Getting older as a photographer has some real advantages. Photography is like good wine. It gets better with age. Occasionally somebody contacts me using the web form to ask if they can use a picture I made 20, 30 or even 40 years ago. Which is what happened last week.
And again it was one of the photographs I made for a series called Rockers in the late Seventies. A portrait of Bill Haley taken in a dressing room for a really low budget magazine in 1979. I forgot the title of the magazine and I remember working for free, which was not as common in the 1970s as it is today. Nowadays if you produce a two or four page spread for a high end glossy magazine, you will no doubt get a snotty editor on the phone who will explain that it is good publicity for your work if you do it for free.
Publishing today is a wonderful world inhabited by a surplus of creepy marketing/sales people, yet very few people who can actually create content.
In this particular case I was approached by Pleasekillme.com and they actually asked for a license, instead of just stealing the picture. Asking for permission to use copyright protected material today is as rare as the sighting of an albino lion in the midst of the Swiss Alps.
So I immediately felt sympathy for them and I sent the picture for free. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Yes!
I really loved their site. I saw some old pictures of people I photographed in the past like Al Goldstein and Charlie Cracie. I immediately felt at home. Great articles too!
WHAT WAS THE FIRST ROCK & ROLL RECORD? DEKE DICKERSON SAYS IT’S ‘ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK’
