Comments on: Costco Photo Contest Fails Photographers

By: Brandon

Brandon — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 00:58:30 +0000

Its legal jargen they have to do it in order to display your photo in there magazine.

By: latoga

latoga — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:57:01 +0000

@Rubin Z., Ouch, you're not even going to get your name out there as the winner? Sorry to hear that.

By: Rubin Z.

Rubin Z. — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:46:45 +0000

@latoga, thanks for the advice greg i’m going to do that, or maybe my brother “because the photo is under his name” .

Cheers, Carlos Rubin.

By: latoga

latoga — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:42:45 +0000

@Rubin Z., Congratulations on winning the contest! Let me know when the winning photo is posted to the photo contest site. You have some amazing photos on your website, I especially liked your wildlife images. Unfortunately, at this point there might not be much that you can do. Especially if you have been contacted as the winner and had to sign something at that point. I would review the document that you (or your brother) signed to see if it contains the same wording about giving up the rights to the photo. About all you could do at this point is to contact Costco and let them know you are concerned about your rights to the photo. See what they have to say...

By: Rubin Z.

Rubin Z. — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:07:22 +0000

Hey Greg, my name is carlos rubin and i winned the International Grand Prize of the costco cotest of this year with the costo account of my brother francisco Rubin, he already signed the papers of the rights assignment, what should i do?

By: Marianne Bush

Marianne Bush — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:59:18 +0000

I won third price last year and have had no problems. I have been able to do what I wanted with my photo, Costco didn’t use it except for putting it in the Costco Magazine. I bet they just copied the condition from some other photo competition without paying much attention to that particular part. Either way, I trust Costco to do the right thing.

By: Mike Hagen

Mike Hagen — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:08:05 +0000

I encourage you all to write to Costco’s magazine and let them know your feelings. A few months ago, I wrote the editor and explained how restrictive the contest rules were. He was a very nice guy and said that they will probably change the rules for next year’s contest based on my input. You should all do the same. Costco is a good company and they want to do what’s best in most cases.

By: Maureen

Maureen — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:50:31 +0000

I just found out my sister entered this, being completely unaware that she was giving up her rights to the photo. If she calls Costco and tells them she wants her entry pulled out, will she retain her rights?

By: Video Promotion

Video Promotion — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:36:26 +0000

Please, can you tell me few more thinks about this, I am really fan of your blog…gets solved properly asap.

By: latoga

latoga — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:20:40 +0000

Jewel,

The silver rule is “exposure, exposure, exposure”. Only to be trumped by the golden rule of “don’t give away your gold”. If you ever have a desire to earn money from your photography, the leason to be learned early is to not give away the intellectual property rights of your photos. (I had this same discussion with a professional architecture photographer early today…).

There are Photo Contests out there that do honor the photographer’s rights. The normal expectation is that the photo contest can use your photo to publicize the photo contest with no payment due to you, but trying to steal your rights to payment for any other use of your photo is simply robbery.

The key is to pay attention to the rights usage of any photo contest. If they are abusive, don’t enter AND raise a stick about it with the people running the photo contest. If no one tells them that what they are doing is wrong, they will just continue to abuse photographers in general.