Model: Megan Marie Taken at Yosemite National Park
After some long discussions over a few nights with some fellow photographers, I think it’s important to establish some guidelines and better understandings of our view on cosplay photography. I believe cosplay photography is a great thing for photographers to explore, and it is very beneficial for the cosplay community when we thrive for high quality photography works.
However, we definitely need to educate and encourage stronger content creation practices. This generation is definitely blessed with the easy access of digital photography, and we are definitely benefiting greatly from it. In turn, we forgot how important it is to respect copyright and ownership. One easy trick to understand them better is to compare photography with any other art form. For example, when you do a painting of the great outdoors, the great outdoors do not own your painting; or when you do an article by interviewing a person, that person does not own the article you wrote. Another example would be how news channels couldn’t use another channels’ video clips or interviews without direct permission, it equates to how a news site cannot copy another news site’s articles even with “credits”.
To ensure more collaborative works in the future, we have established a few guidelines that would help creators to get better feedbacks, receive proper gratitude, and collect more analytics. In addition, these guidelines are more effective ways for fans to find the original source materials. If any site/account is claiming that they love to help spread our works, we are definitely encouraging them to do so as long as they follow these guidelines. Not only it’s a lot easier and faster to just click the “Share” or “Retweet” button, but we wouldn’t assume that people are trying to steal our works as their own original content.
Guideline:
Do not post photographer’s/cosplayer’s content as your own original content, only share (Facebook) or retweet (Twitter).
If anyone want to share an image that isn’t posted, they can make a request and the photographer can then post for them to share.
Publication must be granted permission by the photographer (or photo's owner).
Do not associate any product/fundraising/event/promotion/unrelated agenda with the photo without permission.
NEVER alter photos in any way, including cropping, filtering, watermarking, and etc.
If unsure, always contact the content owner first.
Instagram Copyright Infringement Report Form:
Facebook Report Form:
Twitter copyright infringement report form:
YouTube Copyright Takedown:
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