Have you registered your Copyright? No? Why not? Do you feel it’s unnecessary because you own the copyright as soon as you press the shutter? While this is true there are some important facts you must consider:

• If you register you are entitled to sue for attorneys fees as well as punitive damages, not simply compensation for the usage.
• A lawyer will be more willing to take on your case on a contingency basis because of this, this means no cost to you if the case is won (which is nearly guaranteed if registered).
• If you don’t want to deal with taking a case to court you now have big leverage to get the infringer to pay licensing fees they should have paid in the first place. You can tell the infringer that you have the copyright registered and that it will be a federal case, once they talk to their lawyer and realize how much a federal case will cost them they will gladly pay you usage fees.

I know this information has already been covered all over the place, the point of this post is to bring awareness to those of us that have made the mistake of publishing images without registering and bring some clarity to published vs. unpublished and how to register these properly. In my search I found very little information about this and most of it was speculation.

I was one of the many photographers (the vast majority in fact) that did not have my images registered, at first I didn’t think it was necessary, but after researching the subject I realized it was extremely important. I still put it off for a long time because of the confusion surrounding it though, I couldn’t get a clear answer on what was considered published and how to register.

After talking with the Copyright office they have assured me that photos posted on my website that are for sale are considered published and photos posted on other websites (flickr, google+, 500px, etc.) are not considered published because they are not available for purchase on any of these sites, that is the key distinction; if they are for sale to the public they are published, if they are only being displayed to the public they are not published.

To register a group of published images this form must be used http://www.copyright.gov/forms/formgr_pph_con.pdf

Which you can read more about here http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl124.html

It is possible to register these online through a special pilot program which you can read about here http://www.copyright.gov/circs/sl39.pdf, this is the method I used and it was a fairly painless process (just time consuming) everyone I worked with at the visual arts division were extremely helpful. The worst part of this process was creating a list of all the images with their title and publication date, thankfully this information was easy to find in zenfolio. I had 150 images to register from my website.

Of course the rest of your unpublished images can be registered via the normal method online, asmp has great instructions here http://asmp.org/tutorials/online-registration-eco.html

In the future I will not be posting any new images to my website until the copyright is registered. I plan to register any new images every quarter, so there will be a delay of potentially 3 months from when I click the shutter to when you see them on my site. I will continue to post to other social networking sites in that time though since there is a 90 day window to register unpublished work.

I hope you find this information useful and I ask you to please share this to raise awareness, there are far too many photographers that are not registering their images and it is having a negative effect on the industry.

I have an obsession with clouds, I shoot them all the time but they always seem to end up unedited with no love after they hit the hard drive. So I've decided to start a cloud series that I will be adding to regularly.

This is a two exposure blend for the sky/foreground, please provide feedback.

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Haven't had much time to edit images so here's one from a couple years back that is one of my favorites

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On Friday night I went out with +Mike Berenson and +Jon Blake with plans to shoot the Boston mine with a bit of moonlight, unfortunately the moon had begun it's retreat behind the earth before we made it to our destination (my fault for going to the wrong park and ride!) We were still able to come back to these cabins for a few shots before the cold became overwhelming.

The light on the cabin came from Mike's headlamp as he was packing up. The image took a lot of work in post, it's a 10 shot pano that I double processed the raw files for the foreground and the stars. I also used the astro tools actions to remove the little bit of light pollution, increase star color and increase local contrast. I also applied a slight warming filter to the foreground.

As always I'm open to critique, especially since I've been staring at this for so long I accept that I may be delusional.

#starrynights

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Working on my backlog of images today I came across this gem that I edited a couple years ago and never posted anywhere. I'm having a great time today and don't miss cubicle life a bit!

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I had forgotten how much I enjoy black and white, expect to see a lot more now. Yosemite just begs to be in black and white imho.

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I took everyone's comments into consideration after my last post and feel much better about this image. This is an hdr image, I did nearly all the editing in SNS and just a bit of tweaking in photoshop. The new masking tools in SNS allow me to tone down the highlights and pull the shadows in a subtle manor. I couldn't do much about the composition unfortunately, I picked this one randomly as a test and ended up taking it all the way through the process. I don't like the empty sky so I may go back to the original comp. What do you all think? Better? Worse? I hate exposure blending, hopefully the D700 will show up soon and I'll have to do a little bit less of this.

BTW what's up with G+'s thumbnail compression lately? They look like garbage and I don't remember it being this way in the beginning. Anyways, click to see it large

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Now that I've acquired some free time I've begun to look through my backlog and realizing just how much there is, talk about overwhelming!

Honest feedback appreciated, the blending was painful on this one.

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Exciting times ahead to say the least! Of course I am looking to drum up business, so if anyone would be so kind to share leads for anyone that may be looking for fine art nature photography in their house or commercial buildings it would be greatly appreciated.I will also be providing architectural photography services (Interior and Exterior) for Medical Buildings, Schools, Commercial and high end residential. Please view my portfolio here http://kinghamphotography.zenfolio.com/architecturalI would gladly send a 16×20 signed and matted print of your choice to anyone that can provide a solid lead that leads to a sale.Thank you all for your support!

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Kingham Photography – Fine Art Nature Photography
Kingham Photography – Fine Art Nature Photography:

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We had a late start hiking to the subway in Zion so I didn't have time to slow down and find interesting, less iconic images. The sun was setting when I took this, which means we hiked the entire 5 miles back in twilight/darkness. I hope to go back here at some point and give myself much more time.

Editing this image was interesting as the tonal range was dramatic. I tried just using luminosity masks to blend 3 exposures and it looked awful, hdr looked awful. In the end I did hand blend these using another method from +Tony Kuyper of painting through luminosity masks http://goodlight.us/writing/paintedmasks/paintedmasks-1.html which worked brilliantly

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