Pop “star” Rhianna wins court case against Topshop… in other news she needs a new hats to fit her swollen head

Really annoys me when “celebrities” kick off cos a photo of them has been used without permission.  In the Rhiannha v Topshop case, the mediocre singer complained because the shop was selling t-shirts bearing her photograph.  She claimed that Topshop were making out that she had endorsed the use of the photo. Rihanna won because the High Court decided that despite the copyright licence a substantial number of purchasers would have believed that Rihanna endorsed the sale of the product shirt with her image– because the image was taken from her current album – Talk That Talk – and Topshop had collaborated in the past with trend setting celebrities (from www.fashionlaw.co.uk).

This kind of crap is ridiculous, and demonstrates how $$$ is more important than the facts and the law in courts.  When a photographer shoots a photo of an individual, the copyright belongs to the photographer, whether the subject of the photo likes it or not (this is English law).  As for this nonsense that the public might think Rhianna endorsed the t-shirt in question – that has nothing to do with it.  The t-shirt did not bear any lettering suggesting that the crap pop star liked the t-shirt.

Rhianna, probably realizing that she would be broke in a few years, decided to get a few extra bucks suing Topshop.  Stupid (as you might expect from a pop bimbo with less brain than a stick insect) – instead of taking Topshop to court, she could have got her lawyers to arrange for her to be paid royalties.  But no: the twat tries to occupy the moral highground (and how in hell did she manage that?).

Rhianna after taking a beaten from partner Chris Brown. Such a pretty look…

At Shmoosmiths.co.uk,  it was reported that Judge Justice Birss was at pains to point out that no new law was being developed as a result of his findings:

Unlike other jurisdictions (including many US states) there is no such thing in English law as ‘image rights’. In some jurisdictions it is possible for celebrities to rely on extensive statutory protection for their personal brand covering everything from their voice to their signature. In Guernsey it is possible to register such rights. However, in the UK the courts have refused to extend the law to prevent the use of a celebrity’s image if they consider that the use is simply fair competition without misrepresentation.

In the UK celebrities may be able to use existing law to protect their images and reputations in certain circumstances.

So, were those “certain circumstances” met in this case?  I think not.  Basically, Rhianna’s singing skills are leaving fast.  All the silly cow has going for her are her looks.  It won’t be long before those fail her and she ends up looking like the back end of a bus.  So she’s making the most of them while they last.  Hence the court action.

As a photographer, I have the right to take pictures of just about anyone I want to, so long as I am standing on public roads/areas or have permission of the landowner that I’m standing on, and so long as the subject of my photography does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy (as far as I can tell, Rhianna did not have a reasonable expectation.  And, also very important, Topshop had obtained a licence of the copyright in the photograph. Topshop owned the copyright, the photo was taken legally… yet Rhianna still won.  English courts are ridiculous.  Rhianna (and her legal team): a bunch of pillocks.  Fuck Rhianna and all who sail in her.

Another pic of the beautiful Rhianna. I like in particular that sneer/growl. What a looker eh!!

Here’s another blog post about Rhiana from Mind of Malaka “What do Rhianna and my daughter have in common?” It’s not about this story on the photos… but if you don’t want your kids to grow up seeing Rhianna as some kind of role model, click of the link and read it. Stupid dopey Rhianna fool, she is one big mass of idiocy-with-money…

I don’t just take photos you know…

I don't just take photos you know….

Serpents

New Photo Blog: martintoppingimages.wordpress.com
Serpents.

Googling round the internet, checking out the idea of freelance war reporting, I came across an interesting piece in The Independent (by Tom Goulding, on 25 February 2013).

Gould wrote:

As the targets of government shelling, many have speculated their deaths were a warning to the outside world; scare tactics designed to drive foreign journalists out of a war that has so far claimed the lives of over 60,000 people.

Normally I would have expected the British press to show the various Syrian factions their proverbial longbowmen’s fingers. But no – all of a sudden the British media “care” about their on-site sources. And this isn’t just a Syrian issue. Gould went on:

Similar strategies deployed around the world saw 2012 become one of the deadliest years for journalists on record. Overall, journalist fatalities soared 13 per cent, with a total of 121 losing their lives in Syria, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil, Iraq, the Philippines, and Somalia, described by the International Federation of Journalists as a “media killing field”.

So, it’s clear various combatants in various combat zones think killing journalists will make a difference. But they are clearly wrong. All they’ll do is alienate journalists as soon as their boots hit the ground. One thing all these various groups share is hope that international media will paint them as the “good guy”… or at least no worse than the other guy.

But the papers are getting antsy. Earlier in the month Press Gazette broke the news that the Sunday Times would no longer accept speculatively submitted pictures from the Syrian front because they did not “wish to encourage freelancers to take exceptional risks”. The Times, Guardian, Observer and Independent all have similar policies in place.

