Some issues in need of raising.

[jeffcable]

Originally Posted by Ian_D_Griffiths

At the end of the event the event team lose all rights to the images, that transfers to Event-Photos, the images are published on our web site and any sales made are to the benefit of Event-Photos.

Ian, this appears to be absolutely on all fours with your own business model because the team photographers are working on behalf of Event-Photos. Legally speaking, the copyright in the images also belongs to Event-Photos, who permit the photography teams to earn money for the day.

No right-thinking professional photographer could have any qualms with your clearly stated terms, which are, indeed, very fair in my own opinion.

Jeff

[Mike Weeks]

Ian,

having re-read your answer can you just clarify about the £50 daily fee as in who pays to whom as my understanding is not clear. If what you are charging your teams is a fixed £50 per day for an event then the team at least has a fixed understanding of their commitment to you.

One of the PMs that I have received mentions the idea of an Event Photographers Charter that would cover such things as CRBs and Insurance and also a similar Charter between event photography agents and their clients and their photographers. How such a scheme would work is a different matter, but through debate it may be possible to raise the game for all.

Mike

[Ian_D_Griffiths]

Hi Mike,

Quote: "Our method I believe is very simple and fair to all involved, I charge £50 per event per day, so a two day football tournament attracts a fee of £100 "

The job fee's are paid to me by the team leader for the one time use of the booking.

The booking, contact, re-booking and any other potential jobs as a result of the team attending the job on behalf of E-P are the interlectual property of Event-Photos. In other words if the team is approached at the event and asked to attend another event, that contact and the potential job belongs to E-P and must be passed back to me. In such instances that team would usually be given first refusal of that job to maintain continuity. if the offer is declined the job then is offered to our other event teams in the usual way.

It is in this area on two occasions that has brought about the loss of event teams who thought they could be clever and circumnavigate E-P and save themselves £50, it cost two of them very dear as I took legal action against them both and won.

The whole system works through everyone playing the game according to my rules and being honest reliable individuals, now I'm sure there have been other instances where people have cut me out but if I become aware of this I do persue them through the courts, apart from being a breach of contract and theft, its only fair to the other guys who are honest.

We use anomynous shoppers and enquirers to check our terms are being adhererd to. Again this is made very clear prior to any work being offered and is in our T's&C's.

I know this will all sound very heavy but its the only way to protect the business and even this is open to abuse.

[jeffcable]

Originally Posted by Mike Weeks

Ian,

having re-read your answer can you just clarify about the £50 daily fee as in who pays to whom as my understanding is not clear. If what you are charging your teams is a fixed £50 per day for an event then the team at least has a fixed understanding of their commitment to you.

One of the PMs that I have received mentions the idea of an Event Photographers Charter that would cover such things as CRBs and Insurance and also a similar Charter between event photography agents and their clients and their photographers. How such a scheme would work is a different matter, but through debate it may be possible to raise the game for all.

Mike

Mike,
I find this issue of CRB checks intensely irritating and frequently misunderstood. The current legal position is this...

1. if an adult is not going to be in the position of having unsupervised access to children, as a regular and expected part of their working day, then there is absolutely no legal requirement for them to have a CRB check done.

2. It should be remembered that a CRB check is not transferable between agencies so the poor victim may be in the position of having several CRB checks done (at their own expense) in the space of a week, as has happened to me and at £31 for the standard version and £35 a twist for the enhanced version, it can be a significant expense.

3. No person can supervise their own CRB and it must be carried out by an umbrella organisation so this entails more expense (laughingly referred to as admin fees) and waiting.

4. A valid CRB document only guarantees one thing... that at the precise time the CRB document was raised, there was no evidence of the person being investigated having a record of undertaking any criminal activity... on any police computer. The obvious corollary is that as soon as the CRB document was despatched to the umbrella organisation, the subject of the investigation could have committed a terrible crime and it would not have been recorded.

5. CRB documents neither guarantee that a person is civilised nor do they prevent a crime being committed. .eg. look at the failure to nail Huntley, who had obtained a job that gave him access to the two little girls he assaulted and murdered.

6. There is not a paedophile lurking around every corner and where photographers are capturing images in a public place at a public event, there can be no justification to support the notion that all decent people should swell the government coffers with this stealth tax on the supposed morality of the putative employee.

The CRB check is redolent of the attitude of the Stasi (the infamously brutal east German secret police) who are ascribed with espousing the notion... if you have done nothing wrong then you have nothing to fear

and as the UK slips and slithers ever nearer towards becoming a western police state, I would be very concerned that we are far too ready to surrender our right to walk around with a camera, especially in the face of the fact that the denizens of urban areas in the UK are likely to be imaged by CCTV at least 300 times per day!

7. As stated earlier, I wont go anywhere without having my own personal insurance cover.

Jeff

[Ian_D_Griffiths]

The following is copied from a post here by myself about the current CRB position with regard to photographers:

The current situation has been brought about by, amongst others, two significant changes.

One was a change in Rehabilitation of Offenders Act last September, when following a case in the European Court certain 'Trades' that were exempt had to be declassified. e.g. A plumber goes to work in a school to fix pipe-work during the school holidays, a CRB check shows that 20 years ago he had a conviction for assault, so he is banned from working in the school. No pupils in the school during his proposed work time, record showed no danger to children but CRB showed conviction. This senerio was deemed to be infringing his human rights.

Second may show my cynical side, government under pressure to reduce waiting times for CRB checks, so if you de-lassify many trades on the exempt list who are perhaps not going to be in a position where they are alone in charge of a minor or vulnerable person, perhaps like our Plumber, then the waiting list will reduce significantly, photographers are one of those such trades.

The up-shot of these changes is that if you are not an exempt trade, ie photographer, it is now ilegal for any organisation to use the absence of a CRB certificate as a selection criteria.

What can you do? Please don't waste the time of good-will organisations as suggested in the post above, they have enough on their hands without people misusing their time and resources. Go to your local Police HQ and ask to see the Data Protection Officer and request a "Statement of Fact" of information held on the Police National Computer (PNC) about your history.

Long winded I know but I hope it helps with why things have changed, I don't agree with it but there we are!

This may help.