Creating a New Photo Book and a How to Make a Picture Book Course

Started a new project today of creating a photo book around my local community. I walked all over the town taking pictures of boats, old buildings, the bridge, waterfronts, stores and streets. Beautiful weather and a great day. Being very conscience of not taking pictures of people directly or kids or anything that might have copyright or trademarks tied to it. Keep the pictures general.

In my product planning cycle I have plans to develop courses on How to Make and Sell Picture Books and thought, why not use this project as the example for building the cocurse. So here we go, the beginning of How to Make and Sell Picture Books the course. What I thought I would do is document the process here and on my Facebook publishing groups.



For the photography I am using my iPad, perfect for this project. Easy to carry and use. I am trying to keep it easy and non-complicated. This isn't a fine art project, it is a project to make a book and use it to create the course around.

As things happen a question came up in my How to Publish Your Book Facebook Group about picture rights of people, stores, etc that would end up in the book

QUESTION: Great idea Bruce! Do you need to get permission from the stores, people, etc to put their pictures in your book?

MY ANSWER:
Great question Keith
It is going to be very general and I try to stay very general. I never photo any specific person or especially any children from the front. It is always the backs or they are in the distance. You could never get rights for all these people anyways. I wouldn't highlight any one particular new building but make sure it is always general. New buildings have copyright issues but groups of buildings don't. So no modern buildings built by an identifiable architect featured on the cover that kind of thing. I use to run into this doing corporate brochures. Architects own the rights to buildings. So don't features it or get the approve image, or shoot something else.

But older buildings and houses and historical houses are fine. Skylines of buildings are fine. If you are featuring a person then yes you need the photo rights but just some people off in the distance is fine. I try to keep things general and I usually wait until people have walked past me to take the picture, I get their backs. With our social media crazy world people are being photographed all the time now. Watch out for featuring popular logos or brands, license plates, really identifiable things or anything that can hurt someone. If you feel funny about shoot something else. This is art more than anything.

What I like about most community stuff is that it is in the public. Public buildings, general skylines, parks, doors, trees all that kind of stuff. Keep the general stuff general, a street, a skyline, a waterfront. And the specific stuff very specific, a fence post, a antique light, a cool old fashion sign, things that give the neighborhood character but stay out of rights issues. You aren't reselling specific images of a famous building. It is a book on a town or city.

I did ask a guy if I could photograph his cool scooter/motorbike and talked to him for a while. Looking through my images I have churches, streets, general storefronts and some windows, boats, anchors (I am in a seaport), old houses, docks, more old churches, the old bridge and lots of metal stuff, marinas. So I think fine.

I am sure there is a line here but I am trying to fall in the art/photography world. But there are so many subjects where you just slide the camera to the left or right and avoid the stuff that might have an issue. I am also operating under the ask forgiveness instead of permission. I know enough about rights to know what not to shoot and if it feels funny, just don't do it. If you were going to make a real community book that you sell everywhere in the community then I might go ask each store owner if they are ok with being in the book. That could be a cool community project. But stay away from any big chains like CVS or Subway or Disney

Excellent question

Another member weighed in from my How to Publish Your Book Facebook Group taking pictures of public buildings and how some of them are sometimes off limits especially if you are reselling the images as stock images. Which I am not.

She shared an article on DYIPhotography.net which you can read more about here
10 FAMOUS LANDMARKS YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO PHOTOGRAPH FOR COMMERCIAL USE

If you are interested in learning more about the course you can check out my Publishing Mastery Academy

Here are some of the other things protected with trademark rules saying that you can't take a picture of them. Intellectual Property Wiki, with Getty Images