly. But when they do, mess with my work that is, and whether they do so poorly or nicely it doesn't look like my work anymore. And when that happens, can I really lay claim to that work? I'm not talking about from a legal perspective. My copyright is my copyright, my work is my work, but when it's licensed to others or it was shot under a shoot-4-hire situation, others have rights and those rights usually include messing with my pics and when they do, sometimes in big ways, it doesn't seem like my work anymore and that can give me angst... or gas, sometimes both.

I understand that graphic designers and photo-editors are important contributors to the process of making images that sell. Whether their selling the images themselves or, as is usually the case, using the images to sell something else doesn't really matter to my ego. My ego says, "Whoa! That's my hard work and creative genius you messed with, pal!"

Even when my hard work and creative genius has produced lackluster images and then some gifted graphic designer--suddenly and magically--transformed those images into something that sells, that is, he or she frosted the turds with wonderful results, my ego still has its nose out of joint. I guess people are funny that way. Apparently, I'm no exception.


And then there's those times when the turd-frosting is put on images that aren't turds. As in images that are quite beautiful and creative and have real impact. Then Mister Ego really goes into a tailspin! "What? I give you this masterpiece and you screw with it? You gaussian blur it and diffusion glow it? You colorize and posterize, metamorphisize and super-size it to the point I can't recognize it as my own, incredibly gifted, gallery-quality work?"

Hold on a second while, after making that "gallery-quality" comment, I dislodge my tongue from my cheek.

But the point is, can I still claim this work, even when it was good when I shot it and it's now even better, as mine? I mean honestly and sincerely mine? Like, you know, when you're lying awake with angst-drive insomnia thinking about this kind of stuff in the dark hours of the night, mine?

The truth is, if I'm really honest with myself, I don't know. I don't know if it's still wholly mine.

The models in my messed-with-by-someone-else images in this post are, from top-to-bottom, Paris, Charmane, and Cindy.