I would be more than happy to provide some pictures of a couple of Norman churches near Bath,which I photographed last year, and are absent from their archive. If their terms and conditions did not include the possibility of Royalty Free use by businesses, making money, that should be paying for photography.
I would be fine with this archive, and indeed support it, if it was just for browsing pictures, or even downloading for personal use. like a student thesis or a school project. I have in fact let a couple of students use my pictures for a thesis for free when they asked me, just because the were honest and asked.
I have no real desire to make money with my photography. But those terms and conditions are just wrong. It would not be too difficult for them to charge business users and pass on payment to the photographer, who spent money travelling to a site and bought the gear to enable the picture to be taken.
Professional photographers ain’t owed a living, they are entitled to be paid a fair fee for their images. This is a government department that not only has the front to expect something for nothing, they want non-pros to contribute to save them paying too. The government department can monetise any images from either camp at any time though.
I think it's an excellent idea. I shall provide photos where possible.
Historical England aren't requesting the services of professional photographers.
Besides which, there are undoubtedly millions of snapshots of historical places sitting idle & unlooked at on gigabytes of disc space taken using modern smartphones. These photos can be easily uploaded/forwarded to the project with just a few finger taps. By careful selection, many would be more than adequate for the project.
Before I ramble, I should note that I am a publisher that actually pays for images. Some of the stock agencies like Getty want up to $700 for single use of an image in a book that might sell 3000 copies. They have completely priced themselves out of the market, and their archives are gathering dust as a result, at least in my market segment. Its a shame generations will never see those images. This is a two way street, it turns out.
All negotiations are based on leverage. With 4 billion people out there with fairly capable cell phone cameras, outdoor pictures of buildings in the public domain to be presented on a website have an extremely low degree of difficulty. I am surprised they don't just shoot them themselves. Because the degree of difficulty is so low, why would they pay people for them? Even people here are willing to donate for free.
In regards to the contract, well......welcome to contracts. Practically every contract is written by lawyers who leave zero wiggle room in their language to avoid any possibility of damages down the road. The clause about commercial gain or otherwise? What happens if logging in to their website becomes fee based ten years from now? What happens of they sell magazines in their gift shop or tourism materials that might have one of your images in it? These guys are covering their ass, not making prints of your donations and selling them at art fairs.
So anyway yeah, 4 billion camera phones, that's gonna make hard to sell a lot of images of certain subjects. This is one of those subjects.
Historic England is not a Government Department. From their website :
Income from grant-in-aid
In 2019/20 Historic England will receive £87.1 million in grant-in-aid from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Our Management Agreement with Government provides the context and framework for our work and sets out our key activities for the money we receive.
Self-generated income
Historic England also receives a small amount of other funding, such as research grants and lottery funding, for particular projects.
I will go a bit off topic regarding this interesting reply.
Sure, Getty are living on another planet if they want to compete against micro stock, which sell at prices that are much lower. I understand a low circulation publication will pay a small amount for a published picture, and I understand the effect the internet has had on printed publications, since I sold my pictures through an agency in London. Bur even back then I know for a fact that, the Economist did not pay a big sum for pictures.
Yes, I got it, that this was Lawyers covering every situation. May be in a language understandable by mere mortals, they could add that these pictures serve for their own publications or that stuff downloaded and published was beyond their control. Sometimes a simple explanation of what these pictures are to be used for might sweeten the pill. As an aside I had a whole bunch of pictures stolen from my Blog and published in a book. The publisher was quite clear that they did not pay for photography, but expected photographers to donate their work. Legal redress is just a fantasy, taking them to court would waste more of my time and probably money than it is worth.
Actually, taking a good picture of any building, without all the usual defects of keystoning out of place intrusions into the shot by cars and people is not so easy. Architectural photogrphy done properly requires just as much skill as other genres of photography. A good architectural shot is not easy to achieve, it needs preferably expensive specialist shift lenses to render the building properly and a skilled eye to avoid geometri distortions.
It is getting more difficult to sell any type of photograph, because people have become used to low quality photography, thanks mainly to the cell phone, but even before people did not understand the skill required to take a good photograph.
So Historic England with their £87,000,000 budget are happy to document England's historic monuments with cell phone snapshots. We sink ever deeper every day in the the mire of mediocrity.
Lazy lawyering most likely. They've just used boiler-plate T&C without actually giving it any thought. It took a bit of thought to do the T&C for this site - because there are conflicting requirements, but as you say a government department should take due care. They're probably getting in the mindset for being privatised.
You make valid points about the general state of affairs. To be clear, when I get images from Getty, they are historical images as the books I am publishing are on transportation history. The images cant be duplicated our sourced from low cost modern image stock agencies. We can just create those images ourselves if we want them at little or no cost.
Its sad that they just stole your images, not sure if you watermarked them or not but that can be the danger of exposing them online. It sounds like they are used to this stunt, and you absolutely do have legal recourse, at least one would here in the states. Its not like they are using them on their website and can pull them with a slap on the wrist. They are in printed material and legal recourse can get you an arbitrated fee or you can even go for a cease and desist, which would be painful for them. You might be able to settle with the threat of that, as that is your leverage. Again, I am speaking of US laws.
I also understand that good architectural photography is a skill, but do they have those standards? My guess is that they would happily accept a cell phone shot if they presently have none at all. You don't have to sell me on quality architectural shots, but they probably are more like real estate offices that will take whatever.
I live in Italy and the process would be long and expensive, and the time away from work with lost earnings does not make this endeavour worthwhile. Yes, this publishing house, ang/or the author is defiantly used to doing this, if I look at the other stuff he has published. He is also the Ex Socialist Vice Mayor of a big city near where I live. So I would be fighting a big political dog, or rather pig.
