Jim Goldstein has posted a must-read article on photo contests that describes something I noticed a while ago – if you enter your work in many of the online and other photography contests you may be giving up all of your rights to your photograph without compensation merely by entering.

You don’t want to do this.

Jim writes:

So you’ve got this incredible image that you’ve got to show the world. Not only are you going to share it with your friends online, but you’re also going to enter it in a contest or two to win some fabulous prizes. Well before you do I recommend reading the fine print, that includes the the Terms of Use (ToU) for web sites and Contest Rules for, you guessed it, photo contests.

One of the most underhanded tactics sweeping the online and publishing world is the hijacking of photo rights through inequitable terms buried in the fine print of legalese for contests and web sites. The perpetrators will no doubt surprise you, they include the likes of Facebook, National Geographic + PDN, Popular Photo, and more.

This issue is not a new one and has reared its ugly head in the past on other photo sharing sites, but now this tactic is becoming increasingly common with major players. Offending words such as perpetual, royalty-free license and irrevocable are being introduced to hijack the rights to photographs of well intended photographers looking to play the odds to have their work recognized in a contest or just to simply share with friends.

This is why I’ve avoided entering any of these contests and while I’ll continue to do so. And it is not just photo contests. Jim points out that by posting your work to Facebook you may also surrender your rights to your work!

Jump on over to Jim’s site and read more about this.

After returning very late last night from a couple days of landscape photography in Yosemite Valley, today I was at the opening prolog stage of the 2008 Amgen Tour of California bicycle race. Could two photographic subjects be more different?! I’ll post a photo tomorrow.

A series of recent photographs from the Big Sur California coastline will appear here over the next few days, and I thought I’d share a few things about these images beforehand.

Last weekend I headed down toward the Monterey Peninsula with a new lens that I wanted to try out. My plan was to stop early in the morning at Point Lobos and shoot some familiar subjects there. Knowing that this park opens late (absurdly late, from the perspective of any self respecting photographer), I left home later than usual and stopped for coffee on the way. I still arrived a good half hour before the gates would open at 9:00 a.m. I turned off the car, opened the windows, and prepared to sit in the line and wait.

And then it hit me that sitting there in my car for a half hour on such a beautiful morning was absurd. I did a u-turn and spontaneously headed south on Highway 1. Within the first mile or two I stopped a couple times but the view was only “predictably pretty” and not really worth photographing. I did notice unusual amounts of mist hugging the waterline, the result of some very big winter surf. I kept driving, with a vague plan to perhaps go as far as the Bixby Bridge.

I came over one of the rises that sit between the creek drainages that you cross as you drive this route and there in front of me was a stunning sight. Along the road in the vicinity of Bixby Bridge the coastal bluffs sloped down toward surf/mist from huge waves that was partially obscuring the coastal rock formations, and the mist was glowing luminously in the morning backlight. The waves were stupendous and the coastline hills rose above this mist into blue sky. I was stopped dead in my tracks. Or my lane. Or something.

I pulled over and set up the tripod, fitting the new lens on my camera, and began to take in the scene, looking for compositions that caught the combination of backlight, surf, mist, and coastal formations – and hoping that it wouldn’t all disappear before I could start shooting. In the end I came up with four images that I like a great deal, all of which will appear here during the next four days. I’ll give away my preferences in advance and say that my two favorites are a portrait orientation photograph that includes a natural arch in the foreground with Bixby Bridge barely visible in the distance, and a telephoto shot of a lone fisherman on the rocks with roiling surf and rugged rocks in the background.

And all because Point Lobos didn’t open early enough for me. :-)