Weird camera/farktography question

[olavf]

So I’m working on building a camera, which will be partially off-the-shelf components, but there’ll be things I make, and have to put together some code to make it work. Unfortunately for technical (and possible insurance) reasons, I won’t be in a position to physically mount the camera on the tripod nor push the ‘on’ button. But, I’m literally doing everything else.

Is this too far? I mean if my prototypes work well I’m going to do it either way, I’m just curious about the Farktography guidelines as this is maybe a little murky.

To be clear, I’m designing, building, and making all the necessary settings but someone has to put the camera on a known tripod & push the trigger.

[Elsinore]

So there’s another edge case that came up kind of recently where a guy who has some kind of digital imagery/editing studio hands people cameras and tells them to shoot stuff, then he takes the images and does whatever. He argued he owns the images so he’s the photographer, but in my mind, he didn’t actually have much creative control over the images themselves. Interesting project, but he was telling others to frame up a bunch of stuff and take pictures in whatever way they wanted to. So….I feel like that is over the line for Farktography purposes since he isn’t controlling the making of the photographs. IANAL, but from the reading I’ve done, mere ownership of the equipment doesn’t confer copyright, but neither does simply pressing the shutter. It’s about composing and creative control. In your case, you can’t exactly compose, but the camera is set up where you direct and simply turned on to run the program you wrote. That sounds like creative control. I’m just trying to find the consistent argument for why I’m inclined to allow your set up vs the one where a guy hands everyone a camera and claims ownership himself. But I think that creative control piece is consistent.

[olavf]

Thinking about it, something relatable might be a camera trap ~ set up a camera in a location wired to a motion sensor. All the creative work is there, but the trigger is indiscriminate so you’re likely to get a bunch of photos of a cat’s butt as well. And there’s no question about ownership.

The guy you describe sounds like a digital artist. Sure he owns the photos but his actual work is whatever the end result is. Perfectly valid, but it’s a separate non-photography category at the State Fair

[Elsinore]

Agreed

[Author]

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