Edwyn Collins/Teenage Fanclub, Trongate 103
On Thursday 10 September 2009 I witnessed two gigs on the same day by a legendary Scottish collaboration; one which will live long in the memory. Edwyn Collins, backed by Teenage Fanclub, in not one, but two venues on the same day. Heaven.
Naturally, as is my wont, I blogged about it and added a couple of snaps of the event. I didn’t think much more about it. The blog that is; the gig will never leave me.
In April this year, out of the blue, I received an e-mail from Phil King, a freelance picture researcher for Uncut magazine. He’d seen the blog and wondered if he might have my permission to use the picture (above) in a Teenage Fanclub photo retrospective for a forthcoming edition of Uncut. His name was familiar but I thought nothing more about it.
Now, I’m not a photographer by any manner of means and I only took the snaps for my own amusement and as a momento of the day, proof that I was there. I did assume that there might be a going rate for such usage but I was happy to accept a free credit and a copy of the magazine. Yeah, sure you can use it.
After giving permission I did enquire around about what the going rate for such a photo might be and a couple of people suggested I should charge for it. However, because photography isn’t my livelihood and nobody could give me evena rough figure and having already given my permission – my word is my bond – I let it go.
The promised copy of the magazine (July 2010 issue) turned up a few days ago and there’s my picture on page 15, with my small but perfectly formed credit reading up the side. I was, quite frankly, dead chuffed.
Uncut - July 2010
A writer friend, who happens to know Phil, said that I’d done the right thing because I would’ve spent months chasing up payment for something like £20 from the company. Take in the cost of phone calls etc and it wouldn’t have been worth it. (It turns out Phil was bass player in Lush, The Servants and Jesus and Mary Chain amongst many indie luminaries).
Now the reason I mention this is not out of some sort of ego trip but by way of introducing another issuing surrounding the use of photographs, this time unauthorised. I’m not going to repeat the story as you can read it HERE but I think if photography was my living I might have approached IPC differently regarding my photo. After all, it is MY photo.
Readers of the wonderful Tabloidwatch blog will know that you can’t trust a lot of the “news” in the Daily Mail and the overpaid columnists talk shite at the best of times but now it seems you can’t even trust the photo credits. Okay, they may only matter to those who have taken the pictures – who else would read them – but it seems that nothing it what it seems in the Mail. How can you trust The Daily Mail? Quite simply, you can’t.
