Money Crazy

One of my colleagues who just returned from Vietnam told me that she saw one of my pictures of Vietnam published in a travel magazine. I did sign a contract last year with Red Images which is a stock photo agency specializing in Asian photographs but I didn't recall the series of Vietnam photos were included.

By far, I haven't got much reward from my photoshooting habit. I signed Red Images as my photos licensor for a few photos taken in Chinese Lantern Festival in 2005, but I still haven't gotten any royalties. I guess the company hasn't found any buyers for me yet. I got a digital camera for participating in the 2004 chinese global photo contest and won the honorable mention with the picture taken in Cambodia(above). I sold the camera at half of the market price in about 2 weeks after I got it because I had to use 6 dry batteries to take about 16 pictures. I was excited by the news, some travel magazine plagerized my picture and earned lots of money by selling it. It's time to teach them a lesson and get my compensation.

The news spread much faster than I expected in my institutes. One secretary told me that a photographer was paid NT$ 800,000 in compensation for being plagerized for one of his pictures; another secretary told me that she could arrange a meeting for me to talk to the lawyer of the institutes. I was all excited and dreamed about how to spend my NT$ 800,000! Maybe spend 200,000 for a Nikon D3 camera? Another 200,000 for a nice trip to the north pole...?

So I asked my colleague to find that magazine for me and it turned out that the magazine was published in 2004...a year before I had been there. My dreams of money, holidays, cameras and payback all dissappeared in a flash.