National Geographic's 2007 international photo contest

Looks like this is another contest to stay away from. By entering, you give up perpetual, royalty free license for National Geo to use the images in any media “including commercially using and exploiting the entries to fullest extent possible”.... See the relevant text below or at http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/photo-contest/rules.html

“By entering the Contest, all entrants grant a royalty free irrevocable perpetual non-exclusive license to Authorized Parties, to use the entries and a name credit in any media now or hereafter known, without restriction, including commercially using and exploiting the entries to fullest extent possible at any time following submission. Entrants consent to the Sponsor doing or omitting to do any act that would otherwise infringe the entrant’s “moral rights” in their entries. Display or publication of any entry on an Authorized Party’s website does not indicate the entrant will be selected as a winner. Authorized Parties will not be required to pay any additional consideration or seek any additional approval in connection with such use or exploitation.”

Pretty much par for the course these days and not many entrants will care.

I was on a local board in a thread about a local insurance company having a photo contest for its annual calendar. I pointed out the fine print (similar to this) and all the responses were the same.

“so? At least this way I get my name out there”.

I just gave up.

Yeah, true….there are tons of people who will enter the contest regardless of the rules.

However, I think it’s valuable to point out problems like these in rules so photographers who care about their work and it’s use are fully aware of the terms they agree to by entering these contests. Sometimes, the contest organization doesn’t know that their terms and conditions are disagreeable. In fact, people pointing out egregious terms like these on lightstalkers in the past has resulted in contest organizations changing their rules to more fair usage of winning and nonwinning entries (usually just to future usage in direct context of promoting the contest).

and the licensing does not apply only to winners, but to all entrants; that’s really over the top.

woah there.. so even submitting an image, I give up my rights to the image?

How does this work if I hold the model release form for an image?

answered my own questions by reading their rules.

no thank you on that one!

one can guess that they target the weekend tourists that feel they may have a shot they want to see in NG?

imho, personally, I would rather have an assignment from them, instead of a $1000 digital camera as a prize.

The true purpose of a contest like this is to aquire royalty free images AND the copywrite to it. It is a sly and

cunning plan of corporate minded people to save as much money as possible and gain as much as they can for

their own coffers. I find it sad that NatGeo would put such rules in a contest of their own. For an organization

that prides itself on the quality of their photography, this contest says they feel photography has no value.

I guess because there is no tangible physical “slide or neg” and the photo is just one’s and zero’s the photo is

worthless. Sad. Very sad…

The true purpose of a contest like this is to aquire royalty free images AND the copywrite to it. It is a sly and

cunning plan of corporate minded people to save as much money as possible and gain as much as they can for

their own coffers. I find it sad that NatGeo would put such rules in a contest of their own. For an organization

that prides itself on the quality of their photography, this contest says they feel photography has no value.

I guess because there is no tangible physical “slide or neg” and the photo is just one’s and zero’s the photo is

worthless. Sad. Very sad…

Sad…i’m speechless! I know the story..

I’m a bit shocked that National Geo would be doing this, but then nothing surprises me anymore.

I was shooting something not that long ago (really mainly for myself) and I had a rather surprising phone call
the other day from an organisation (quite wealthy as well) that wanted to get a hold of some of these shots. It was then backed up by an email saying well just send the photos here.

Naturally I replied with ‘Whoa Baby’ its not quite as simple as that, credit usage etc. have to be sorted.

They rang me back and said ‘well we don’t feel we have to pay for photographs’ of course I told them very politely to F%$# off but I actually couldn’t believe what she said after I had explained in the initial email photojournalism is how I make my living.

I wonder what she would say if her bosses said to her ‘Well we don’t feel we have to pay you to work’

2000 photos per minute are uploaded to Flickr… that’s nearly 2.9 million images per day. We live in a new world now, and photographs are cheaper than chips in the eyes of those who think in the reductionist frame of the bean counter. That’s the reality – it’s what’s occuring here with the Nat Geo competition and what’s going on in the heads of the people hitting up Lisa for free works…

So we need to forget about the old model and pretty quickly come up with both new models and new ‘forms’ of photojournalism to carry this practice beyond the next, say, three years (talking end of the decade here). Otherwise what we broadly know of as photojournalism and a method of making ‘a living’ will dissolve into the image torrents of the multitude.

I get the impression that this is not really a contest for pros anyway. Certainly all pros should steer well clear.

That’s kind of the point, Paul. They, all of a sudden, need a whole lot less ‘pros’ than they used to…

Yeah Ed

“At the end of the decade there is gunna be a lot of refugees”

But what model is going to replace this kinda attitude?

I mean these knuckle heads approached me for something they wanted and expected to get it for free. Saying literally 'they didn't feel they had to pay for it' A commodity they wanted but they felt they didn't need to pay for it.

I think the problem is that unique photographs are not seen as product by a lot of people. So they don’t see the value in them. And unfortunately while world wide solidarity to get people to boycott competitions with these kinds of clauses would be a dream there is always some poor sod who needs the money, kudos, ego boost that will lean over and take it (in whatever orifice you would like to put here)

Until the whole idea of quality replaces quantity our commodity is rapidly devaluing in a very fundamental way.

