Of course, just a couple of days after posting a mini-rant about photo contests, I come across a photo contest where the rules are far more sensible: the sponsors gain a license to use just the winning photos; the photographer retains the copyright. Which contest? The 4th Annual Photoworkshop.com Digital Imaging Competition, sponsored by Adobe.

Heading home from dinner tonight I noticed that the clouds were ‘burning’ in the sunset. Having the camera with me, I drove up to the old naval air station on Alameda, and managed to get a few shots. A little magic with Photoshop resulted in this photo. I wish I’d had the tripod with me; even with the Canon image stabilisation feature, the 300mm lens is too long to handhold.

There seem to be a lot of photo contests around at the moment. The most recent I’ve seen being from Animal Planet and Life Magazine. I was debating entering this one, but then I noticed this in the official rules:

Submission of a photo further constitutes the entrant’s consent to irrevocably assign and transfer to Sponsor and Animal Planet any and all rights, title and interest in the photo, including, without limitation, all copyrights.

I would be willing to let them have an unrestricted license to use the photo if it was the winning photo, after all they are paying for that with the prize. But this rule goes further than a license, and it also goes further than just the winning photo. Essentially, this rule means that they get total ownership of a large number of photos without paying anything to most of the photographers for the privilege.

And it is not just this one contest. I’ve seen this type of wording in the rules of every photo contest I’ve looked at this year.

A profile shot of one ofOakland Zoo‘s Blue and Yellow Macaws.

This is the final shot of the ducklings from Saturday. These were resting next to their mother – the calm one. She actually had her head tucked under her wing all the time I sat on the opposite shore of the lagoon and snapped shots of her offspring. This was one of the earlier shots I took; the ducklings were reacting to the sound of the shutter from the previous shots (except for the one that is too cool to even look around, letalone stretch!).

Can anybody tell me why this bird is called a spoonbill? Only joking! This one is a resident of Oakland Zoo where the African spoonbills share an enclosure with the pink flamingoes.

Another shot taken Saturday morning on my ‘duck shoot’ here at my apartment complex in Alameda. This was one of the set where the mother was less than happy about me being anywhere in sight (letalone near enough to take photos). She kept her little fleet of ducklings, five in all, moving away from me most of the time, occasionally vocalising her opinion of me with the hisses that they use to warn off predators.

Eventually, she seemed to accept that I wasn’t a threat, and even let the ducklings come onto the shore in front of me. This shot was taken earlier on though, when she had them mountaineering over some artifical rocks that mask the pumps for the fountains to get away from the evil human with the odd black object that makes noises.

One of Oakland Zoo‘s Arabian Camels takes a break from its busy schedule 🙂

A shot of a cactus flower taken on my last trip to Oakland Zoo. This cactus is alongside the camel enclosure and had several of these budding blooms.

Since I had the long lens (75-300mm) on the camera, this was taken from further away than I would normally have done, using a tripod and a focal length of around 200mm.