Permissions, Clearances and a Lovely Man!

Yesterday evening I was looking online for some game score updates for the Slough Jets v Basingstoke Bison game (just out of curiosity) when I came across an article on the Bison website about the upcoming 'Evening With Dave Simms' event. We had one of those a few weeks back and it was most entertaining! But there was something about the article that caught my attention, here's a screengrab of it:



The photo that accompanies the article, that's one of mine:



Slight snag though, nobody had asked me if they could use it. So I posted something about it on my Facebook page, and sent a mail off the Bison office asking who'd given permission for the shot to be used. This morning, one of the Bison's photographers Grant King got in touch with me to say that he'd spoken with the Marketing chap Paul West, and that Paul would like to speak with me personally.

So I phoned Paul, and he couldn't have been nicer about it! He was incredibly apologetic on behalf of the club, and surmised that the use of the photo was probably down to the home rink rather than the club itself. He's promised to look into it further, and fully appreciates that unauthorised use of photos is unacceptable at any level. Paul has also offered to sort me out with photo passes next season when the Phoenix travel down to Basingstoke. I couldn't have asked for a better response, so on that level I'm a happy chappie!

The bottom line is that I'd have been more than happy to allow my photo to be used, if someone had actually asked. In fact, I'm still ok with it being used so long as I get a credit for it. But at the end of the day, a photographer has to look out for the rights to use their photos, and nobody should ever assume that it's ok to use something without checking. I realise that this isn't the fault of the Bison or their Marketing staff, so on that level I'm incredibly pleased with their response and their approach to the issue, but someone somewhere has used the shot without permission and that's a no-no.

In an age where everything is available online by typing a few words into a search engine, I can't help but wonder how many photographers are having their work used without due permissions, clearances and credit....