You see, it is not easy valuing yourself when others value their chosen pathway over yours. I am relating this to myself because I experienced a situation where someone used my work without permissions to promote their own business venture. Now they claimed ignorance to the whole copyrights issue which I would normally be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on if they were not a writer that publishes and protects their own work regularly. However, it was the next move which got me rather angry; they said they felt it was 'petty' to bring the issue up. They are paying my request sum for usage, but only to avoid any bad feeling (i.e. not because they made an error, sorry for this, how much do we owe you for your work?)
It was partly my own fault really, I did a favour for someone who knew someone and did a shoot stupidly cheap (why? because at that time I lacked the confidence to ask for what my time and skills were worth) and then did not type up a contract of usage believing that they would use the images for what they specified they were for. Two mistakes that even if you are just starting out you should not be making. A colleague of mine (in my other life) is just starting out in her photography business and we are working together on a shoot. I was surprised by how organised her business skills are, this is what I should have been doing for the last couple of years! Even if you do the work at a cheap rate as a favour, make sure you still give a contract breaking down what they get (i.e. the work that you actually put in including editing days) and that clearly states usage rights.
This whole episode feeds into a larger subject that is dear to my heart which is valuing the work others do regardless of your own standing in life. Understanding that without those people serving you, cleaning up the shit you throw away, packing and producing your food the system would collapse. The worth should be measured in this way, without one cannot exist the other. Consider it while you sip on your caffe latte, how many people are actually working for you to enjoy the pleasure of sitting down in a cosy cafe listening to French music in the background while you tap away on your device? Im not trying to make anyone feel guilty, I love a good coffee shop as much as the next person but lets be honest, this is pure luxury. When you look at your whole coffee experience from start to finish, £2.20 seems rather cheap.
Being in Harbin has really highlighted this issue. There so many people here and this is a third tier Chinese city (to me it seems almost the size of London). Wherever you go there are twice as many people as are needed to do a job. I walk into a restaurant and there are five waitresses (mostly women serving) doing the job of two. But people need to work here in order to eat and while industry and technology mean we can get a machine to do the job of 20 people, what are the people going to do for money? Human labour is cheap because they have it in abundance, it needs to be cheaper than running machines because otherwise they will use the machines. An example of this is waste management. To the untrained English eye the first thing you notice is the lack of recycling and bin collections. With the huge amount of plastic being used (China is in the midst of a passionate love affair with the stuff), this was a shocking thought. What the hell are they doing with it?
Human labour and private enterprise is what. They have no big garbage trucks coming around the houses, they have private system of collection with several parts to it. Beginning with person that goes through your household and street garbage looking for paper, plastic, cardboard to the person that takes a truckload to the recycling plants outside of town. I still have no idea about how they deal with the landfill rubbish though.
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| You will hear a bang bang bang on the streets, the sound of a plastic drum being beaten with a stick. They are the recyclers. Each one has there own area and the sign tells you what they are collecting. |
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