I go to shows and I take pictures all the time, many are bad, so that’s why I take a lot of them; I don’t have a photo pass most of the time, but going in the photo pit is a special feeling!
I know that some artists totally forbid pictures, but what the Mineapolis City Pages, a sister paper of the LA Weekly, described, never happened to me as I am not a professional photographer at all and I have never had to sign a contract.
A freelance journalist went to a Foo Fighters show, and the band's management had the venue send out a contract for the photographer to sign before being approved for a photo pass. But the guy refused to sign it because of ‘an oppressive set of terms laid out by the band's management.’
The guy did not agree with a few things he j
udged went ‘well above and beyond the usual I agree to shoot this band for this publication’.
First of all there was the ‘approval of the photos’, which means the management reserves himself the right to control which photos are allowed to be published, to pick and choose which photos the like to see in the press.
Secondly, the management company wanted to own all photos taken, depriving the photographer from ownership or rights of his own work. The contract was even going further, saying that ‘the photographer must march down to the U.S. Copyright Offices and transfer ownership of the work over to the band’!
Who do the Foo Fighters think they are??? The newspaper even advances the idea that these abusive contract are especially aimed at freelance photographers who are trying to make a living, but, under these conditions, it becomes impossible.
The LAWeekly added a few interesting examples: Band of Horses’ management uses the same over-the top contract, striping photographers of ‘the right to exploit all or a part of the Photos in any and all media, now known or hereafter devised, throughout the universe, in perpetuity, in all configurations as you determine, without obtaining my consent and without any payment or consideration therefore’ as the contract stipulates.
Florida-based photojournalist Radko Keleman is asking for a boycott and is demanding photographers to stop shooting artists with these kinds of abusive releases.
But the Foo Fighters’ photo waiver is the strictest around, and interesting enough, I read on Keleman’s facebook group page, ‘Music photographers’ that Motorhead does not ask for a release ,… so Dave Grohl should learn from his idol and not faking being cool and close to Lemmy in that Motorhead documentary, what a joke this is!