In this particular case, if I’m reading this article correctly, the photographer’s camera was set up to automatically transmit everything he was shooting back to home base, where his editors would be able to immediately review his images. This makes sense any time there’s the potential for fast-breaking news to emerge; you don’t want to wait until the photographer sits down and scrolls through to decide what’s worth sending. Here, the photographer himself didn’t know he’d taken The Photo until almost two hours later when he finally reconnected with the rest of the world and saw his picture had already been dominating social media for a while.
In other words, contractual agreement aside, the photos were going directly from the guy’s camera to the agency’s editors. I gather from the article this is a common arrangement.
I found myself in the position of being on many front pages of newspapers worldwide one day. I’m a camera operator and was rather close to a public figure. The photo was shot by a Getty photographer. It was a hell of a shot.
A friend sent a link to one such front page with some wisecrack comment. I did a bit of digging and found the photographer on the Interwebs. Wrote him an email and basically said, Hi !! This is me !! Can I have a high-res file of this? "
He wrote back and was very cordial. "Yes, I will send you a high-res ( not RAW, but still…high enough res ) file. You may never post it online. You may never send it to anyone. You can show it on your phone, or make a print to hang on the wall. Otherwise, well, Getty does in fact scrape the Web for its images incessantly. Don’t get me in hot water, m’kay? "
To this day, it’s never been sent out online. It’s a lovely souvenir. I don’t make prints of myself at work ( gag ), but I COULD…
Anyway, the agencies who buy from stringers or who have full-time employees are mighty prickly about people appropriating their property. It IS property. Despite what the prevailing attitudes may be in some quarters, intellectual property is property.
I appreciate that. Nobody likes having their hard work stolen. I think he got that I got it.
Many years back, I found out that other Steadicam Operators had stolen some of my work and put them into their own demo reels. Made me insane with resentment.