19 replies to this topic

[TheRealDrew]

See some familiar faces and friends in the list, congrats to all!

DEEP 2010

[Steve Williams]

Way to go folks! Did you catch what Laz won?

Cheers!
Steve

[TheRealDrew]

Way to go folks! Did you catch what Laz won?

Cheers!
Steve

LOL, did not until you mentioned it.

[stewsmith]

Way to go folks! Did you catch what Laz won?

Cheers!
Steve

love it.

well done to everyone.

Pedro Carrillo
Spain
"Lightnemone"

what a fantastic shot this is.

Stew

[jeremypayne]

Way to go Karel!!

... and congrats to all the other winners!

[Stephen H.]

Some astonishing photo's,

Congrats to all the winners!

[Scubamoose]

Congratz to all the winners! Stunning shots indeed

Cheers
Karel

[laz217]

Way to go folks! Did you catch what Laz won?

Cheers!
Steve

[randapex]

Congrats to eveyone. But I gotta say, David Barrio's Seahorse with the fish is un-real. WOW!

Rand

[yahsemtough]

Laz won a what? LOL

Congrats all that placed some special images in that collection.

Cheers

Todd

[PRC]

Great shots all.

Laz - er - how about a trip report after that one then ?

Plan B - maybe you can sell the seat to Jim ?

Paul C

Edited by PRC, 15 March 2010 - 11:00 AM.

[Nigel Motyer]

Gianni Pecchiar's silver in the diver catagory is the overall winner for me.

Stunning use of form and light, anybody who has tried to do that kind of image will know what it takes. Wonderful vision and flawless execution. Looks like the model is on snorkle too.

[echeng]

Way to go folks! Did you catch what Laz won?

Craaap. I totally missed that. Too late to do anything about it, but I'll try...

[loftus]

Great images everyone; congratulations!

[NCmermaid]

Craaap. I totally missed that. Too late to do anything about it, but I'll try...

Eric, if Laz would like a nice autographed book by Wyland, I'll be willing to switch with him...you know, just to help you out ...

Karen

[MattDPG]

Eric, if Laz would like a nice autographed book by Wyland, I'll be willing to switch with him...you know, just to help you out ...

Karen

Karen, you're always willing to help out Congrats to you on your win and everyone else, too.

[decosnapper]

Some truly great work in this competition.

But reviewing the images, one thing stood out - Why are the images watermarked with "© underwatercompetition.com/wetpixel.com & divephotoguide.com"?

The rules for the 2009 competition (see 2009 Rules) clearly state:-

"Photographers retain all copyrights to their images. Wetpixel.com, DivePhotoGuide.com, and UnderwaterCompetition.com retain the right to publish the contest entries in print or online to congratulate or feature the winners and their respective images, and to promote future events. Winning images will be included in a press release for third party websites and publications in the context of congratulating and/or featuring the winners and winning images, and to promote future competitions. Strict guidelines requiring photo credit and specific one-time press release usage are issued along with the press release"

Marking images with © notices as written implies that ownership has been taken from the photographer and assigned to Wetpixel, Underwatercompetition and divephotoguide and contradicts the published rules. Copyright ownership is valuable and to indicate anything other than the rightful owner is not something I would feel comfortable with, if it were my images in question.

last week I used the "Contact us" form to point out the contradiction between what the rules say and how the images have been watermarked, but there has been no reply.

Any comments?

Edited by decosnapper, 22 March 2010 - 03:04 AM.

[TheRealDrew]

Any comments?

Eric and Jason are all the judges and in cahoots for a massive right grab and changed the Rules for the 2010 Competition since none of them can take a decent underwater image or video (Joking - the 2010 rules are the same as 2009, they are all rights grabbing despite the rules )

Anyway, kidding aside (and I also strong believer in preserving IP rights for people) there was a post recently for one of the contests where someone here mentioned a contest should have watermarked the winning images to protect them since they were posted on-line - pretty sure it was Beneath The Sea and most of the images in 2010 now do have a watermark, albeit without the copyright notice, or somehow since it is on the UWC site someone marked it in the context of the site's overall copyright. (Without getting into all the details of whether that is correct or not.)

