Do I need permission to put a landscape photo in a Publishable Book?

Quite simpl yif I were to publish a small coffee table book, and I had a few photo’s I wanted to include in it…whom do I need to talk to about permission? The land owner? No one at all? Does it have anything to do with the caption I put on it? For instance… I have a photo of a covered bridge… if I include that photo in the book and only put the name of the town it is in do I need to ask the property owner as well?

If you took the pictures yourself, you just really need to worry about whether the image is of public or private property. If public, you’re probably safe, although it wouldn’t hurt to contact the municipality to see what their policy is. If private, I’d contact the owner of the property.

I’m not clear on who is taking these photos. If somebody else took them, you definitely need permission.

If they are your own photos, you took them from a public location, and there are no people in them, then you have no problem–go ahead and use them.

If you have to go onto private property to take the pictures, then you need permission. Just last weekend I spoke to somebody who did a coffee table book that included pictures of the Crazy Horse monument in South Dakota. He was forced to remove all pictures taken on their property, but was allowed to use the ones he took from the public roadways.

Note the distinction: if you take a picture of private property from a public place then you can use it. If you take it from private property, then you should get permission.

As for the covered bridge–if you’re talking about a publicly-owned bridge on a public road, then you’re completely in the clear.

What if there is a crowd? Obviously you can’t get thousands of random people to sign a consent form unless they did so as part of participation at an event. What about buildings. I’ve heard that some buildings are copyrighted and you can’t use their image without permission. But what about a cityscape? Do you have to pay the owner of every building in a city? What about if you take photo of the Earth? For that matter, are the names of cities and town copyrighted? Could you sell tshirts witht he name of yoru hometown without permission?

Do you have a cite for that? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Images of a building could be copyrighted, but the building itself???

IANAL, but I believe that town names are free game.

I have a good friend who has published several pictoral coffee table books… I have not spoken with him in several months…maybe I should give him a shout.