A nutcracker illuminated by the lights of a Christmas tree.

The week between Christmas and New Years is traditionally slow for myself as far as image-making. Every year, as a result of the “down time,” I fill out the appropriate form and ship pictures off to the U.S. Copyright office. The process of copyrighting takes maybe just over an hour, but it’s well worth the time and energy later on if something comes up.

The first year I sent pictures in for copyright, I feel like the process took forever. That’s mostly because I had no clue what I was doing. Now, several years later, I have an extremely streamlined process and I’m done before I know it.

If you’re interested: I use Form VA each year and it costs $85. I’ll go into Adobe Lightroom and export all of my pictures taken during the year to a folder on my desktop. The file size doesn’t have to be spectacular; just enough to show your picture is indeed your picture. That folder is then copied to a DVD and sent via UPS to the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington D.C. Yes, I am well aware there is a cheaper method available ($35) and it involves simply uploading images via their secure server, but there is also a 60-minute window where you can upload as much as you can upload, and that’s it. If you go past that 60-minute window you’re out another $35. For me, it’s easier to just ship the images out on a DVD and be done with it, plus I receive confirmation that it was received and signed for (the government is VERY slow to cash checks) and I also make an exact duplicate of everything I send in.

One of the nice things about using the mail-in method is I send in a boatload of images spread across several disks. In my labeling, all I needed to do was “Kettner 1 of 3,” “Kettner 2 of 3,” and “Kettner 3 of 3” all for the one price of $85. If copyrighting music, movies, paintings or pictures, it is nice to have the flexibility of more than one hour and more than a 11.3MB file.

1112. (2244)