SECTION TWO
published work for reference, inspiration (to do better)
or contest entry.
Notes and work in progress go in simple, labeled
manila folders or, my favorite, one of a half-dozen or so
clip-boards (one project each) I hang from nails on the
off ice wall. They don’t get lost when they’re in your
face!
The biggest challenge I face in protecting the economic
potential of photography is keeping it in a form easy to
f ind and sell. More than anything else, that means only
keeping the stuff that really has value.
Just the other day someone described chatting with
an esteemed photographer, back in the days of color
transparencies. How many publishable shots per
36-frame roll? she asked. On a good day, one, he
replied. The rest were waste-bin f iller.
More stunning yet was the estate sale of a world
traveler; his family, unable to make any sense or derive
any joy from his thousands and thousands of slides, was
pouring them into a trash drum so they could sell the
now-empty metal boxes for 50 cents each.
The message from each episode was clear: transparency,
print or digital image -- keep only the best.
Sorting f ile photos is not only time consuming but
soul-wearying. I can’t pore through black and white
prints, color slides or even digital images, without
f inding shot after shot of dear people now dead. It’s
not work for the weak. Still, a task that needs doing.
Physically protecting photos? That that means off-site
storage of digital f ile duplicates. I’ve had my best slides
scanned (okay, I’m working on it) and I am myself
scanning my good black and whites (discarding the
mediocre) and adding them to my DropBox f iles.
(I still carefully store the physical images, of course, in
the irrational distrust my generation feels for 0 s and
1 s. You’ve got your hang-ups, I’ve got mine.)
electronically f iled photo to make it discoverable by
search: “Fishing steelhead drift boat Manistee Griff and
John Janson”, with a further identifying number, for
example. That makes it easy to f ind when a story (and a
check) come calling.
Still, as in writing, my time is far better spent f inding
and creating the next wonderful image than in
protecting one I’ve made in the past.
Just as so-so photos clutter up the works, feral f iles are
trouble. As I’ve said in a past essay, my rule is never
return a f ile folder to the drawer (or close a digital
one) without swiftly going through it and removing
materials dated or otherwise unusable. Bonus? Once in
awhile, this gleaning nets a dynamite story idea, if only
how things have changed, where today came from, etc.
So, what about protection from theft – copyright and
related issues?
For a decade I taught magazine and newspaper feature
writing as an adjunct instructor at Central Michigan
University, and one of the f irst questions my students
would ask was how they could protect their work from
theft.
It now sounds unkind, but I’d reply, “First create
something worth stealing, and then worry about it.”
Then I told them how I once engaged a lawyer to go
after a publication that had lifted a photo from one of
my magazine articles and used it in an ad, with neither
my permission, nor that of the folks in the photo. After
a few weeks, the lawyer got us $400. Billed us $400.
Explained that he’d discounted his fee to match the
award it consumed.
Copyright law protects our work, but enforcing it, even
before the Wild West of the Internet, is a tough slog.
Best advice? Keep trying to create something worth
stealing. And then f ile and store it carefully in case you
get a chance to prof it from it yourself again.
As with stories, I try to assign names to each
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HORIZONS | 15