MLB.Com, D'Backs: Do Your Photogs Need Their Own Spring Training?
Patromerocal, one of my regular readers, posted to the Byrnesblog on Feb 22nd, "Now I'm waiting to see a picture of my favorite centerfielder in his new uni." To which I replied, "I will have a picture up as soon as I can find one!"
Turns out that the more precise answer would have been: "I will have a picture up as soon as I can find one that the copyright holder doesn't want me to pay for."
Pictures of Byrnesie as a D'Back have been hard to find. Tuscon hosts three teams in the spring: the Diamondbacks, the 2005 World Champion White Sox, and the Colorado Rockies. And, of course, in early spring training, the emphasis is on pitchers and catchers. So, they keep the pro photogs busy. And since I'm in rainy Oakland pounding on my keyboard, not in sunny Tuscon with a digital camera in hand, there haven't been many pix of Byrnesie. The two that I have found are from local papers that want to be paid for public display, even by someone like me who is not looking to resell them or otherwise charge for viewing them. (I have kept one of those for display on my home computer desktop. Byrnesie, like the rest of the D'Backs in early spring, is sporting the BP jersey).
Red Sox Chick has an array of spring training pix to display from the gallery on the Red Sox web site. But here it is, Feb 27, 2006, and the Diamondbacks gallery is still full of photos from 2005! C'mon, Diamondbacks, I like history as much as the next person, but can we join the current year here? And Owen Perkins wrote an enjoyable column titled, "Note: Byrnes Brings Energy to Desert" as a special to MLB.com, but the picture that accompanies it is a John Miller/AP photo of ALEX CINTRON! Huh?
Does this mean I have to look for an Alex Cintron article to find a picture of Eric Byrnes? Here's a wild but not so crazy idea, MLB.com: let's have pictures of Alex Cintron next to articles on Alex Cintron, and pictures of Eric Byrnes next to articles on Eric Byrnes.
If any fans visiting D'Backs spring training want to send me photos of Eric Byrnes to post here, please email them to kellia@rise4news.net. I don't have money to pay--If I had money, I would buy a digital camera and head to Tucson myself--but I will happily credit you with taking the photos; I will even list what type of camera you used, if you want to share that information.
In the meantime, MLB.com and AZ Diamondbacks, we fans are in that wonderful time of hope called spring, when we look FORWARD, not backward. Let's see more 2006 pix, especially of my and patromerocal's favorite centerfielder in his new uni!
Go Byrnesie!
Go Snakes!
Kéllia Ramares
Oakland, CA
That's how photogs make their living, but you would think there would be a pic oot there somewhere...
-talkinbaseball.mlblogs.com
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Haken,
I don't have a problem with photogs making a living, but there are different forms of payment. If I were reselling the photos, I should pay. If I were willing to pay for photos of politicians or movie stars, I should be willing to pay for pictures of ballplayers. But I also think that someone not making money off the work should be able to display for free with credit to the photog and the place where it came from. Free publicity is a form of payment.
And the copyright holders in these cases are not the photogs themselves, but the newspapers. A look at copyright shows that in many cases, the distributors, not the artists are the copyright holders. Creators of work end up having to turn copyright over to distributors, who make the big bucks.
In the classical music world, the famous example is the Rachmaninoff C# Minor Prelude, which the composer sold when he was desperate for money. The piece became famous, but he didn't get a cent for it beyond the sale price because he no longer had the rights to his own work!
The idea that copyright protects and encourages the creators of works, I think is in many ways a myth. It's a system of distribution control that benefits the distributor most, the creator of the work just a little, and withholds distribution from poor folks like me, even though further distribution could build the name of the creator.
Employees in creative fields, artistic, literary and scientific, often have to sign work-for-hire agreements whereby they agree to take their salaries as the only compensation for their creations and the hiring institution gets to make a fortune off any copyrightable or patentable work they create. (I know. I signed such a thing when I worked in legal publishing, not that there was anything there that I would have wanted to take with me to sell when I left).
At some point I would like to write an article for this blog about how poorer people (a not inconsiderable class as at least a million new people have fallen into poverty each year for the last four or five years) are being forsaken by the "national pastime" in the form of high ticket prices for live games and more games going to cable with its sometimes ridiculous blackout restrictions. I wrote about the latter last year at http://byrnesblog.mlblogs.com/down_the_left_field_linec/2005/10/whats_the_point.html
Sorry,I'm running at the mouth, or should I say the keyboard. It's just after 11 pm, the night before the D'Backs first Cactus League Game. I'm listening to the rain that has moved in, a cold rain that's come from the Gulf of Alaska.
I'm concerned about Byrnesie, who signed on with the D'Backs to be their everyday centerfielder, but how everyday is now a question since they also signed DaVanon.
I hope he's solved, or will shortly solve the hitting problems he had last year. I wrote about them extensively in three articles now in my December archives: Some Answers for Eric--The Mental Game, Eric Byrnes--Making Sense of 2005, and More Answers for Eric--The Batting Stance Article.
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