It’s usually gratifying to see your work in print, and displayed large in a popular cultural venue – but not when it gets credited to someone else!

I was alerted to the fact that one of my photographs, taken in Pill Community Orchard of a touring production of the delightful ‘I Peaseblossom, I Caliban’ was in the Bristol Old Vic’s brochure and on the wall of their upstairs seating area along with several other photographs – the image looked great in print and nearly 6ft high on the wall BUT the name attached to both was someone else’s (a red X marks the gaffe below)! They have changed the name under the framed picture on the wall but clearly not possible to do anything about it in print.

A much more galling situation occurred some years ago; I’d been asked to take some photographs at a tree-planting event for BTCV that were to be used just for a local newsletter and general record of the event (for which I had been paid a proportionately very modest fee). Some months later I discovered by chance that one of these photographs had been used on a Bank of Scotland / BTCV charity credit card with a national campaign leaflet featuring an image of the credit card bearing my photograph.

According to advice from legal sources I could have demanded the withdrawal of the leaflets – and possibly the credit card, but I didn’t want to exploit the charity, however I was pretty sure the Bank weren’t doing all this for no money. Later versions of the leaflet added my name (as above) and I received another very modest, token sum of money from the Bank and a rather grudging apology – a BTCV ‘internal misunderstanding’, apparently. I finally got my name on one of the cards though, by applying for my own!