The Jack and Jill Foundation is this year’s IPPA Happy Faces partner. If you’re not sure what the foundation does, have a listen to the interview below that IPPA council member Roger Overall did with John Gaffney, a father who had to come to terms with a terminally ill baby daughter.

Parents of children born with life-threatening or terminal brain damage receive little or nothing in the way of help from the state. In John Gaffney’s case, his family didn’t receive any state assistance until two days before his daughter passed away. Jack and Jill did help, though, providing nursing and respite help during the ten weeks that John’s daughter lived.

If Jack and Jill were to go away tomorrow, and the children it looks after were to go into hospital to receive the care Jack and Jill provides at home, it would cost the state €45million annually. A sobering thought. Yet the foundation only receives just over a tenth of that in aid from the government.

If you’d like to participate in this year’s Happy Faces initiative, time is running out. Take action today.

And if you’d like to buy the calendar of semi-naked referees, here is the website mentioned by John in the interview: ISRS Cork.

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The preparation for IPPA’s Happy Faces charity initiative is underway and participating members are attending training sessions to learn how they can get the most out of the initiative.

The first one was held on Monday in Dublin. Other meetings are scheduled during January at locations throughout the country. You can find out more and still sign up by clicking on the dedicated Happy Faces webpages.

Meanwhile, member Paul Dorrell has produced this video of the Leinster training event.

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Canon Digital Cameras and lenses and Serial No’s

EOS 1D Mk 3 No 525487
EOS 1D Mk 3 No 525829

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Entries for the 2012 IPPA Awards

Have you ever wondered what goes on at the final judging of the IPPA’s annual awards? Many members have. Certainly, I’ve been curious. Last Sunday, I was able to see for myself when I participated in the judging of the 2012 awards as a stand-in judge.

Before we continue, I should explain what a stand-in judge’s role is. You’ll already have figured out that one responsibility is to cover for any judge who cannot make it on the day. In the event, all of the first-line judges were present. That didn’t preclude me from participating, however. In fact, it was encouraged and I was invited to express my views on the photographs under review. As a second-tier judge, I did not have a vote though.

Instead, the final decisions were in the hands of a heavy-weight quintet: Kevin Wilson, Barry McCall, David Cantwell, Mick Quinn and Gareth Byrne – all of whom are Fellows, all of whom have received multiple high honours in their careers. Marshalling them was Vinnie O’Byrne, the association’s chairman of judging and himself laden with accolades and distinctions.

Was I intimidated?

Yes.

For the first five minutes. But it turns out they all drink tea and coffee like the rest of us. Besides, they couldn’t have been more encouraging to the new guy.

Impassioned Debate and Disagreement

That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t tell me, or anyone else in the room for that matter, if they disagreed with a viewpoint.

In fact, there was some fairly robust debate on occasion. Respectful, but robust nevertheless.

Some category winners were decided unanimously. They were the easy ones. The stand-out entries.

Other winners were reached after long discussion, multiple pleas on behalf of diverse candidate panels or prints, and tight 3-2 votes.

It was interesting to see how judges would, having heard the insights of their colleagues, change their position if the argument put forward was good enough. If it was twaddle, they’d dismiss it. I found that out first hand. You live and learn.

The Process

The judging process itself was straightforward. All of the candidate portfolios or single prints in a category would be displayed together, and the judges would inspect each one. Then, by a process of elimination, the entries would be whittled down.

Judges would first be asked to vote to keep a panel or single print in the judging. Those panels and prints that didn’t receive a vote were removed. This was repeated, if necessary, until three or four entries remained. Then, Vinnie would instruct the judges to vote only for the entry they wished to see win.

I found the final pronouncement the most powerful part of this process. When an entry had been voted the winner, Vinnie would ask the judges: “Are you happy that this is the winner of [Category XYZ]?” It might not convey as well on your computer screen, but hearing that question asked, and so directly, made you consider the magnitude of what had been decided. If you have someone of the calibre of Vinnie O’Byrne asking you this directly, you want to be definite in your mind that you can live with the decision.

Vinnie O'Byrne asking judges for their vote on an entry to a single print category. (I removed image itself as leaving it may have given the photographer false hope or despair)

Keeping It Honest

None of the judges had work that was entered into the finals. You’d expect that.

One issue that crops up regularly among members is that they feel some photographers’ work is so recognizable that judges know their photographs and will act according to the individual’s reputation. I can only go on what I saw last Sunday.

Yes, some photographers have a very distinct style. It is something we should all aim for. Yet because the judges are drawn from various disciplines and have varying degrees of involvement in the preliminary judgings, not everyone has the same level of exposure to the work of every member who enters the awards. In fact, two of this year’s judges would have have seen none or very little of the work of IPPA members at all.

