Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

Con­trary to pop­u­lar be­lief–and, ap­par­ent­ly, the be­lief of Car­ni­val spe­cial in­ter­est groups–pho­tog­ra­phers don't make a lot of mon­ey from cov­er­ing Car­ni­val.This year, Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers–the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA), Pan Trin­ba­go and the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO)–raised the li­cence fees for Car­ni­val cov­er­age by am­a­teur and free­lance pho­tog­ra­phers.

Some promi­nent pho­tog­ra­phers fear the de­mand for fees will re­duce the cov­er­age the fes­ti­val gets and the way it is record­ed for pos­ter­i­ty.In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian on Mon­day, in­de­pen­dent pho­tog­ra­ph­er Maria Nunes said she paid $8,100 in li­cence fees to the NCC, the NC­BA and Pan Trin­ba­go to cov­er Car­ni­val 2013 events.

Nunes said the amount a free­lance pho­tog­ra­ph­er had to pay the NCC and oth­er col­lab­o­rat­ing bod­ies de­pend­ed on the events he or she wished to cov­er. If a pho­tog­ra­ph­er want­ed to cov­er all Car­ni­val events or shows, the li­cence fees would be enor­mous."For me," she said, "my pri­ma­ry in­ter­est is in tra­di­tion­al mas."

She paid a li­cence fee to cov­er the NCC's re­gion­al Car­ni­vals, which in­clud­ed stick­fight­ing and Cam­boulay demon­stra­tions.In­clud­ed in the $8,100 which Nunes paid was $5,900 to the NC­BA to cov­er some of its events, such as the tra­di­tion­al mas com­pe­ti­tion in Vic­to­ria Square, Port-of-Spain, and the Car­ni­val Kings and Queens pre­lims, semi­fi­nals and fi­nals, as well as the pa­rade of the bands on Car­ni­val Mon­day.

"What we are pay­ing for is ac­cess to a judg­ing point. That is all we are pay­ing for," she said.She said the li­cences al­lowed her ac­cess to the stage for cer­tain events. De­spite that, she said, she would not have the right to pub­lish any of the pho­tos tak­en at those lo­ca­tions un­less she had the per­mis­sion of the peo­ple in the pho­tos.

Mean­while, some of these lo­ca­tions lack prop­er arrange­ments, she said, and am­a­teur pho­tog­ra­phers could be seen pressed against rail­ings tak­ing pho­tographs al­though they have not paid the rel­e­vant li­cence fees.Nunes said this year, she con­sid­ered not pay­ing be­cause of the con­sid­er­able in­crease in the fees. She said it was "the love of our cul­tur­al her­itage and doc­u­ment­ing it" that en­cour­aged her to pay.

She added: "I see it as an in­vest­ment in my work. But I am not sure how I feel about it for next year. When I look at how many pic­tures are ac­tu­al­ly tak­en at these judg­ing points and the val­ue of them, I am not sure it makes sense."She said many cap­ti­vat­ing pho­tos could be tak­en in and around Port-of-Spain in ar­eas that are not des­ig­nat­ed as judg­ing points.

An­drea de Sil­va, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who works for the in­ter­na­tion­al news agency Reuters, said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day she saw the li­cence fees for cov­er­age of Car­ni­val as "wrong and un­eth­i­cal."De Sil­va said in 2010 she cov­ered the lo­cal Car­ni­val events for Reuters and was re­quired to pay an ac­cred­i­ta­tion fee of US$250. In 2011, she paid TT$2,000 to cov­er Car­ni­val events.

That was the last year she paid these li­cence fees. She said pay­ing for cov­er­age of any event is against Reuters' pol­i­cy."It is wrong for any or­gan­i­sa­tion, be it the NCC or any­body else, to charge the me­dia to cov­er any event," she said.

De Sil­va, a for­mer T&T Guardian chief pho­tog­ra­ph­er, said she has cov­ered events all over the world and has nev­er been made to pay for such cov­er­age. She said the rea­son she had paid the li­cence fees in the past was that she saw the need to pro­mote T&T Car­ni­val on the world stage.This year, she said, she saw a ma­jor de­crease in the num­ber of pho­tog­ra­phers dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.

"I am sure this is be­cause of the ex­or­bi­tant fees. Who is go­ing to ben­e­fit from this in the long term? By pro­mot­ing the fes­ti­val, we stand to ben­e­fit," she added.She said sta­tis­tics showed the ma­jor­i­ty of vis­i­tors to Trinidad dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son were from the T&T di­as­po­ra and it was im­por­tant to al­low peo­ple to cap­ture the spir­it of Car­ni­val through pho­tos in or­der to at­tract for­eign­ers to take part in the na­tion­al fes­ti­val.

De Sil­va said the be­lief that free­lance pho­tog­ra­phers make a lot of mon­ey through the use of Car­ni­val pic­tures was very false, since there was no re­al mar­ket for such pho­tos oth­er than in Car­ni­val mag­a­zines.Free­lance jour­nal­ist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er at the T&T Guardian Mark Lyn­der­say said in the 25 years he has been li­cens­ing Car­ni­val pic­tures, he doubts he has made the $16,000 that some free­lance pho­tog­ra­phers would have paid this year alone in li­cence fees for Car­ni­val cov­er­age.

He said these high fees would have a "chill­ing ef­fect" on the cov­er­age of the na­tion­al fes­ti­val.He said such an ef­fect had been per­va­sive since 1995, with the en­force­ment of the works-of-mas copy­right clause which called on me­dia hous­es to pay if they want­ed to pub­lish Car­ni­val sou­venir mag­a­zines apart from their reg­u­lar pub­li­ca­tions.

MORE IN­FO

Dur­ing this year's Car­ni­val sea­son, there was con­tro­ver­sy over is­sues to do with ac­cred­i­ta­tion and li­cens­ing for cov­er­ing ma­jor Car­ni­val events.Among them:

�2The fail­ure to en­sure there was a broad­cast or pro­fes­sion­al video­tap­ing of the Panora­ma semi­fi­nals

�2The threat of le­gal ac­tion by the T&T Copy­right Col­lec­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion against three lo­cal me­dia hous­es for not pay­ing copy­right fees for mas for 2007-2012.

�2TTCO CEO Richard Corn­wall warn­ing the pub­lic not to post pho­tos of mas on Face­book be­cause of pos­si­ble copy­right in­fringe­ment.