My Rolls Are Famous!

Here at work, we're currently playing with our legal team on getting the right permissions/edits/etc. to get these videos posted up to our TMcgraw site that we created for our sponsorship. It's a long story, and one that is not very interesting -- but it is most definitely a pain in the ass.

Really what I've learned is something that I guess I could've probably figured out or just kind of knew anyway in these times where people just like to sue the pants of everyone -- that's it's next to impossible to use the images you capture at a random event without cutting through ~38 rolls of red tape. So I was pretty curious when I came across this article in Ad Age about people backing off Weight Watchers and the like b/c the tough economy makes the programs hard to afford: http://adage.com/article?article_id=128036

Not b/c of the article itself -- but b/c of the accompanying image of this woman's fat rolls.

I wondered what the release process looked like. So first there is a man out there who is following fat people around with a camera angling for shots. Is he like, "oh, yeah, that's great! turn to the left a little more! I'm really capturing that love handle!!" Or maybe, "oh, that's good! Those low rise jeans -- they're accentuating all the right things!!" I don't know, something like that.

So then he has to approach the subject, and he's all, "excuse me, can you sign this photo release? I want to use your image in Ad Age!" And the subject might be momentarily excited, you know, 15 min and all that, until she realizes how she's actually being featured. Or...then...is she still excited, b/c even 15 min of infamy beats no 15 min at all? I feel like these are all good questions to ask oneself over the course of a day. Although I might be a bit paranoid moving forward that there is some photog out there waiting to capture some super unflattering image of me for use in some random publication about something...unflattering. Although, I guess he'll have to get my release...so then...I can put that worry to rest. Phew.