For photographers living and working in the U.S., I think it will be almost impossible to realize a profit from images produced now and going forward. The demand, even for microstock is leveling out or declining, and there is way too much over supply of every subject matter. The supply of good quality imagery will continue to grow at a much faster rate than it has. Prices will continue to fall. As a result no one will ever be able to earn as much as they earned in the past from stock photographs.

Jim Pickerell Interview

My own opinion is that a photographer can still make a living with a stock collection that specializes in difficult to find imagery and a group of clients that are willing to come to you for imagery.  On the other hand, if you are a “Generalist” and shoot all varieties of imagery, I agree with Jim: in the near future you will no longer be able to make ends meet shooting stock imagery.

And here is another Photography job posting for the Carnival Cruise Line.

Again, I am not saying these jobs are the most amazing jobs in the photography industry, but if a young photographer just out of school wishes to bank some (tax free) money to start their business in a few years, while at the same time waiting for the photo industry and world economy to recover, this may be a way to do that.

NB: The medical ministry that Megan traveled with in Honduras (see the bottom 2 photos) was sent by Casa Corazon, a 501(c)3 non-profit run by Mountville Mennonite Church.

a burn victim receives a hair transplant, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Mammoplasty. For every 4 paid plastic surgeries, the Rio hospital can perform a reconstructive surgery for free. Megan has been photographing both.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Rio

Rural hospital that treats landmine victims in Battambang, Cambodia

A prosthetic leg being made at the International Center for the Red Cross facility, Cambodia

Cambodia

Cambodia

Megan also traveled with a neurosurgery team in Honduras that mainly treated children with hydrocephaly. Patients' families must purchase their own shunts, which allow drainage of cerebrospinal fluid, or await donated shunts (each donated shunt costs $257). www.ccorazon.org

Honduras

Can I register a collection of works with a single application?
A collection of works may be registered with a single application if either of the following requirements is met:

1. The collection is made up of unpublished works by the same author and owned by the same claimant;

But Shawn and Matt said it goes further than that, that works copyrighted together should be a true collection, meant to go together.  They directed me to the circular, Copyright Basics, which says this:

Unpublished Collections

Under the following conditions, a work may be registered in unpublished form as a “collection,” with one application form and one fee:

• The elements of the collection are assembled in an orderly form;
• The combined elements bear a single title identifying the collection as a whole;
• The copyright claimant in all the elements and in the col­lection as a whole is the same; and
• All the elements are by the same author, or, if they are by different authors, at least one of the authors has contrib­uted copyrightable authorship to each element.

Now that sounds like gobbledygook to me, and I’m a lawyer.  But apparently what the first two lines mean is that to register them together, the works need to truly go together.  So we can register “Tybee Island Portraits, 2009″ but not “Everything Greg Shot, Jun – Aug 2009″. I don’t think I could have possibly figured that out from this Circular, but I’m going to trust Shawn and Matt on this one and do it right from now on. Might re-register a few particular old things too.

Incidentally, I asked them why the Copyright Office had never sent them back if I was doing it wrong, and whether copyright protection would still hold up since the Office accepted them, after all.  They said no, that if I got into a legal battle with someone over an image, they could in fact claim that I had not registered correctly. There is of course legal language somewhere that says it’s my responsibility to do it the right way, and not the government’s fault or problem if I muck it up.

-Michelle

Special thanks to Desoto Row, a local non-profit gallery and arts organization that has begun offering educational programs for local artists and sponsored Shawn and Matt’s talk.