Watching the process unfold where a photographer’s DNA was very evident in the work entered was fascinating. If you think that a photographer’s work has an advantage because it is well-known and their style is evident, think again. It makes no difference. Every single debate I witnessed was about the photography, the images in their own right – not the photographer, nor their reputation.

I’d like to give you a very concrete example of this, but to do so would give away a category winner and the ultimate title of IPPA Photographer of the Year.

When the awards dinner has passed, please someone remind me, and I’ll fill in the gap. You’ll find it very enlightening and reassuring.

Five Tips to Help You Win

So how do you win an award? Is there a formula?

No. There is no silver bullet that will catapult you to victory.

I can instead give you five tips that will help you.

1 – Only enter strong photographs. If you’re entering a panel, don’t add a make-weight.

2 – Make sure your work is printed and presented as best as it can be. Shoddy printing and presentation lost people awards on Sunday.

3 – If you enter a panel, try to make the photographs hang together well. A mishmash of image sizes, printing techniques, themes, post-production and so on hinders the coherence of a panel.

4 – Obey the rules. One entrant’s work was disqualified because it was known not to have been taken during a genuine wedding as part of a real wedding commission, for instance.

5 – Dare to be different. Dare to follow your heart and express your vision and your voice. The strongest panels were those that were a true expression of a photographer’s individuality.

To these five, I’d like to add a sixth.

6 – Enter. It will challenge you to became a better photographer.

-Roger-

IPPA National Photographic Awards

ORPHAN works legislation caused a bit of a stir in the US when an attempt was made to introduce it. The push to do so has petered out – for the time being. Now, though, the EU has launched its own bid to put in place rules governing the use of intellectual property whose creator is unknown.

The EU’s proposal is to allow public institutions to use orphan works in their collections without payment. Given the pressures already on photographers to give up their copyright in their work, such a law could, if implemented without proper forethought, further erode their position. With the help of specialist intellectual property lawyer Linda Scales, the IPPA recently made a submission to the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation raising concerns about such legislation.

Photographers are particularly susceptible to having the rights in their work stripped from them. In particular, where authors of books, for instance, are able to exert their moral right to be identified as the creator of their writing, photographers are rarely afforded this courtesy. We can all point to instances in which our work was used without our name appearing beside it. Worse, as Linda Scales highlighted in her submission, “Commercial and public entities, when commissioning photographs, demand a moral rights waiver almost as a matter of course.”

Matters aren’t helped by the ease with which metadata can be stripped out of a digital file. Even if you embed your details, there is no guarantee they will travel with a file throughout its lifespan, increasing the likelihood the photograph will be orphaned.

It won’t come as a surprise that the IPPA feels strongly that “any proposal which involves the use of orphan photographs should be preceded or accompanied by appropriate action to ensure that it is possible in future to identify the authors of photographs.” To achieve this, the IPPA is insisting that a photographer’s paternity right in their work is made unwaivable by law. At the same time, the association opposes any proposal to make orphan works available while the basic conditions for photographers to assert their rights are remain as ineffective as they currently are.

One of the key parts of the proposed directive permits public institutions to put material online without any conditions attached, without the application of effective technological measures, and without anyone to monitor or pursue unauthorised uses once they are online. Problem is, once photographs appear on a website, it is impossible to protect them from being harvested for unauthorised use. Retrospectively recalling them from the worldwide web should the copyright holder step forward is not going to be possible. The damage will have been done.

Worse, the proposed legislation would permit the use of orphan works without payment of remuneration by the institutions when acting in pursuit of their “public interest mission”. That is a very broad term. In reality, it can cover pretty much any activity. The IPPA is keen on a tighter definition and the stipulation that such use should be non-commercial.

Even agreed commercial use of such works, with retrospective remuneration should the author or rights holder come forward to claim their orphaned work, could be problematic. The current copyright regime in Ireland lacks any suitable framework to accommodate such a mechanism. Ireland also lacks any kind of database or database manager that could catalogue and maintain an overview of orphaned works.

The whole issue of the proposed orphan works legislation is muddied somewhat by the fact that it doesn’t mention individual, standalone photographs aren’t mentioned. In fact, you have to dig a little in the draft text to find any reference to photography at all. It looks as if, certainly initially, only photographs embedded in published literary works that are themselves orphan works will be affected by the directive.

The IPPA has raised a trio of concerns in that regard. Firstly, the indirect manner in which embedded works are referred to in the proposal is unsatisfactory. If the intention is genuinely to include these works, specific provision should be made in the draft. Next, just because a photograph appears in an orphaned work doesn’t mean the photograph itself is orphaned. And lastly, a photographer must be able to stake their claim to their work independently of the author of the orphaned work it appears in.