Yes, it is… as for a model there’s a lot of potentials but I don’t know how many of them involve just photos with captions…

Please note some contest rules have been clarified.
You can find the updated rules at the following link- ngphotocontest.com

how come? is it just that NG has not realized until now, the moment of reading some posts on LS, what on earth they are doing?! but errare humanum est

Does this not lower the quality of the magazine seeking images for contests in this form?

If your methods alientate your very source of a particular market, it would seem that wisdom (or is it common sense?) dictate that you try to avoid putting stipulations that would cause professional photographers to steer clear of your projects…

As for Lisa’s situation, why even explain why you need to be paid for the work you do? It’s not up for debate. You have a service and if they require the use of that service, then currency is the currency of the trade. I wouldn’t even bother telling them why you should be paid. I reckon those same people wouldn’t be doing THEIR job if those companies or publications gave them that chock of bullshit.

Is this the updated rule?

By entering the Contest, all entrants grant an irrevocable perpetual non-exclusive license to Authorized Parties, to reproduce, distribute, display and create derivative works of the entries (along with a name credit) in connection with the Contest and promotion of the Contest, in any media now or hereafter known, including, but not limited to: Display at a potential exhibition of winners; publication of a book featuring select entries in the Contest; publication in National Geographic Magazine or online highlighting entries or winners of the Contest.

The weird thing among all the rights-grabbing fine-print stuff we read about is that I have yet to see a website or media company publish materials that were obviously worth all the legal effort. Readers/viewers aren’t as stupid as the general media believes (this is the problem with the general media), and the notion that there are legions of wannabe-PJs just dying to get their name into print is just silly. Yeah, maybe there’s an eighth-grade kid who would be proud to have a shot in a famous magazine, but most people operate under the rule that undergirds human civilization: “You want it? You pay for it.”

NG would like to believe it has midwifed some of the world’s most stunning and iconic images. The Afghan Girl wasn’t shot by an amateur who just happened to be vacationing in Kabul—and any amateur who snapped such a picture certainly wouldn’t submit it to some contest when he could make real money from it elsewhere.

No, “citizen journalist” contestants aren’t going to supplant McCurry, Harvey, Abelard, et al. The contest is just a ploy to garner more readers because someone said that interactivity (web 2.0) is the key to site traffic, which is the key to advertising dollars. If thousands of people submit images and NG puts them online, the result will be however many thousands of page views, which can be taken to the bank.

It was never about the pictures.

Actually preston that does sound very logical…

Preston makes a good point but right now what these guys are doing is playing with these new tools to see how much money they can make/save. Either they’ll end up with a zillion crappy photos coming in with the contest and none of them any good, or they’ll end up with a zillion crappy photos coming in with maybe 1% of them being, well, pretty darn good.

Jul 18, 2007: a steam pipe explodes in NYC and the first pictures on the AP wire are from someone’s camera phone… now, there aren’t going to be people running about in Darfur or Chad with camera phones transmitting pictures as soon as something happens, but in places that are both affluent enough for there to be a high level of dissemination of digital-imaging technology and where the network connection is strong and ubiquitous (like NYC) we are going to see this happen more and more. It’s important to note (at the risk of sounding like a technological determinist) that the higher resolution gets in these cameras the less it matters about perfect composition… images just get cropped into shape.
-puts up virtual shield and waits for barrage of abuse-

Also, as a side note the NG photo editor did just post here on LS the other day asking for pros to submit images to the NG FTP site for consideration for the big double-page spread in the magazine. So I guess that at the same time the bean counters over there are jumping on top of the flickr-like multitude out there they’re also starting to use places like Lightstalkers as sites to source high-quality content, which is very very interesting. Models like this (a collection of high-level practitioners in one virtual space, kind of like DRR or Photoshelter but LS is much more community-oriented and open) could well be the saviour of things like high-quality photographic journalism…

slightly off topic… but can anyone think of another product/service that has completely lost it’s commercial value (if… this is the
way photojournalism is headed… ) the only context i can think of is music or film with piracy issues… but then there are still big
corporations whose survival depends on selling their ‘products’.. whereas photographers are individuals trying to make
their living from their work, without corporate money to protect their rights…

Well, no doubt all the big agencies/wires (commercial photo bodies/archives of all kinds, editorial, commercial stock etc etc) are working pretty hard to mitigate the unathorised spread of their copyrighted works over the web, just the same way the record companies and movie studios are working to stop the spread of their products through networks like Limewire and Bittorrent. Just type “Steve McCurry” into Google Image and see what you get… my bet is most of those images weren’t paid for. As for individual photographers you’re totally right, Julia…

What about the collapse of ‘Life’ magazine in 1972, folded as a weekly publication due to the shift of its audience (one interested in short-term visual news and reportage, just what ‘Life’ catered to) to television?

The Italian NG contest this year is experiencing serious problems regarding the winning pic in the landscape section. The image is clearly manipulated and was published on the web before the contest. They have already withdrawn the image but much perplexity still remains in the photographic community.