Too Busy To... PhotoBlog

[Photo 101] Tips for Indoor Party Portraits

Simple tips I wish I had remembered a month ago:

• Use a prime lens, with a focal length around 35mm (APS-C). A 55mm lens required more distance between me and the subject than a small room allowed, and an “all-purpose” lens, such as an 18-105mm telephoto, does not have enough aperture range for good portraiture.
• Use the right mode. Auto-mode might get it right most of the time but in Aperture Priority you can lock in a maximum aperture for those intimate portraits and then close it down to f/8 or f/11 when more depth of field is needed for a group shot.
• Use single point auto-focussing, not auto-area. Manually focus on the subject’s eyes.

Instagram’s Terms of Service

This week there was some controversy around popular photo sharing site Instagram’s new terms and conditions. A day later they removed the clause that had caused the most uproar but left in place this revised wording about licensing:

Old terms (retrieved 2012-12-23):

you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly (“private”) will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services.

New terms (retrieved 2012-12-23):

you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content […]. You can choose who can view your Content and activities, including your photos, as described in the Privacy Policy.

It is, I think, uncontroversial to assert that the lack of right to modify a photograph in the new licence is a step forward compared to the old one. And the new licence appears to remove the vague wording that allowed Instagram to “publicly display [and] reproduce […] in any media formats through any media channels”. But a close reading of the new terms reveals that the new licence is transferable and sub-licensable. So Instagram can not only transfer their rights to another company but also do so multiple times without relinquishing their own licence. I am not a lawyer but this strikes me as broadly similar to the previous clause about displaying content in any media format/channel, so a photograph could (still) be “sold” (i.e. sub-licensed for a fee) to a magazine or TV channel with no compensation to the owner, provided the sub-licensee did not modify the content.

So given that Instagram could always “sell photographs to advertisers” if it chose, why the fuss? The clause that drew all the attention was:

“To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you,”

Putting someone’s name and profile picture (‘likeness’) in an advert displayed as part of the Instagram service is one thing (and xkcd makes a good point about “free” services) but there is no context in the text to strictly limit this to Instagram’s own website. So while I agree with the point made by the xkcd cartoon, that clause did make me uncomfortable.

But the news article headlines do not seem to tell the real story.