I’m an older sports med guy who was forced into retirement due to burnout. Now I battle depression. To help I began to draw and paint again. What I’m drawn to are common urban scenes in small Japanese towns, so I follow a lot of photographers from Japan (and Korea).
Sometimes I’ll take one of their photos as inspiration and paint it. When I post I always tag the photographer and give credit as well as including the original photo. I do this as a hobby and don’t sell (or plan to sell) and of my (objectively poor) art.
Recently someone told me even if I tag the photographer and include the pic – one should still obtain permission before. Otherwise you can be ‘inspired’ by the photo, but you need to alter it in some way. Then it’s okay to post.
I like to try and recreate the photo, so after that long boring preamble my question to the photography artists of Japanese Instagram is this: if an artist/hobbyist tagged you and you saw they had painted one of your photos; would this be okay? Should they ask first? (I always feel creepy asking).
Thanks anyone who takes the time.
by Beautiful-Rent-9664
3 comments
I used to post a ton of pics on Instagram before it became totally swamped with ads. If you painted one of my photographs I’d be flattered. I have *no idea* about the legality of it though. I hope you start feeling much better soon. I’ve suffered from depression in Japan and it wasn’t fun.
It depends on the person. Some will be flattered but others will be annoyed/angry if done without permission.
As a photographer I would be flattered but also just a wee bit weirded out lol but I’d probably reason that comes with the territory when sharing my photos online.
I saw one instance on insta where someone was making art inspired by a maiko/geiko photography account, and that original photographer was PISSED and even tried to get all their followers to harass the painter and report their account to Instagram etc lol. Nothing came of it ofc but just to illustrate that some people will have radically different thoughts on this.
I’d avoid using any photos that have a watermark on them, those accounts are probably more sensitive about that kind of thing.
Anyway probably best to ask permission beforehand. Just need to draft up a dm once and then copy paste it for future use. If they say no just find a different pic, or just paint it anyway without uploading to social media lol.
I think the problem here would be “as well as including the original photo” which I think no matter what country you would get some backlash for, also legally. Making a painting of it though I doubt many would have anything against and most would probably be happy to see it.
If you want to play it safe I would probably just post the painting and then redirect people to the original photo.
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