Lack of Control

The thing about being a commercial photographer, that is editorial and advertising versus fine art, is that often you don’t have control over how your images get used or what form they take or how they’re cropped, etc.

Would I like more control? Sure, but I realize that there are plenty of people further down the line that have input.  I don’t usually agree with their decisions, but that’s part of the game and I figure until I’m asking for a $100,000 day rate, I need to roll with the punches.

That said, sometimes it’s funny or shrug-worthy.  Examples:

Here’s a author’s portrait I did of the delightful and talented Mary Elizabeth Williams. Elle was apparently testing exactly how small they could print an image and still have it be visible.  This is what I have a 21MP camera for?  <grin>:

Today, NPR used a severely cropped image I took of John Wesley Harding:

… and here’s the whole image it came from:

The there are the times when they use your image as intended as in this ad for Practical Law Company that I shot a couple months ago. Pretty much it’s my picture with copy added.  Ah if they could all be like this. Excuse the crappy scan, I just pulled it from a magazine: