Photos

I've really appreciated all the great comments on my photos on the message boards, in person and via e-mail. I've been photographing as a hobby since I was about 10, working mostly landscapes, shot a few sports in high school, shoot for a stock sports agency out of Atlanta and commercial work (product shots and such) but this is the first year I get to shoot racing on a regular basis.

The goal of it all was just to stretch my creative legs and complement the media portion of this site. Other tracks have been kind to offer me media passes, including Eagle Raceway due to my past history with the track, the World of Outlaws and other work I've done.

And most people have respected that © at the bottom and asked for prints or permission to use the pictures, and I've respected track photographers by getting permission to redistribute the print. My commercial work and time as a member of SportsShooter.com, a professional resource site, has taught me to register my photos with the U.S. Copyright Office.

However, someone printed the samples (web samples do not print well), and made home-made autograph "cards" (the one I saw was on cheap paper, looked like it was done by a fourth-grader, and left my hand with ink on it). It wasn't a print of a sample card, it was one that had an autograph on it.

I hadn't had problems with people copying the picture and posting it onto their sites, because they asked, left the copyright notice intact and they respected my bandwidth and hosted the pic themselves. I knew by posting on the internet people would copy the pic and use it on their personal desktop, and whatnot. That didn't bother me, either. I'm not naive.

Nor was there a problem with people posting links to my picture site. I was even honored... Some were even kind enough to ask permission to just to use the image in a mockup of autograph cards. Again, no problem.

The problem came with the reprinting and redistrubution of the picture as a promtional vehicle for them and their sponsors. It's like using an actor in a commercial and not paying them. What I do is not a money-making venture - it costs me money. It's a reflection of my interest in racing, photography, and documenting history. I try to do this while offering services to the tracks by promoting their program to a target audience - and the promoters I've talked to feel that I do. Win-win. If they don't think so fine. I'm not entitled to anything.

Unfortunately, I have to do what I didn't want to do - watermark the samples across the image, and limit the number of pictures. If you're interested in something you don't see, email me.

I'll have some shots from this weekend up and I hope you enjoy them.