copyright questions/ need help

Alright last August at the state fair my girlfriend and I had our picture taken at one of those "old fashioned" places. You know the ones where you dress up and it looks like its "back in the day". Well for Valentines day i wanted to get this picture made into a puzzle. The place i tried was portraitpuzzles.com and they said,
"Although the image you sent would make a great puzzle, we are unable to reproduce photos take by professional photographers without express written consent. If you have such permission, please pass it along. If you would like to send another image, please reply to this message and attach the file. Or, if you’d like to cancel the order just let me know."

Now it was a booth at the state fair so i have no idea how i can contact these people to try and get permission to do this. Does anyone have any help on this?

scan it, and say its urs. your friend vin took it. he gives me permission to use it, and permission to piss on ur face if you don't like it.

edit: sry, thats the best help i coulda offered. btw, nice present, she'll def like it.

Yep, thats pretty much the deal.

yep...i dont think the old fashioned photgraph people with prosecute you if you use their pic in a puzzle for your gf. Just say your friend took it, or fake the consent. Probably best to use the former though...

Well i just told them to forget it and said i would go somewhere else to have it done. I have no way of finding the info of the vendors there and if i could i doubt they would send me "written permission" anyway. The picture was scanned to my PC then i uploaded it to their site. Thats when they got into the whole copyright stuff. Oh well they're losing money not me.

Just a thought... If you really wanted to find out the company that took the pic, then contact the organization that put on the fair. Ask them for the names of the vendors who took the pictures. If they have it, they will give it to you and you can contact them for a "copyright release." I went through the same process with a company that does pictures of newborn babies in the hospital. We needed to make copies of the picture of my daughter, and experienced the same situation you did. I contacted the hospital, got the name and phone number of the company, and contacted them. They told me that they no longer had the proof as it was 8 years ago, and sent me a "copyright release" to go have the picture copied. This may take some time for you to do, and you might not think it is worth the effort, so I would just go the route of what vinny and kustm said. We ended up knowing someone who has a side job in photography, and has a good quality scanner and copied a bunch of photos ,including the kids school pictures, and then made sheets of 5x7s and 8x10s for us cheap. I even think there is software available to take the picture and turn it into a puzzle. I was told by someone that the statute of limitations on the pictures for copyright purposes is 75 years, but I'm not sure if that is accurate.( Getting back to the story about the pics of my daughter, we got the release to copy the pics at Wal Mart because they are so anal about reproducing copyrighted materials. When I went back to make the copies, the clerk didn't even ask to see the release when I went to pay for the new pics :screwy: It might depend on where you go to have the picture copied and whom you deal with. )

Wal Mart is pretty anal...my sister and I tried to go and make copies of our parents' senior portraits out of their yearbooks as part of a surprise Chirstmas gift, and even though the yearbooks were over 30 years old, and we had a very legit reason and story, the clerk basically just tore the pictures up in front of us and told us that we needed a copyright release...if he knew how to get it on a 30+ year old year book, then he could probably just stick it up his ass.

just type out a consent in Word, and send it to 'em.

walmart sucks.

Just take a picture of the picture w/ 35mm film and offer to send them the negative to prove that you took the picture...

aww that is so cute! i wish my bf would've done something like that. as for the copyright thing, BS it and say a friend took it. what are they going to do, tell you you're wrong and that they don't want your money?

aww that is so cute! i wish my bf would've done something like that. as for the copyright thing, BS it and say a friend took it. what are they going to do, tell you you're wrong and that they don't want your money?


They obviously didnt want my money, so i went elsewhere. The site im trying now has nothing that says they cant duplicate pictures. I think its totally stupid that they wouldnt allow that though.