At a time when professional photographers are under increasing pressure to handover all rights in their work, it is more important than ever to stand up for our copyright. The IPPA will be keep a keen eye on the progress of any suggested changes to Irish and EU copyright law.

Copyright · Legal · Orphan Works

TO help our members explain to brides what the benefits are of hiring a professional wedding photographer, the IPPA has produced a promotional video. It is part of a more extensive programme of videos that the association will be producing in the year ahead. We’re already working on one for our portrait studio members.

If you’re an IPPA member, why not embed the video into your website or blog? You can find the embed code by clicking on the video below to let it start and then clicking again on it when it is running so that icons appear on the right. The embed icon is the one at the bottom.

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The IPPA has partnered with The Jack & Jill Children’s Foundation for Happy Faces 2012 and 2013. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be running a series of blog posts to give you a better idea of what the foundation does. This week: the sad story of what inspired the foundation of Jack & Jill

JACK & Jill founder Jonathan Irwin speaks passionately. Behind the words is anger. Anger at how in Ireland today there is little or no government support for the parents of severely handicapped babies. In fact, things are barely better than when, in 1996, Jonathan’s own son Jack was severely handicapped very soon after being born. Overwhelmed by the situation, he and his wife, Senator Mary Ann O’Brien, sought support and guidance. But there was none. The State merely shrugged them off. Parents of handicapped children could expect no medical or practical assistance. They were on their own. The reluctant advice they got from their GP was to abandon Jack at a children’s hospital in Dublin. Only then would the State step in.

“We went through a dark, deep valley for 22 months. It was horrible,” Jonathan says.

Jonathan Irwin - Offering to others the help that was unavailable to him, his wife and their son. (c) IPPA 2011

He and Mary Ann didn’t know what to do. Mary Ann’s fledgling business, Lily O’Brien’s Chocolates, employed 40 people at the time. Diverting her attentions away from that would have meant closing it down. Jonathan was in a similar bind. Yet how else would they be able to give Jack the care he needed? And how would they keep themselves from collapsing under the strain? Caring for babies born with life-threatening and severely debilitating conditions involves desperation and pain, punctuated by drugs, physio, seizures and hospital operations. Jonathan describes it as “a long sequence of exhaustion, and often terror”.

Help for Mary Ann and Jonathan came from an unlikely source.

“After about three months, one of the ladies on the Lily O’Brien packing line stepped forward and said that she’d been a nurse. She offered to help. Then ladies from the surrounding villages started knocking on the door to offer help as well. These lovely ladies became Jack’s nurses,” Jonathan recalls.

Eighteen months later, Jack died. For Jonathan and Mary Ann, Jack’s passing wasn’t so much an ending as a beginning. They decided that parents of handicapped babies in future weren’t going to experience the abandonment that they had endured. They would see to that personally. The Jack & Jill Foundation was born.

“We aim to make sure that a handicapped baby is warm and comfortable in the safety of its own home – that they are not an anonymous white bundle in a grey ward in some hospital,” Jonathan says.

To achieve this, Jack & Jill provides nursing at home and foots the bill for respite care for the parents, as well as providing practical information and, ultimately, bereavement support to the parents of babies with a life-threatening neurological condition.

One of the big challenges at the start was locating these babies. The State, of course, couldn’t help. It didn’t have any records of these babies once they were bundled off out of the maternity ward. That meant Jonathan couldn’t tell the financiers he approached exactly how many acutely handicapped babies the foundation would be caring for. “Some of them thought it would be no more than five. I knew it would be a lot more, and that we would never turn a baby away. But, a bit like Nelson at Copenhagen, I put my spy glass to my rotten eye and said ‘Yes, yes, yes’,” he remembers.

Five turned out to be a little wide of the mark. By a big margin. Jack & Jill currently underwrites the part-time nursing and care of 271 babies in Ireland at a cost of just over€114,000 a month. Over 1,500 babies and their parents have benefited from Jack & Jill’s assistance since its inception.

Providing this care is a team of 11 nurses nationwide. They will be the focus of the next installment.

Charity · IPPA Happy Faces · Jack and Jill

IPPA member Dermot Byrne is forging a career in the world of fashion, possibly one of the toughest markets to crack in the photography business. He’s making progress, not least because he is producing personal projects of a high standard. A good example is a shoot he did over the summer with chess as its theme.

He also had a video produced of the shoot. Click on the player below to see and hear the story.

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What makes a photographer? What makes a professional photographer?

Questions we all ask.

