5 minutes on: References – Historical Photos On PastVu.com
From Alexander Sanning
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This is a very brief 5-minute video on the basic procedure of using PastVu.com – "Retro View of Mankind's Habitat" – to find historical photographs (and paintings/drawings) as references for a certain space in a certain time.
Timestamps:
0:05 Introduction to PastVu.com
0:34 Using PastVu.com
3:01 Remember to confirm the copyright status of the image
4:07 Capturing the image with Snipping tool, or downloading it
4:50 Drawings and paintings are also aggregated
To download the image without the PastVu watermark, excluding the sceenshot method, the most straightforward way is to simply go to the image's source. For the example at 3:18, this was clearly not possible, due to the source being infactually stated (link was to another image). But for the example at 3:58, one could have downloaded the original (watermark-free) image directly from the Deutsche Fotothek website – however, since PastVu.com aggregates images from many different sources, all different sources have different buttons to click for downloading an image, so a "one-fits-all" method is impossible to depict. However, generally, a download icon or a download button should be visible on the linked source page.
The drawing example that was shown at 5:14 provided is a good example of an image where the act of determining the copyright status is a more complex consideration than simply looking at the licence. We had to cut this lengthy discussion out of the tutorial video to keep the tutorial short enough, but we'll briefly present the matter here:
When clicking on the source link for the image, one is directed to Wikimedia Commons, where the source image is hosted.
Here, the licence is stated as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International – which requires any usage of the image to include proper attribution, and that any redistribution of the image in original or manipulated form must be shared with the same licence (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The date of the drawing is stated to be 1911, and the author stated to be Ragnar Östberg.
In Sweden, any work of art with a known author enters Public Domain when the death of the author is more than 70 years prior (if the author is unknown, then it is 70 years after the creation of the work).
Since Ragnar Östberg passed away in 1945, his previously copyrighted works of art has been in the Public Domain since 2015.
In 2016, the given image was uploaded by the user Karl-Elis to the Swedish Wikipedia, thus making it accessible on Wikimedia Commons.
The licence that the image was uploaded with was the aforementioned CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
Examining the camera metadata that was included in the uploaded file, one sees that it was not a camera photography of the drawing, but actually a scanned image using a Canon scanner.
The scanned image actually comes from a book, "Gustaf V och hans tid 1907–1918", published in 1936 (during the life of the image's author).
The author of the book, Erik Lindorm (deceased in 1941), hardly cannot claim any intrinsical right to the image that he and the publisher was given the right to reproduce – that belongs to the author of the image.
While the publisher, Wahlström & Widstrand, could claim the right of the image as depicted in the book itself – the copyright of the book as a whole is for certain well protected – but one could in good faith assume that since the book in itself is older than 70 years old, that the non-personal entity (the publishing company) claiming such reproduction rights would be overruled by the Public Domain legislation in Sweden. However, one cannot ignore that the uploaded image comes from a book that has reproduced the original drawing, and we are not lawyers.
If the depiction of the drawing would have been a heavily edited photograph, with some sort of individually characteristic augmentation, one could argue that the uploader has some right to his/her rendition of it – excluding the unaltered original Public Domain work of art of course.
But since the uploaded depiction is a scanned version of the faithfully reproduced depiction of the original work of art, which itself is positively Public Domain, then one could argue that one could use the uploaded image – as a depiction of the original work of art – without adhering to the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence that the uploader uploaded the image file with. But when in doubt, take time to do right.
Sthlms stadshus modell 1911.jpg by Karl-Elis
CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
Disclaimer:
This tutorial aims to increase student awareness of the versatility of the digital tools available for use within the context of the architectural education offered by KTH. As such, it might not be generally applicable, but on the other hand, if even one student is helped by it with fulfilling deliverables requirements, the purpose of this tutorial is satisfactorily achieved. There might be inaccuracies in this tutorial video – if you identify any significant one, please tell us in the comments.
Timestamps:
0:05 Introduction to PastVu.com
0:34 Using PastVu.com
3:01 Remember to confirm the copyright status of the image
4:07 Capturing the image with Snipping tool, or downloading it
4:50 Drawings and paintings are also aggregated
To download the image without the PastVu watermark, excluding the sceenshot method, the most straightforward way is to simply go to the image's source. For the example at 3:18, this was clearly not possible, due to the source being infactually stated (link was to another image). But for the example at 3:58, one could have downloaded the original (watermark-free) image directly from the Deutsche Fotothek website – however, since PastVu.com aggregates images from many different sources, all different sources have different buttons to click for downloading an image, so a "one-fits-all" method is impossible to depict. However, generally, a download icon or a download button should be visible on the linked source page.
The drawing example that was shown at 5:14 provided is a good example of an image where the act of determining the copyright status is a more complex consideration than simply looking at the licence. We had to cut this lengthy discussion out of the tutorial video to keep the tutorial short enough, but we'll briefly present the matter here:
When clicking on the source link for the image, one is directed to Wikimedia Commons, where the source image is hosted.
Here, the licence is stated as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International – which requires any usage of the image to include proper attribution, and that any redistribution of the image in original or manipulated form must be shared with the same licence (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The date of the drawing is stated to be 1911, and the author stated to be Ragnar Östberg.
In Sweden, any work of art with a known author enters Public Domain when the death of the author is more than 70 years prior (if the author is unknown, then it is 70 years after the creation of the work).
Since Ragnar Östberg passed away in 1945, his previously copyrighted works of art has been in the Public Domain since 2015.
In 2016, the given image was uploaded by the user Karl-Elis to the Swedish Wikipedia, thus making it accessible on Wikimedia Commons.
The licence that the image was uploaded with was the aforementioned CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
Examining the camera metadata that was included in the uploaded file, one sees that it was not a camera photography of the drawing, but actually a scanned image using a Canon scanner.
The scanned image actually comes from a book, "Gustaf V och hans tid 1907–1918", published in 1936 (during the life of the image's author).
The author of the book, Erik Lindorm (deceased in 1941), hardly cannot claim any intrinsical right to the image that he and the publisher was given the right to reproduce – that belongs to the author of the image.
While the publisher, Wahlström & Widstrand, could claim the right of the image as depicted in the book itself – the copyright of the book as a whole is for certain well protected – but one could in good faith assume that since the book in itself is older than 70 years old, that the non-personal entity (the publishing company) claiming such reproduction rights would be overruled by the Public Domain legislation in Sweden. However, one cannot ignore that the uploaded image comes from a book that has reproduced the original drawing, and we are not lawyers.
If the depiction of the drawing would have been a heavily edited photograph, with some sort of individually characteristic augmentation, one could argue that the uploader has some right to his/her rendition of it – excluding the unaltered original Public Domain work of art of course.
But since the uploaded depiction is a scanned version of the faithfully reproduced depiction of the original work of art, which itself is positively Public Domain, then one could argue that one could use the uploaded image – as a depiction of the original work of art – without adhering to the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence that the uploader uploaded the image file with. But when in doubt, take time to do right.
Sthlms stadshus modell 1911.jpg by Karl-Elis
CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
Disclaimer:
This tutorial aims to increase student awareness of the versatility of the digital tools available for use within the context of the architectural education offered by KTH. As such, it might not be generally applicable, but on the other hand, if even one student is helped by it with fulfilling deliverables requirements, the purpose of this tutorial is satisfactorily achieved. There might be inaccuracies in this tutorial video – if you identify any significant one, please tell us in the comments.
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