If I were to guess, OWU and DEEP may have just marked them quickly via a batch watermark so that if the images were taken from the OWU/DEEP posts, there was something that was clear there was a copyright. With the upcoming BTS show, they may not have had time to respond and I would suspect if any of the owners of the images complained/had an issue, it may have been addressed quicker

In other words I think it is in error rather than anything else, more so in light of the people involved and my personal opinion of them (though of course that means nothing legally). I would bet dollars to donuts if someone contacted the organizers about the images they would pass it onto the photographers. Not trying to dismiss what you are saying, but this is not one of those situations where I would be personally too concerned about the situation being properly handled or there being an assignment of rights.

[JasonDPG]

Eric and Jason are all the judges and in cahoots for a massive right grab and changed the Rules for the 2010 Competition since none of them can take a decent underwater image or video (Joking - the 2010 rules are the same as 2009, they are all rights grabbing despite the rules )

Anyway, kidding aside (and I also strong believer in preserving IP rights for people) there was a post recently for one of the contests where someone here mentioned a contest should have watermarked the winning images to protect them since they were posted on-line - pretty sure it was Beneath The Sea and most of the images in 2010 now do have a watermark, albeit without the copyright notice, or somehow since it is on the UWC site someone marked it in the context of the site's overall copyright. (Without getting into all the details of whether that is correct or not.)

If I were to guess, OWU and DEEP may have just marked them quickly via a batch watermark so that if the images were taken from the OWU/DEEP posts, there was something that was clear there was a copyright. With the upcoming BTS show, they may not have had time to respond and I would suspect if any of the owners of the images complained/had an issue, it may have been addressed quicker

In other words I think it is in error rather than anything else, more so in light of the people involved and my personal opinion of them (though of course that means nothing legally). I would bet dollars to donuts if someone contacted the organizers about the images they would pass it onto the photographers. Not trying to dismiss what you are saying, but this is not one of those situations where I would be personally too concerned about the situation being properly handled or there being an assignment of rights.

Just want to jump in and clear a few things up here.

We unequivocally do not own any interest in any copyrights or image usage permissions beyond what the guidelines of the site state. However, as it was pointed out (thank you!), the copyright notice on the images is indeed an incorrect usage of the © symbol, and a legacy issue of having an automated function that does this watermarking. It is only done so with the intention of disuading anyone from using these images (as Drew correctly pointed out). In reality we should have the watermark without the © symbol. But rest assured that the competition is run by photographers (Eric and myself) who take copyrights and image usage guidelines very seriously. In fact, I've been part of a small group (along with Chris Crumley, and Roger Roth) that "policies" some of the other competitions to ensure that their guidelines do not take advantages of photographers. There are too many competitions that assume significant usage rights for all entries and/or winning images.

We do get inquiries from magazines about image usage and several competition winners have had their images licensed and published as a result, including a cover shot for Unterwasser magazine last year (which pays well compared to most dive magazines BTW). In all instances we directly connect the publishers with the photographers and are not involved in or benefit financially from the licensing. We are only happy and proud that we can facilitate this from time to time and hope that the additional exposure can result in more image licensing for more of the winners.

Moving forward we'll fix the incorrect addition of the © symbol and only have the watermark. Thanks for pointing it out!

[decosnapper]

Just want to jump in and clear a few things up here.

We unequivocally do not own any interest in any copyrights or image usage permissions beyond what the guidelines of the site state. However, as it was pointed out (thank you!), the copyright notice on the images is indeed an incorrect usage of the © symbol, and a legacy issue of having an automated function that does this watermarking. ............................................There are too many competitions that assume significant usage rights for all entries and/or winning images.

We do get inquiries from magazines ..................................... for more of the winners.

Moving forward we'll fix the incorrect addition of the © symbol and only have the watermark. Thanks for pointing it out!

Thanks for the clarifications Jason. I pretty much guessed that an automated widget had stuck the notice on, but then again assumption is the mother of all cock-ups. There was ambiguity - never a good situation with respect to anything, let alone copyright - and it needed sorting.

There are many copyright grab based contests out there.......it's down to photgraphers who care to police them....