Original negatives- underrated? Show yours

[Keith_Loving]

I am hoping the scanned images could be made available for purchase through a site like gettyimages. Seems like many Conlon is available on gettyimages. I've bought a dozen scans myself from gettyimages and would buy more if this archive was made available. Here is hope in a few years time, this archive and metadata can be searched and scans can be bought.

[mikejanesphotography]

Originally Posted by Keith_Loving

I am hoping the scanned images could be made available for purchase through a site like gettyimages. Seems like many Conlon is available on gettyimages. I've bought a dozen scans myself from gettyimages and would buy more if this archive was made available. Here is hope in a few years time, this archive and metadata can be searched and scans can be bought.

I am not thrilled reading that they want to have the ball club to contact them for exclusivity of their photos. I'd say that would be a mistake. As they should make that scans available for purchase by the general public as well. I plan on e-mailing them again next week to see if I can get any information on a certain player that interests me.

I posted that as well, saying if had known would have bought and made the money back via licensing as Getty does. It's just odd that teams would be the only ones getting them, if they went to the Hall of Fame you could purchase copies and help out the HOF at the same time, teams though depends on if they have a good system in place or not, many not so sure they do.

[Keith_Loving]

Kelch Returning Brace Collection To Teams

(this was a one-on-one interview we had with Kelch on Thursday afternoon. This all original content for these pages.)

Jeffrey Kelch, CEO of Digital Archive Group, the group that purchased the remants of the massive George Brace collection in a January court-ordered auction, is finally going public with the details of that purchase. And what he had to say was remarkable.

Kelch, contacted this week, isn’t ready to spill all the details, but the headline is that the Brace collection was actually purchased intact. The auction, conducted in the aftermath of the collapse of the Rogers digital images empire, drew only $46,500 as the winning bid -- a modest amount dwarfed by the $1.8 million that the Conlon Collection (also a Rogers acquisition) had drawn the previous August.

“We have been trying to acquire the collection from Mary Brace for the last three or four years,” Kelch said. “But her asking price was a steady $2 million. She finally got someone to meet her price – even though she would only wind up getting about half that. What she didn’t get were the rights.”

Meanwhile, as authorities were closing in on Rogers, he was busily selling the elite players out of the Brace file – Robinson, Mantle, Ruth (with four different teams as a player and coach), Gehrig – seemingly stripping the massive collection of much of its value. But Rogers was no fool. He did not sell the rights, and the numerous court claims on his estate prevented them from reverting to Mary Brace, despite an agreement with Rogers.

“Rogers was all about selling as much as he could as quickly as he could to make a quick buck, and as a result a lot of the best players were gone. But they missed a lot of stuff,” Kelch said. “And the one thing Rogers did – everything he sold, he copied digitally.”

The January auction, conducted by the executor of the Rogers estate, was held to pay off claims with whatever the remaining negatives would bring. But the digital copies were also part of the lot that Kelch’s group won – a gold mine that was still there.

“We had digital copies of everything,” he explained. “Some 250,000 images, with all rights.”

But the wrinkle is that, for all the years that Kelch pursued the collection, he has had a specific destination in mind.

“I have no interest in holding onto these images,” he said. “I bought them with the idea of returning them to the original organizations – images and rights. We intend to return the entire collection back to the teams.”

One thing Kelch did almost immediately was to assure Mary Brace that the collection would not be sold piecemeal, and has kept his word in the months since.

Kelch’s Illinois-based group went about the painstaking process of organizing the collection, even as Digital Archive entered into negotiations with every major league organization separately for their own unique treasure trove. But he wisely did not merely put the Brace photos out in a vacuum.

“We want to work with the clubs to allow them to have a better understanding of the players in the photos, who they were,” Kelch said. “Like Wimpy Quinn; he pitched in five games for the Cubs, went off to World War II, never to play again. He's there.”

