Despite myself, I quite like Covent Garden. Lots of fabulous buskers, lots of kinda cool things that you really don’t need.
I went there last year with my brother to check out the Transport for London shop (for all your Underground poster needs) and to buy a t-shirt for some girl he knows, he said it was in exchange for taking him to the airport. But since we went to rather trendy t-shirt shop, it would have been cheaper to take a cab (depending on the strength of the dollar, of course).
Don’t get me wrong – their T’s are super-cool. And I was able to pick up a t-shirt I’d had my eye on since before our Bill was even born – as in “wouldn’t that be such a cute shirt if I ever had a baby”. It was a price so high, that I was tempted to evade an honest answer when Simon, ever the miserly husband, asked me how much it cost.
This morning I had an email from the shop asking me if they could use this image.
I do think my little guy is adorable, but I don’t think much of this picture for either my photography or his cuteness, but I guess they were only interested in the T.
Free for all
Most of my photographs are published under a Creative Commons license, which means that anyone can use them – I only ask that I get credited. I used to allow it for non-commercial use only, but generally would allow my photos to be used for commercial purposes for free. The requests were so infrequent that I don’t think I could ever make any money out of it – so I’m generally quite happy to just let them use it.
I use other people’s photos a lot, too in presentations – and though I work for the public interest – I may be stretching non-commercial licenses. So, I thought – what the heck – I’ll allow people to just use my images.
But when it comes to images of my son, I’ve decided I’m keeping it at All Rights Reserved. I may have taken the pictures, but they’re not of me.
I can’t decide if I should let him be a child model at all (however limited) and I definitely don’t think I’m going to farm out his image without at least getting a t-shirt out of it. The one he’s wearing is a little tight these days.
Skimming the surface 
I’m no expert (no children here) but I do think that unless you’re intent on him becoming a child model at some point it is better to keep his pictures to the family circle.
He’s clearly going to be very photogenic in a year or two, or in later life, but maybe you want him to have a proper childhood first?
As a grandmother with photogenic grandchild, I say don’t do it. Our son advised his sister about all of the stress, time commitment, etc that might be involved. Who needs it when childhood is soo short.
Oh, I’m not interested in getting him a “career” in child modelling. I have my own career to manage and don’t have any desire to fool with that.
I did consider it when I was on maternity leave…as I live in London there are plenty of ad agencies, etc and it would have been something to do while I was on maternity leave that brought it money that didn’t jeopardise my maternity leave benefits. However, his head was still too lumpy from heavy birth moulding.
I think I might exchange the use of this photo for a new t-shirt though….