Greetings!

You may have noticed that the portfolio pages mostly show older photographic works. One of the main reasons I do not update these pages is that whenever I contact either conventional or ‘new’ media I am asked whether the photographs I offer have been published before.

That question is hard to answer. Sometimes people simply grab images for a blog or a website, which is fine with me as long as these sites are not corporate sites. I am getting more and more convinced that the existing copyright laws are quite ineffective for the web and not just because copyright laws tend to differ for each country. I think the best option for the future is to look at digital photographs showcased on the web as software. Technically that makes sense too. Photographs could then be handled under the many existing software licenses created especially for the web such as GPL.

However, before I start licensing creative products as software, I will still need a way to show recent material in such a way that it can still be considered as material that has not been published on open platforms.

A membership site seems to be the (best) option available to protect photographs and the models involved.

You will notice there are three kinds of memberships, a silver membership which is free and it will give those who subscribed an option to participate in the small community of models, fellow artists and friends. You can check the membership by clicking on “My Account” after logging onto the site.

The gold membership is the only paid membership and it will give access to both community and restricted content. I really do not expect people to line up for these accounts with all the free content on the web. Still, a gold membership will give people who really care about my art a chance to support it and to see where I am heading with my projects. If you as a random visitor consider purchasing this membership, please keep in mind that this is not a membership that will give you access to loads of adult material. Granted, some of my images are more explicit than others, but this should never be a reason to sign up because chances are you will be very disappointed.

The platinum membership is for friends and models. Where would I be without friends and models? They offer their time and their patience to work for me and it seems only logical to give them full access to all works added to this site.

Those of you who visit this site regularly will have noticed that some new photographs are posted to the activity feed, while the Archives section as mentioned on the membership pages isn’t actually there yet. This is because the site was redesigned in July and some of the code I used did not live up to expectations resulting in the fact that large portions of the site’s design needed to be recoded, resulting in enormous delays because photography sessions scheduled had priority. As it is I am working on the archives section. It will be live in two weeks from now and updated on a regular basis.

Visitors who already signed up for a gold membership will receive compensation. Their bimonthly subscription will be prolonged to six months.

Best regards,

Hans van der Kamp