Kilkenny-based member Maria Dunphy sent in this adaptation of a poem by American photographer Colleen Gonsar by way of an answer:

I am a Photographer

I can use a hammer but it doesn’t make me a builder.
I can use a thread and needle but it doesn’t make me a seamstress.
I am able to take a pulse but it doesn’t make me a doctor.
I am able to listen but it doesn’t make me a psychologist.
I own scissors but it doesn’t make me a hairdresser.
I can help my kids with their homework but it doesn’t make me a teacher.
I can make my family dinner but it doesn’t make me a chef.
I can wrap an ankle but it doesn’t make me an athletic trainer.

Just because you own a camera, that doesn’t make you a photographer.
You can take a snapshot outside but you don’t understand lighting.
You can try and pose someone but find it’s harder than it looks.
You take hundreds of “pictures” only to get one or two good ones.
You own photoshop but can only use it to fix your mistakes.

We live in the best little country in the world… Ireland. Everyone has the right to own their own business and everyone is in control of their own destiny. However, do not
call yourself a photographer, or open a photography business, if you do not understand light control, posing, retouching, image enhancement, customer service, business laws, or your equipment. Using the “P” setting on the camera does not mean “professional”. Photographing your subject outdoors on vintage furniture does not make it cool. Lens flare, out of focus images, and blown out highlights does not make it art.

Our studio receives calls daily of regret…. regret that they went to a “photographer” to save a few dollars. I am saddened by the people who say, “I wish I had gone to a real professional studio and now its too late.

I can manipulate light, I am a photographer.
I can create sets and backgrounds, I am a photographer.
I understand color harmony, I am a photographer.
I can pose someone in flattering ways, I am a photographer.
I am able to use my manual settings on my camera, I am a photographer.
I can see lighting outside, I am a photographer.
I can use Photoshop to enhance my images, I am a photographer.
I own a camera and I really am a Professional Photographer.

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ONE of the most often asked questions about organizations such as the IPPA is whether membership is value for money. It’s a good question. Let’s see whether the IPPA can give a good answer.

Roughly speaking, professional photography organizations fulfill two functions. Firstly, they represent their members. Secondly, they represent the industry as a whole. Everyone understands the first. The latter is often forgotten or misunderstood.

VAT

Every single wedding photographer in Ireland who provides their couples with a wedding album benefits from the 13.5% rate of VAT. Yet few consider the work the IPPA has done with government to make sure that is the case. No other body in Ireland stepped forward to represent wedding photographers on this score and fight their corner, keeping wedding photography out of the 21% bracket.

Copyright

Similarly, at the moment the association is spending time and money making sure the voice of photographers is heard during the current review of copyright law in Ireland.

While there is no doubt that existing copyright law is out of synch with the modern world, and the internet in particular, it is important for those whose livelihoods depend on being able to control the rights in the works they create aren’t ignored during any redrafting process.

The IPPA has provided government with an initial submission with the help of expert legal council. A follow-up submission relating to orphan works is in the pipeline.

Protecting photographers’ copyright will benefit members of the association and non-members alike, including those who don’t photograph for a living.

Promotion

Getting the message across to picture buyers what the benefits are of hiring a professional photographer also benefits members and non-members alike. An often requested initiative from members is a national advertising campaign, sadly the budget isn’t there. Nonetheless, the association does contribute articles to relevant magazines when the opportunity arises. Similarly, it is working on a series of online video promotions.

Liaising with government, employing specialist legal advice and producing promotional videos is expensive. Yet all these things need to be done for the good of professional photography and represent key spending commitments the IPPA makes on behalf of its members.

Education and Training

Improving standards also benefits the business as a whole. A rising tide lifts all boats. The more professional photographers know, the better for the entire industry. Consequently, the IPPA puts a lot of effort into education initiatives such as the regional meetings, one-off seminars, online videos and the conference.

In the past, the IPPA had links with Skillnet to provide training. More recently, the association was deemed to be an accredited centre by the Further Educational Awarding Council (FETAC). Achieving this wasn’t easy, but it does mean that the IPPA can run FETAC accredited courses that will allow members to build up accreditations throughout their career.

Happy Faces

One of the most effective events put on by the IPPA for its members is its annual Happy Faces charity fundraiser. Not only does this raise tens of thousands of euros for the charities involved, it gives participating members nationwide a great publicity platform, leading to more business. Such has been the success of Happy Faces here in Ireland that professional organizations the USA and the EU are looking at organizing their own versions.

Listed above are five activities unique to the IPPA in Ireland. They cost money – money the IPPA is willing to spend to further the interests of professional photographers.

Is the IPPA good value?

We like to think so. But, then, we’re biased.

Copyright · Photographer Rights · Training · VAT