Photographer Rick Findler submitted work to the News International paper The Sunday Times, stuff he had shot in Aleppo, Syria. The paper’s foreign desk that “it looks like you have done some exceptional work” but “we have a policy of not taking copy from Syria as we believe the dangers of operating there are too great”. AKA: “Your work is great, but if you get hurt/die in a war zone it might make us look bad.”

And it isn’t just the Sunday Times pursuing this policy. The Times, Guardian, Observer and Independent have each revealed that they have similar policies. (No other newspapers asked had responded to Press Gazette’s enquiries at the time of publication. But it wouldn’t surprise me if every British paper with an international news desk was doing the same.)

And this creates a situation where no one knows what the hell is going on in war-torn regions. Some papers are lucky enough to have accredited “full-time” journos and/or togs in trouble zone. For instance, despite its freelance ban The Sunday Times still regularly devotes staff resources to reporting from Syria. So it isn’t a refusal to report – rather it is an apparent boycott of freelance reporters and photographers. It is, in the words of BBC World Affairs producer Stuart Hughes, an attempt to stem the rising tide of fresh-faced freelancers who are “skipping the unglamorous training grounds of local newsrooms” to report from hazardous locations in search of that coveted career break

So why are the papers doing this? Surely it’s useful to have a “man on the ground” who might produce scoops on big stories? It’s certainly dangerous work, especially for inexperienced journalists. They can end up as targets for kidnapping or murder. From the Independent:

In August 2012, American freelancer Austin Tice went missing in Syria. The 31-year-old, who recently received the George Polk Award for his work, is currently believed to be in the hands of Assad loyal forces. Clues to his whereabouts are scant; a YouTube video posted in September shows armed men leading a blindfolded Tice through mountainous terrain. While some experts have refuted the disturbing footage, the former marine’s disappearance proves that, regardless of age or experience, no reporter is safe in Syria.

In the words of Tom Goulding:

Young journalists are now caught between a rock and a hard place. Despite financial constraints, there will always be a place for good war journalism, and those freelancers determined enough to make it in the industry will find an audience regardless of boycott. It falls on editors to ensure this new generation receives the same advice and respect that all journalists are entitled to. Such courage does not deserve the cold shoulder.

Freelancers can be, and often are better experienced and equipped to get the story rather than a paper’s regulars. Are the papers really going to boycott running quality content? And are they really going to pretend that they’re saying “no” to the freelancers because they “care” about them? Good quality copy and images are good, whether or not the reporter has served a “tea boy” apprenticeship. Forget the CV, look at what you’ve been offered. Good is good, end of story.

Nikon DSLR with Pentax lens…do I pwn Nikax photography or is it an epic fail?

For years I’ve been into taking photos.  I started with a Pentax  ME Super, got through a few of ’em, then got a Program A… eventually I got a Pentax autofocus camera, the SF7 (cost me pennies as film was on its way out), but as I had a bunch of manual focus lenses by then I couldn’t see any point in buying AF lenses so it may as well have been a MF camera… but, as I already said, film was on its way out, and going digital suited my finances and my machine-gun approach to photography made going digital a good idea.  But limited finances meant I got a Fujifilm S5700 bridge camera.  Which isn’t a good camera to go for if you go at it like me (though, to be fair, the s5700’s super-macro mode does produce some nifty close-ups…).

Anyway, I voiced my displeasure to a friend, who then bought me a used DSLR.  Great, huh?  And it is great. But (and it’s a big butt), she got me a Nikon D70. A nice camera for its age, and as I’m not a pro I’ve never much cared for the ridiculous number of megapixels you can get now.  But (cue the butt) it’s a Nikon, and I have a collection of Pentax glass.  Mostly prime lenses.  The D70 came with a 35-80mm zoom; but I have a 28mm (Sigma) lens, a 50mm f/1.7, a 135mm f/3.5, and (black sheep of the family?) 80-200mm Prinzflex f/4.5-5.6 zoom.  And extension tubes.  And a 35-80mm Pentax “kit lens” (I guess), that I found for sale for very little. The Nikon came with a 35-70mm zoom.  But I want to do stuff that the Nikon just cant do (I may not be a pro, but I am a keen amateur, y’know?

I know I could have traded in my Pentax lenses and got some Nikon glass.  But I had a wide range of optics, no way could I have got anything like that for Nikon.  I could have bought a Pentax DSLR, but the Nikon was free, and free stuph is grrreat!!  So, I decided to get an adaptor so I could fit Pentax K lenses to my Nikon body.  Unfortunately the adaptor has to include a lens in it to allow infinity focusing, but the adaptor wasn’t very expensive (thanks ebay!) so I went for it.  My photography has slowed right down, what with having the aperture wide open for focusing, then stepping down the aperture for the actual pic, plus checking the rear screen afterwards to check the exposure’s good… but it’s kinda like going back in time to when I first learnt to use a SLR, and the slower workflow might even result in better photos!