An admitted diehard Cubs fan, Kelch said that his beloved Cubbies were one of “seven or eight” clubs which which Digital Archive had come to terms with over the Brace images. The process is ongoing.

“We’re not in a hurry,” he said. “We’re not giving them away. There were a lot of costs involved in production and organization. But we are not selling them to individual collectors.”

For the time being, Kelch is happy to gradually return the Brace Collection to the teams. After all, their cooperation and access allowed Brace and his camera to have a unique place in the history of the sport in the 20th century. A longer term goal for Kelch is to find other such collections from Brace’s contemporaries in order to return them to the teams in order to protect their own history.

“We haven’t even talked about what we’d do if a team does not want its images,” Kelch said. “There’s always the Hall of Fame.”

SOURCE

[TCMA]

Originally Posted by Keith_Loving

I am hoping the scanned images could be made available for purchase through a site like gettyimages. Seems like many Conlon is available on gettyimages. I've bought a dozen scans myself from gettyimages and would buy more if this archive was made available. Here is hope in a few years time, this archive and metadata can be searched and scans can be bought.

Problem is, Getty is selling the digital image files for $500+ and they are intended for editorial use only. If someone were to sell prints of the images (legally) they would not only need rights to the images but also rights to the team logos. That's how they get ya.

[mikejanesphotography]

Originally Posted by TCMA

Problem is, Getty is selling the digital image files for $500+ and they are intended for editorial use only. If someone were to sell prints of the images (legally) they would not only need rights to the images but also rights to the team logos. That's how they get ya.

Legally a stand alone print is editorial, it's been challenged and courts have been very clear that selling a print is not commercial. If it wasn't imagine all the lawsuits against photographers and newspapers. There's photographers who sell their work today (Walter Iooss, meager starting price of $2,000 for an 11x14). Leagues of course look at it as a commercial product and require licensing, and if you don't want to cooperate they have the power to shut you down....though literally thousands, if not millions, of photos are for sale on eBay, most stolen.

Topps got sued by Buzz Aldrin and a lower court ruled it was a historic event so they did not need permission from him, it fell under editorial because of its significance. It unfortunately got settled before the appeal happened, as many wanted to see if higher courts would also rule the same.

[mikejanesphotography]

...other question is now that the Conlon Collection was sold, does Getty still have the rights to sell them? They're still listed under the Rogers Photo Archive, if someone else owns the rights now does Getty still have the right to sell them?

[TCMA]

Originally Posted by mikejanesphotography

Legally a stand alone print is editorial, it's been challenged and courts have been very clear that selling a print is not commercial.

Please provide a source for this info. Even if that is the case, anyone selling prints online wouldn't be selling standalone prints. They'd be producing many multiples and offering them as made-to-order items. If it got big enough the leagues could take action for copyright and trademark infringement.

Trust me, I'd love to see it happen but I think there are many legal hurdles that need to be considered.

Originally Posted by mikejanesphotography

Leagues of course look at it as a commercial product and require licensing, and if you don't want to cooperate they have the power to shut you down....though literally thousands, if not millions, of photos are for sale on eBay, most stolen.

Correct. Which is why everyone involved in this lawsuit is royally screwed. Several eBay stores were obtaining images through this guy:

http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/f...te-fb-forums)/

http://press.gettyimages.com/stateme...r-a-kowalczuk/








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[mikejanesphotography]

I will say it probably could be challenged and would be a very interesting case to follow because a lot of legal definitions that have stood for awhile could get redefined. However, since it's a first amendment issue and always viewed pretty liberally and wide reaching, I honestly do not think a league would ever go far with the case because it could not work out in their favor, and that could open up Pandoras Box so to speak (of course it already exists kind of). I know of two photographers who challenged two different leagues, no suit, just banned.

Anyways, the case remember most you can look at is probably IPA (Illinois Press Association) vs. IHSA (Illinois High School Association). It got "settled" by the IPA getting everything they wanted, the court said the IHSA could not stop them from selling prints because it's constitutionally protected and they also could not limit access (this of course we know is different in major sporting events, they can deny anyone they want, which is a good thing!).

