Gutstains, our resident photo blogger, just wrote an interesting article about yesterday’s drama. He’s got a unique perspective on these things and has been in situations similar to Ryan’s recently ie; yesterday. This is pretty spot on:

“It’s not hard to see that there is a lot of tension between these two & that undoubtedly plays a role in how this situation got to where it is. If it were any other company, I honestly can’t see Fudger getting so bent out of shape. And if it were any other photographer, I could see Adam settling on a reasonable price & being done with it. But Fudger wants everyone to see what a terrible person/businessman Adam is & Adam wants everyone to see how much this whole thing bothers Fudger. Its honestly laughable both ways: Adam is so wrong & Fudger hates Adam so much.”

There is so much bullshit behind the scenes in this situation that almost nobody knows about. I can’t deny it, if this situation unfolded with somebody other than Ryan, I probably would have been more inclined to negotiate. I am also sure that if it was pretty much anyone besides me using the photo, an apology would have been enough. I’ve had multiple people who are friends with both of us tell me that Fudger and I are really similar, in that we’re both super opinionated, argumentative and confrontational. I guess this situation is basically a manifestation of that.

So, here’s a situation for you guys to mull over:

Earlier this month we sent out our new media kit to 20 or 30 brands who either advertise, have advertised or want to advertise on this site. I wrote most of the text and our graphic designer, Scotty Wemmer put it together. One page in the media kit features quotes from Ron Bonner, Will Stroud and Chase Dehart where they basically talk about how much they like The Come Up. Scotty grabbed photos off Google image search, which we didn’t really give much thought to since again, we sent this out to a very small number of brands and we never intended to put it online. The photos were all about 2 inches tall and 2 inches wide. It turns out that the photo of Chase was shot by Ryan Fudger.

Now just to give this some context, Ryan doesn’t like me. It goes way back. I wrote a post in the early days of The Come Up where I basically criticized some of the Nora Cup winners from that year, saying that I didn’t agree with the decisions. Which to me, doesn’t seem like a big deal. Ryan emailed me, then called me and was very upset. Which was pretty wild for me at the time since it was probably my first phone call from anyone in the industry, ever.

There have been some other things over the years that we’ve done, that he didn’t like. We have been critical of magazines and talked freely about the declining print industry. We Photoshopped him into a photo of Chris Duncan. There were other things as well, that I won’t mention here. But basically he just doesn’t like me.

Fast forward to last week. Ryan Fudger emailed me. I hate to make private emails public but he already did, so I suppose it’s fair game:

Ryan Fudger:
“I’d invoice any company that would use my photo without my consent, so don’t take it personal. $400 fair? I’ll send an actual invoice in the next couple days.”

I immediately forwarded this email to Scotty and had him swap out the photo of Chase.

I responded:
“designer pulled it from Google image search and we didn’t realize it was from Ride… misunderstanding, sorry about that it’s already been fixed.”

Ryan Fudger:
“The media kit was sent out weeks ago. Using the image is using the image. Sorry, but you can’t just change it now like it’s never happened. ”

Me:
“either way, i’m CCing Alfredo and you can hit him up if you want for anything legal related, not really my specialty.”

Ryan Fudger:
“Legal related? So, in short, you’re not willing to pay for using one of my photos? ”

Me:
“i’m sure you can understand that i’ll be handling this exactly the same way you are; i need to make the best decision for my business. i’m not familiar with the laws in regard to this kind of thing. any time we’ve ever accidentally used someone’s photo on the site and received a take-down request we’ve removed the photo and that’s been the end of it. if we have a legal responsibility to pay you then i’m sure we’ll be doing so.

and just like you said, this is how i’d respond to anyone who sent me this sort of email so it’s nothing personal.”

Ryan Fudger:
“Haha, alright. It’s obviously not the same as the website since you can’t take it back from all the brands it was sent to. I won’t be suing you over $400, but sometimes you make mistakes (even if it was your art director’s mistake) and you should chalk it up to a learning experience. It’s mostly a matter of respect…as most things tend to be. 

