 How does the photographer contribute to free culture?
Just another free soul In his foreword to the book, Lessig writes that you understand your subjects “by learning to see them in a certain way.” Some photographers will make someone look the way the photographer wants them to look, and not the way they appear, so they’ll pick the one picture out of 100 where the guy looks more egotistical than he really is. Some photographers are almost medical, and are going after a perfect portrait. To me, uploading a picture that is not an easily recognizable picture of that person defeats the point, which I’m working toward, to try to express who they are. On the other hand, professional photographers usually have a subject whom they don’t know personally, so they end up having to try to capture an image that they’ve created based on who they think the person is or how they want that person to appear. What I’m trying to do is free someone’s soul from his or her image. I think good photographers are also able to disarm people through conversation, but still, it’s difficult to have a disarming conversation with somebody you don’t know, or to make them laugh. On the one hand it means you are free, liberated. You, as a human spirit, are open. And then, it also has the meaning that you are unencumbered legally, that you are free, as in ‘free software.’ There’s a paradox: with many people’s Wikipedia articles to which I’ve contributed, when it comes to the picture, many of these people don’t have any free photos of themselves on the web, so while they are “notable” on Wikipedia, their images aren’t free of the copyright of the photographer, or the institution who hired the photographer to take the picture. Often, even the subject of the article can’t make an image available to the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community. This means that a lot of people who have a Net presence have a legally encumbered Net presence. By making these pictures available under a Creative Commons license, now they do. The third part of the pun is that, since I’m asking for a model release from the subjects, I’m asking everyone to be much more open and giving about their image than most people typically are. The fact is, it’s much more likely that somebody is going to use these pictures for something positive, rather than for something negative. In a way, giving up your image and allowing anyone to use it: it’s the ultimate gift.
 They are the CEO of Creative Commons.
 They share their photos through Creative Commons.  They are a board member of Creative Commons.  They share their personal image through Creative Commons.  They are the CEO of Creative Commons.