the daily flashkube

Great tips in this.  I usually get people to take off their glasses when I am using flash because I want to avoid glare. I know I’ve said this before, but if you need to learn flash, the Strobist is your best bet. He always finds the best sources.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Follow the Bouncing Ball for Advice on Lighting Glasses

Quick video today from The Flash Centre on how little movements in your subject can get rid of lighting reflections in glasses. And I totally agree with Chris for “Plan A” as being, “Do you always wear your glasses?”

(Hey, it never hurts to ask…)

via Strobist.

This week I got a crash course in Copyright law from copyright holder and well-known photographer, Scott Bourne. I excerpted part of an article on his blog and posted it here at thedailyflashkube.com. I also posted a photograph that was part of his article as well. Everything was in block quotes and there were links to his site. The photograph itself was shown as if it was on my server even though it still resided on Scott’s. Given all that, I thought that I was within what the uninformed call “fair use.”

I was totally wrong. After being notified by Scott that I was in violation of his rights, I did some research. What I found was that it doesn’t matter whether you are trying to make money. It doesn’t matter if you link to or attribute the copyright holder. It doesn’t even matter that the image wasn’t “copied” per se. A copyright holder gets to decide whether and how a work is used, not you or I.

Scott Bourne had every legal right to sue me under Title 17 of U.S. Copyright Law. Even though I took down the copyrighted work, I was still liable for the time it was up. I was extremely lucky. Scott took pity on me and graciously accepted my apology. He is also accepting his normal license fee for the use of his image which I am gladly paying.

A message to bloggers everywhere. Do your homework before you post copyrighted materials. One good resource is Scott’s own post on the subject. Check it out.