Monday, April 02, 2007

The Seminar


I took this picture in Josef's Semantics and Pragmatics seminar last February. I posted it to Flickr and forgot about it. A couple of weeks ago, I got a message from someone who was interested in using the picture. The message read:

"Dear Nat Hansen,

I was searching the Internet for photos, when I found your picture of five people breaking up after what looks like a serious discussion.

I am layouting a book about project collaboration within the Danish construction business. And the intensity of your photo is just what I am looking for regarding the chapter about consulting seminars. I am aware of the differences between philosophy and project collaboration, however you have captured a moment we can all recognize in my office.

I therefore ask for your permission to print a copy of the photo in my book. There is a commercial purpose with the book. But since I am juist part of a small, local based company, I hope for your approval.

My alternative is hiring a professional photographer for the exact same setup.

Best regards..."

I granted him permission, but now I kind of regret doing so. Why? Look at his last sentence: "My alternative is hiring a professional photographer for the exact same setup". That sounds like something Jeff Wall would do. I would have loved to have seen a recreation of the exact same setup.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

and what about the money? although, I do like the idea of Wall recreating the scene. I'm thinking "Dead Troops Talk"?

Nat Hansen said...

I don't get any money, but he said I will get credited as the photographer and I will get a copy of the Danish brochure.

Anonymous said...

That's cool. I've approved a variety of requests to use my flickr photos, but they were all for online publications: a tour guide to Berkeley, a news article about lost luggage, etc. Well, I guess there was one that was used in a print publication. I took a picture of my friend Mindy's house in Buffalo, and someone wrote to ask if they could use the photo in a brochure about state loans to homeowners to fix up their run-down houses. At first, I was offended on behalf of my friend--that they would want to use a photo of her house in such a brochure--but then it turned out it was because her house is a good model of what people can use the loans to make their houses look like. I approved the request, but didn't get a copy of the brochure.

Nat Hansen said...

Another interesting flickr episode occurred when a woman from some online news blog asked if she could use my picture of "Christ Church Dining Hall" to illustrate a story on cheating at Oxford.

But the picture she was talking about was a picture of the room in the Reynolds Club that is a replica of the Christ Church dining hall.

As funny as it would have been to use the Reynolds club in a story about Oxford, I had to point this out to her, and (as far as I know) she didn't use it.

Check it out:

link