Monkey Selfie – The Real Truth with David Slater Himself

In this episode of Capture it with Tom’s friends, I discuss with David Slater, the photographer behind the controversial macaque self-portrait which has made the front page of all newspapers in the world a few weeks ago.

 Show your support:

• To David and his battle for our copyright and like his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wildlife-Photographer-David-J-Slater-DJS-Photography/320489224795657?fref=ts
• To the conservation of the macaque by getting your FREE canvas of either David’s macaque great portrait or one of your own (expire Nov 30th, 2014): http://www.djsphotography.co.uk 

 The Copyright issue affects all of us:

The US Copyright office’s perception of wildlife photography & copyright:

The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants, which includes a photograph taken by a monkey.

The words produced and taken are less than vague, and I do believe we are entitled to demand clarification on those. Is pressing the Shutter button of a camera means “taking” a photograph? If that is so, I wonder what I bother teaching photography to thousands as any monkey can do it!

Do not be a fool to think that it is a US matter. It is not! We live in a more than ever connected world where in a blink of an eye, an image published in France or the UK is available worldwide and therefore downloadable. Unless you only expose your work as a print in a physical gallery, your art is at risk. As mentioned by David, you do have rights but they are not valid worldwide and claiming with is rightfully yours can turn out to be extremely difficult, costly in time and money.

Please add your comment to the US Copyright Office’s perception of what a photographer is:  http://copyright.gov/comp3/comments.html

Here is the comment I have posted today:

The following sentence requires some clarification, especially on the word “taken”: “The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants, which includes a photograph taken by a monkey.” Photography is an art which requires a unique human creative mind and a skill set which itself demands years of experience to be mastered. The creation of a photograph cannot be defined solely by triggering a camera whether by the direct press of a button, a release cable, a motion sensor etc. Questioning this, is accepting that authoring a book can be defined by the actual act of putting in records a succession of words such as by writing, typing or dictating. When referring to the art of making photography, you shall employ the following expression “creation of a photograph” instead of “taking a photograph”. Failing to do so is highly diminishing and insulting generations of artist photographers worldwide.

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