The leagues do not care about copyright issues, that's the photographers and agencies responsibility to worry about (unless the photo is league owned). Players Association worries about likeness, leagues worry about trademark. There's literally thousands of sellers illegally selling stolen photos on eBay, the leagues do not care one bit because it's copyright infringement, not trademark.

Alan could get a good amount of jail time, there's more on that list as well as he wasn't the only one doing it, just seems to be the stupidest one who posted it everywhere and didn't do a good job being sly about it. Two print labs that were doing most the printing of stolen pics had to turn over their order history to the feds. I hope they stick it to him and the others hard, some of the boards he was using deleted the photo sections thus destroying evidence, could get interesting.

Doesn't have much to do with negatives though, if you own the rights to an old negative and selling prints nobody is going to sue over it. If you don't own the rights then whoever does might and could come after you, and if it's an orphaned work it's illegal to even scan it. Fun world we live in.

[GKreindler]

Andrew, those definitely look like Conlons to me! What's interesting is that you don't see a whole lot of shots of his from Ebbets Field - the majority are from Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds (And Hilltop Park in the earlier days). Even the ones from Washington Park are few and far between, with the exception of those batting practice photos when Pittsburgh was in town.

Also, your dad had some excellent taste - there's a lot of iconic images in there. I remember getting one image of Mickey Mantle from 1957, but I think that was it. Chuck was super nice to grant access to the place, and the project we did together was fun, though I wish more came from it - I can't believe how long ago it was!!

[horzverti]

The Wheat is definitely a Conlon. No doubt. A beauty! Thanks for sharing.

I would say that the Landis is most likely not a Conlon. From what I have seen, Charlie was fairly consistent with his player/team identification and other markings on the top edge of his negatives. Much like you see on the Wheat. Then again, there is a chance that he just didn't mark the Landis neg.

Is the Landis the same size as the Wheat? The Wheat should be 4 x 5.

[TCMA]

Originally Posted by GKreindler

lWhat's interesting is that you don't see a whole lot of shots of his from Ebbets Field - the majority are from Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds (And Hilltop Park in the earlier days).

Interesting. I do know we've got two other Dodgers that he shot: Paul Richards and Max Carey but those are from the 30's. Will have to do some more digging when I'm back in the office this week.

Also, your dad had some excellent taste - there's a lot of iconic images in there.

Thanks, Graig and I absolutely agree - great stuff. If you take a look online at the old TCMA cards (and they produced a LOT of different sets back in the day), many of those images are still in the archive either as original photos or negatives. Some are offered on Photo Files website, others are tucked away forever most likely.

Still, I'm always coming across images I never knew existed and my jaw hits the floor.

In my mind, the MOST iconic image is this Lou Gehrig that is part of our glass plate negative collection originating from The New York Sun. My father bought this collection containing hundreds of glass plate negs from an antique shop in CT in 1969:








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[Forever Young]

High end, single Gehrig on GLASS is very tough for some reason. 1927-30

[TCMA]

Originally Posted by Forever Young

High end, single Gehrig on GLASS is very tough for some reason. 1927-30

We’ve got a few. The one I posted previously, plus the one used to create the TCMA postcard below. I believe we have the glass neg used to create the shot below that but would have to confirm:






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[Forever Young]

Originally Posted by TCMA

We’ve got a few. The one I posted previously, plus the one used to create the TCMA postcard below. I believe we have the glass neg used to create the shot below that but would have to confirm:






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Very nice. So they are all Glass vs acetate?

[TCMA]

Correct. Those are glass but we have several acetate as well. Will try and get a few shots posted when I’m back in the archive on Mon.


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[Forever Young]

Originally Posted by TCMA

Correct. Those are glass but we have several acetate as well. Will try and get a few shots posted when I’m back in the archive on Mon.


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This one is Nice. Would love to see