Alfredo, lemme know if I should an invoice over and who to address it to.

Thanks. ”

Then Alfredo responds:
“sorry for my late response! 

To be honest, I feel that $400 is an astronomical rate for a 200×200 image which we did not mean to even run. Realistically, I understand you and Adam have your own issues, and I respect you both so I rather not become a part of that animosity. 

Ultimately, I can’t see us paying for that photo at your rate, and furthermore, Adam is the one that would approve the payment so I really can’t do much on my end. 
In the future, if an instance like this occurs again and the rates are more realistic we can work something out.
Hopefully there’s no hard feelings towards me now, but my hands are tied by my higher up, if you catch my drift.
Cheers man,
Alfredo”

The next email from Ryan was sent to both of us:
“No animosity in any direction. ”Adam differed to you to see if you guys were legally responsible to pay me for the photo and now you’re differing back to Adam saying your hands are tied. What’s the verdict on your end? The photo was used and distributed for the company’s profit, so it’s perfectly acceptable (and legal) to want to be compensated for it. Price for a photo is not dictated by size—there is no standard. Even if it does seem high to you guys, I have my rates and as I implied in the first e-mail, they are negotiable (hence the “fair?” comment in the original e-mail). As of now the real question is if you’re willing to pay for using the photo, because it doesn’t seem like you guys are. ”

My response:
“yeah, we aren’t. there are basically two arguments, the legal one and the moral one. of course morally we don’t think we did anything wrong, and legally I could see it going either way, so the ball’s in your court.”

His final response (for now):
“Morally, you took what I do for a living, used it for free, and are un-willing to compensate me for it. Legally, you stole copy-righted material and used it for your company’s profit. Rack em up, Adam.”

My argument:

• the image was on Google image search. It’s on Facebook. It’s a lot of places.
• we didn’t know he took it
• as soon as we realized he took it, we removed it
• 20 or 30 brands that we sent the PDF to are the only people who ever even saw the media kit.
• we apologized

We did something wrong, sure. I’m not denying that. It’s the kind of mistake that we go out of our way to prevent. But it’s the kind of mistake that people make every day and we handled it as professionally as possible. We removed the image and apologized. Ryan still feels he’s owed money. I’m not being self righteous here and would have preferred to not cover this isue. I’m only writing this to tell my side of the story since his Instagram post makes this sound way, way different than it actually is.

I respect photography, photographers and agree that photographers deserve to get paid for their work. I have paid tons of different photographers over the years for all kinds of different stuff. DVD covers, shooting photos on roadtrips, print ads, web stuff. We always attempt to use authorized photos on TCU and whenever anyone starts blogging for TCU I always talk to them about what photos we can and can’t use. I’m not opposed to the idea of photographers getting paid, I’m opposed to the idea of paying $400 for a 2 inch wide photo, which we used in a situation which was CLEARLY an accident. I feel like we handled the incident professionally.

What do you think?

Here Fudger talks about how he got started shooting photos.

“Weekday cruising at a local Long Beach spot featuring Jay Roe, Darryl Tocco, and some guest clips from Ryan Fudger.“- Kink

“On Thursday, August 4th, Ryan Sher, Trey Jones, Seth Kimbrough, Ben Hucke, Ronnie B., Ryan Fudger, and Chadwick will be making the pilgrimage to Mother Russia. To say we are excited is an understatement. From Friday on, you can expect to see constant updates from the road featured on our main site, our facebook, and also on ridebmx.com. Keep your eyes posted and check out our flyer for the trip. This one is going to be interesting.”- Shadow

Full flyer after the jump.

This time it’s Justin Kosman, Tommy Blanco, Vincent Perraud, Jon Stars, Ryan Fudger, David Lang, Kyle Emery-Peck, Cody Nutter, George Marshall and Joey Cobbs’ turn to list off and explain their camera and gear choices. Here is a link to part 1, incase you missed it.

Until the comments are fixed, discuss here on The Come Up Board.

Previously: My Phone Call With Chris Duncan