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I recently licensed a photo of Pantera’s Dimebag Darrell to a French guitar magazine. It paid well enough and all I had to do was email the image file to their editor… quick, easy money. They sent me a copy of the issue, and it looks great. A full page devoted to my image at the beginning of the feature story. Most photographers work a lifetime to get that kind of coverage. You would think I’d be happy (which, I am for the most part), but there’s a small problem: No photo credit!

They didn’t just forget to put a photo credit under the picture. They didn’t hide it in the gutter (the design/layout term for crease/crack in between two bound pages) like many magazines do. They didn’t have a page at the very back of the magazine listing credits and annotations. Nope. Not a single photo credit for any of the photographers throughout the entire magazine!

What is wrong with France?!? Is this a common practice for all French magazines, or does this one French magazine not respect artists? I was baffled when I saw a lack of photo credits for all the images in the issue. That is unheard of for North American publications. Oh well. Next time I’ll know to ask for a larger payment to offset the lack of photo credit.