“The Norwegian press as a whole, has made a joint statement to never sign any contracts put forward by artists or their management pushed forward by concert photographers, as can be read here. In Norway, most concert photographers are, in essence, photojournalists and identify more or less as such. And because of that, we are part of the press. We are not 100 concert photographers, but 7000 journalists.Together we have a powerful voice. We generally do not meet any photo contracts, and the few we do, never gets signed. And because of that, contracts get fewer and fewer. With the press associations and unions behind us, we actually have a powerful voice against such demands, and the contracts get dropped (though, it has to be said that the local promoters have done tremendous work as well in that regard, but without all of the press acting like a collective, they would have no incentive to waiver the contracts). The aforementioned Foo Fighters contract? Guess what: that was not presented to the photographers in Norway. I can’t even remember the last time I “had” to sign a contract. That’s what having some integrity gets you.”
Source: How to Kill Restrictive Concert Photography Contracts
1 Comment
This is great. I was not aware of this. I’ve been shooting concerts for almost a decade. It’s not my my main gig and although I do make $ from it, it’s a tiny fraction of my income. I’ll admit… I’ve signed some pretty crappy contracts before and it was usually because they were sprung on me last minute and I didn’t want to upset my editor / publication by walking out. The trick is getting everyone to deny them but it seems there’s always someone who will if you won’t.
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