Sign at military installation in Norway

Copyright Notice

and advice on using images taken by Vadim Makarov
All the text and pictures on this site are copyright 1997—2015 Vadim Makarov unless explicitly stated otherwise.

I allow to use my pictures for free in some cases, but please read and observe my requirements listed below.

Usage rights summary:
 Personal, in print Free
 Personal, on Web Free with hyperlinked credit and inscription on larger images; see useful recommendations below
 Commercial and non-profit, on Web Requires registration, usually allowed for free with hyperlinked credit and inscription on larger images
 Commercial, in print May be purchased, ask
 Non-profit, in print Can be free for some organizations, ask

 

Printing photos for personal non-commercial use

If you want to include my photo in your school report or presentation, use as a screensaver or wallpaper on your personal desktop, put it on your fridge or cover a crack on your office wall, feel free to do so (you have my permission). Use the largest JPEG for best resolution. If this is not enough, I may be able to make the raw scan available on request.

Specifically, use in a scientific presentation: if the presentation is distributed electronically in any way, please make sure it includes a tiny photo credit line containing "Vadim Makarov  www.vad1.com" on all slides where my photos are used. The credit line does not necessarily have to be discernible when you project the slides (yes you can make it unobtrusive), but should be present in the electronic file on the slide(s) where you use my photos.

It is possible to order quality prints of my images (Fuji Frontier digital prints made on standard photo paper, archival quality). 20x30cm is my favorite size, but larger or smaller print sizes are also available. Please email for exact price.

For framing photographs, see my advice.
 

Personal Web use of photos

If you have a personal home page or non-commercial Web service, please feel free to use my photographs with a link to my site.

My pictures are available in several sizes. You may try to reach files with endings given in this table:

-1s.jpg  128x192 thumnbnail
-1.jpg  170x255 thumnbnail
-2.jpg  256x384 (large thumbnail)
-3.jpg  512x768
-4.jpg  1024x1536
-5.jpg  original scan size, typically 2592x3888;
 only few photos are available on-line in this size

For example, to fetch a 256x384 thumbnail for use on your page, you take the URL of my image (e.g. http://www.vad1.com/photo/stock/n20-1.html), replace .html with -2.jpg, go to the resulting URL (i.e. to http://www.vad1.com/photo/stock/n20-1-2.jpg) and save the image to the folder where your website is stored.

For a particular image, some sizes may not be available, as well as they may differ from those given in the table. For best quality, I recommend you to stick to available image sizes. If you must resize, start from the largest file available and apply appropriate sharpening after scaling it down.

How to include a link to my site

You must provide a link, this is your credit to me. Also, that way people know who took the picture and can find this copyright notice.
You may think of this link not as a burden, but rather as a courtesy to your site visitor in case he/she wants to see more pictures like this or read about how it was photographed. Web is about linking, isn’t it.

The easiest way to use my picture is to

  1. copy a thumbnail image (up to 256x384, see table above) from my site to your server
  2. insert this thumbnail now hosted on your server into your page
  3. make the photo on your page clickable, linking it to my HTML page with its larger version, title, description and other information.
Doing this, you kill many birds with one stone: it spares you effort, disk space and bandwidth, the image has a decent presentation (i.e. can be viewed in multiple sizes and has a description) and you automatically provide a credit to me.

You may also host HTML page with large image on your server and link to my site from that page.

If you want to present my images in any other way, then an explicit hyperlinked credit is required on every page where the image(s) are used. Examples of the credit line:

Photographs courtesy <a href="http://www.vad1.com/">Vadim Makarov</a>
Photo by <a href="http://www.vad1.com/photo/">Vadim Makarov</a>
Photos from <a href="http://www.vad1.com/photo/lights-trondheim/">Lights of Trondheim</a> gallery
I guarantee not to break any link to my HTML pages. You should, however, download all my JPEG files that you are using to your server and use these downloaded copies on your pages.

If your site uses frames, I recommend you to include target="_top" in all your links to my site, e.g. <a href="http://www.vad1.com/" target="_top">Vadim Makarov</a>. This is better for usability reasons.

All images larger than 384 pixels in longer dimension must bear my name and site address

If you take the image from my site, this happens automatically: all larger images are marked at the bottom. Should you want to crop and/or resize the image yourself, please make sure the resulting image has a legible inscription with the copyright sign, year, my name and site address, e.g. “©2000 Vadim Makarov www.vad1.com”.

The reason for this requirement is that images can be found separately via image search engines and copied without a look at the web page where they originate. The author and site address must therefore be marked in a text printed in the image. This is especially important for images in larger sizes, because they are good for many commercial uses.
 

Web use of photos by commercial and non-commercial organizations

If you would like to use my pictures on the Web pages of your organization or company, then please do the following:
  1. register the URL with me (sending email is fine)
  2. add the hyperlinked credit and make sure larger images bear inscription, as described above
Normally you do not need to pay for usage, either, though I reserve the right to deny usage on sites that I truly don’t want to support and deny free usage if the images are to be used heavily (like an ad page of a big company).

Note: remember that most of the pictures of people on my pages are not model-released (but I may be able to contact the model promptly). Advertising usage of photos (e.g., brochures, catalogs, print ads) is very different from editorial usage of photos (e.g., newspaper and magazine articles, books). You cannot use pictures in advertising (e.g., an on-line product brochure or anything else that is selling or promoting) without getting a model release from any person whose image is recognizable in the photo. One of the reasons advertisers pay $1000+ for images from stock agencies is that those agencies have generally already gotten the relevant releases. This can also be the reason for which an artist is commissioned to produce a digital painting instead of using a real-life photograph in advertising.
 

Use of photos in print by commercial and non-commercial organizations

You should contact me with a proposal (sending e-mail is OK). Please describe the use of image and suggest the price you feel comfortable paying for it.

Though socially oriented non-profit organizations (clubs, charities, etc.) will often be allowed to use my photos for free in their free publications, they also have to contact me first.

All images are available as high-resolution scans (usually 2600x3900) and can be delivered electronically (FTP, e-mail) or mailed on CD.

Note: 1000x1500-pixel images available from this Web site are most often NOT of high enough resolution for use in printed media. You will receive a full-resolution scan after we agree on the price or after you get my permission for publication. For the sake of quality of your final product, I kindly remind you to use the large file sent to you and not the 1000x1500 or smaller JPEGs from my site :-)

P.S. If you don’t have your own idea of how much to offer to a photographer for images, you may check the prices survey of North American stock photography market.
 

Text content

Please do not ever copy any of my text content to a public Web server. Link to my HTML pages instead. I guarantee not to break any of your links. For any other possible uses, please contact me.
 

What happens if you use my images commercially without permission

Not to sound too evil, but... if I find out about the violation (this has happened), I first try to contact your company and name a licensing fee. Please rest assured the fee in such case is large enough and not negotiable. If your company doesn’t pay the named fee, I would sue for whatever amount a lawyer thinks we can get from your company for the violation.

If I see my image used on the Web (i.e. the use for which I would normally not require a fee) without credit, I contact the person responsible for the website, explain the conditions and ask politely to add the hyperlinked credit as required. Should he not respond, a polite complain to the hosting provider has had the desired effect in all the cases I’ve encountered so far.
 

I reserve the right to change this policy (though the changes will not be retroactive). Revision history:

This document was adapted from Philip Greenspun’s copyright notice (that he explicitly allowed others to use).
Vadim Makarov
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