The organisation known as Historic England has launched the "Missing Pieces Project" inviting people to share their pictures of listed buildings, etc. in England.
For those living in England, it is an opportunity to contribute photographs and other material to the archive being created by Historic England (formerly part of English Heritage).
Cool, we've got several listed buildings within a few hundred metres that I can have a crack at. 😀
On their website there's a map search list :
historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/map-search
so there might be more than expected.
This is a good and interesting resource. I might upload some pictures I took of a couple of Norman churches I visited on my last visit to the UK, that I see have no entries.
The dilemma is always the terms and conditions they list. You are basically giving your pictures away, to be used by anybody who cares to download them. But then again I cannot see any way to sell them myself and stock is not worth the hassle anymore.
Shame you can't sell them. You take first class captures of buildings!
I have been asked for pictures, even by the tourist offices of the places I have photographed, but they all want pictures for free. I had a whole lot of pictures stolen from my Blog and published in a book by the author who claimed them as his own. The publisher bluntly told me that they do not pay for photography.
In France and Italy at least, you are only allowed to photograph historic buildings owned by the church or public bodies, for personal use. You need a permissions and probably payment must be made to publish pictures of these monuments. Sure it is an unenforceable law, but you never know.
Historic England is a Government quango, who's top dogs presumably are getting more than a good salary, and are basically trying to document all Britain's listed buildings photographically for free. Maybe they should let us visit their monuments for free too.
I thought this was a fun idea and was thinking about uploading some pictures I took in the UK last year, that are missing from their site, until I read the conditions attached. It left a sort of nasty taste in the mouth.
Here is an extract from their terms and conditions:
*5. Ownership of your Contribution
You confirm that your Contribution is made in your personal (rather than business) capacity or in your capacity as an authorised representative of a business, public authority or voluntary organisation and that such Contribution does not actively promote or further any business activities and has not been contributed for or with a view to commercial and/or personal gain.
We reserve the right to publish, edit, crop, adjust or add our logo responsibly and fairly to your Contribution (at our sole direction) without notifying you and you agree to waive any and all rights to object to such actions undertaken by us in respect of your Contribution.
By submitting your Contribution (which for the avoidance of doubt includes photographs submitted by you) you grant to Historic England a non-exclusive, royalty free, perpetual, irrevocable world-wide licence together with the right to grant sub-licences, to publish and use your Contribution (or any part of it) on or in connection with the List, the Website, and on or in other Historic England websites and publications, in any media, in any context and at any time for commercial gain or otherwise.
You (or the copyright owner) remain the owner of copyright in your Contribution but in addition to clause 5.3 (see paragraph above) you agree that users of the Website may copy, modify, edit, reproduce, display, publish or otherwise make use of all or part of your Contribution on a royalty free basis. * Who pays them:
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.
Most listed buildings are free to visit if they are not in private ownership. Even the privately owned buildings can usually be seen and photographed from public roads.
Historic England is not the same as English Heritage which owns some very popular tourist attractions (castles, etc.) which charge for entry. However, they also own some less popular historical monuments which are generally free to visit.
Sorry, I was wrong, they have separated it seems.
But the terms and conditions are not to my liking. From the terms and conditions, it reads like they have set up a Stock photography archive, where the pictures are free to use by anybody. An online archive of this type is commendable, and very useful, but I do not like the Royalty Free bit.
But my main point is, that this illustrates nicely, is the fact that photographs do not have any monetary value anymore. Publishers do not have to pay for photography anymore. I once made quite a bit of money selling pictures of Italy through an agency in London, with each picture selling for an interesting sum.
Some Italian, German and Austrian publications would once pay me their standard reproduction rates, without me asking, when they published my performing arts pictures, which formed part of a press handout. Recently an Austrian organization offered me a Tee shirt with the exhibition logo, in exchange for a picture of Mantova.
It is entirely your choice if you wish to contribute or not. I am happy to do so, but I have always been an amateur, rather than professional, photographer.
Technological progress has put photography in the reach of everybody, so it's inevitable that lots of people are prepared to freely share their photographs rather than charge for them. It's tough on professional photographers, but I think many other professions have fared worse at the advance of technology. Think of all the scribes who went out of business when the printing press was invented. And countless other examples.
I also may do this… I assume that you upload JPGs - what size/resolution do you use?
I sort of expect the meaning in that scenario. It's the cold heartless legalese that stops me dead from wanting to contribute to such an endeavour.
Most of their old images are low resolution, less than 1000 pixels per side, I think. When I first contributed a few images, which was several years ago, they were not accepting anything larger (or automatically downsizing contributions). They have upped the resolution somewhat since then, but I'm not sure what their current position is.
It was this bit that got my goat;
It gets mine too. Trouble is, there are too many dorky doo's that are willing to do so... Professional photogs have been compromised over the years by this sort of thing. Also, the outsourcing the media do today is horrendous. Instead of doing a high standard of reportage, the majority is outsourced from the public and their crappy cellphone videos and images. Defeats the whole purpose of having HD TV. I have to reach for a sick-bag every time they show phonetards videos.
So they can even earn money by selling my pictures that I have gifted them.
Quote: "in any context and at any time for commercial gain or otherwise."
This is pretty disgraceful for a Government quango.
Precisely. The days of being paid for media content are numbered because of all the free contributions by the naïve public!
Yep, they want all the rights that they might negotiate if they’d paid a reasonable price for the images. But they won’t pay for them. They even say that pro photographers should submit on a personal basis on the same terms. With no reward and no proper accreditation.
Yet this is a government department with no lack of funds.
It’s an utter disgrace and I’ll be writing to my MP about it.
As I said earlier it is entirely your choice whether you contribute or not. What are you complaining about? No one is compelling you to give away your images.
Personally, I think it is a worthwhile project and I am happy to contribute. This sort of archive simply would not exist if all the images had to be paid for. There are many thousands of listed buildings and other monuments for which Historic England have no photographs at all in their archive. There are many amateur photographers who are quite willing to take a few photographs for them for free. So why not?
Some professional photographers seem to think that the world owes them a living.