That extra bit of glass in the adaptor still worries me a bit: will it lead to softness or something in the end result?  I haven’t had the adaptor long enough to do any real comparisons yet, but I will… and I will bore you to death with the reslts of said experimentation!  In the meantime, here’s a photo I shot using the adaptor.  Let me have it in Comments: any good?  Should I stick with and/or buy myself a new(ish) camera?  I’d luuurrve some feedback please!

Geeses, shot with a Pentax MF lens on a Nikon D70 body. Nasty or nice? Pleeeze let me know what ya think!

 

Cheers, from Nikax Land!  Please don’t be mean, else I’ll cry and my make-up will run all over the interwebs!!

 

Gwen’s Grave

Gwen’s grave, St Nicholas’ parish church, Warndon

 

No headstone yet.  But some pretty flowers.  Someone cared about Gwen.

 

Pretty bluebells

Pretty bluebells

If you like flowers, these are for you. If you don’t like flowers, they’re still for you. You don’t have to take them with you. But they’re nice, whatever you think.

Spot the sniper!

Nice little feature on the Guardian website: a series on landscape photos by German photographer Simon Menner; each photo contains a sniper, camouflaged and hidden. So, look at the photos and spot the sniper. They’re very well hidden, I managed to spot him right away in just one of the photos; the others are fiendishly difficult. When you see the solutions, it generally becomes “obvious”… but not always.

Where is the sneaky so-and-so?

There’s also a piece by Jonathan Jones on “the art of camouflage”, which explains the science behind concealment and mentions that “Designers are working right now on a Harry Potter style ‘invisibility cloak’ that can be 3D printed. The principles of camouflage can be translated to a nano scale by such technology, confusing the mind at a microscopic level.” Fascinating stuff for armchair warriors like myself, and I’m sure some readers will gain practical insight from the feature too.

Lidl-photos.co.uk – worth a visit?

Last time I was in my local Lidl supermarket, I picked up a leaflet all about their new online photo printing service, lidl-photos.co.uk. They print digital photos for you, on paper, canvas, greeting cards, mugs and mouse mats, photo-books and booklets – ie the same stuff other such online services do. But Lidl is one of those supermarkets that sell goods with unfamiliar names, usually not well-known brands in the UK but of very good quality, for strikingly low prices. So, does their photo printing service follow the same model?

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to embark on a price comparison (the Boots site seems to want me actually create an item before it’ll tell me the price, and I’m too busy right now to go through the motions of making, say, a photobook that I don’t actually want to buy, I just want prices). But maybe someone reading this has bought/is considering buying an item, and they could post price differences in Comments? If any reader wants to do that, I’ll be forever grateful. Saying that, Lidl is well-known for its cheap prices, so I reckon there’s a decent chance this will carry over to the photo-printing service.

I was happy to see that the “free desktop ordering software” is available for Linux as well as Mac and Windows. Nice that businesses are finally accepting that Linux exists. Linux users may not be as numerous as those of Windows or MacOS, but we are out there and we ain’t going away. Kudos to Lidl on this point alone.

When I have more time, I’ll make a more in-depth report and comparison. But for now, I’m saying: lidl-photos.co.uk is out there. Check it out.

Incidentally: lidl-photos.co.uk uses centimetres to describe image dimensions, while Boots Photo still uses inches. Bloody idiots, companies should either harmonize their measurement units or use both. But since they’re not doing that: I use a site www.manuelsweb.com/in_cm.htm to do the conversion for me, whether cm -> inch or inch -> cm. Very handy.

 

Spider on the wall…

I thought you might like to have a peek (eeek!) of a spider I met while tidying up my patio after the ravages of winter.  It was a bloody monster, and I was somewhat relieved when I discovered it was camera-shy and crept off soon after.

The camera I used was a Fujifilm S5700 bridge camera which boasts 7 megapixels!  I bought it in 2007, and it’s still giving me much enjoyment.  It’s my close-up camera, as its “super macro” mode lets it focus on objects that are very nearly touching the lens!  I don’t think I got quite that close to Itsy-Bitsy (I’m not arachnophobic but they do make me a little queasy… plus I didn’t recognise this particular species, for all I knew it might have been a poisonous one-bite-and-yer-brown-bread kind of beast).  Luckily I survived the encounter, and here is a (reduced in size) copy of its mugshot.

Not being an arachnophile, I have no idea at all what this species is called.  If anyone reading this knows, please share your knowledge via Comments.  Inquiring Minds Need To Know!  🙂