Patrick Hoelck is a well respected commercial photographer, artist and now, film director. He is the creator and captain behind a new online magazine, Pilfered.
Now in the world of advertising, photographers and directors are asked to present a visual interpretation of how they would approach a concept or creative brief. This, in addition to an estimate, is what gets the money. the job. the work. the deal.
To make this presentation, they use images from all over, and not limited to magazines, videos, Flickr, and anything else that may help illustrate their approach.
Patrick and his team have spent countless hours, days, weeks, putting together these style boards, and figured…hmmm, wouldn’t it be great if there was a repository of all of these efforts. And maybe other folks would want a resource of inspirational photographs.

And so Pilfered was born. When I first heard about it, just the name kinda tweaked me.
Pilfered as in “to steal”. Got it, not happy about it. Didn’t everyone on Facebook just get majorly outraged about ownership of their images?

Readers are asked to submit images that inspire them, not necessarily their own, and let the mag know where they come from. Publication, site, etc., with credits. If they didn’t know, like if it was from an ad where photog credits were not clear, the images was classified as “pilfered”
ooohhh, naughty.
OK, I do understand the editorial rights and the magazine was not intended to be sold. On the credits page there were some photogs credited.
After some deep discussion with Patrick fans on FB, I figured it was best to ask the man what was up.
After all, on his photography site, there was a big section on licensing and copyright of his images. So why come up with a mag called Pilfered, deliberately going against what he wants his work to be?

As they describe it:
“PILFERED is a place where art buyers, photographers, artists and designers alike submit their favorite visuals pilfered from the web to share with one another. Founded on the spirit to inspire and aid in communicating ideas and concepts, PILFERED Magazine aims to assist in speaking the thousand words – visually.

Its founder, artist Patrick Hoelck, and his team (Nate “Res” Harvey & Mia Van Valkenburg) spent hours in the past surfing the web to put together presentations for various commercial ad and editorial jobs. Patrick quickly noticed the hours it took to gather the images and felt it was time to have a massive image collective shared by the people for the people to make this process easier and a lot more fun. His initial description of PILFERED was “It will be the of wikipedia of images”.

Teaming up with new media and advertising creative director RUDJ, the two hope to build PILFERED into a destination for creatives to share, discover and participate in the dialogue of a new, exciting and forever changed landscape.

• Content on PILFERED is submitted from around the world and carefully edited by an in-house team, as well as a new monthly guest editor to keep issues cutting edge, fresh and informative.

• Contributors will be credited if their submitted images are chosen for a given issue. As the monthly grows, PILFERED’s goal is to provide exposure for photographers, designers and artists alike.

WELCOME TO PILFERED MAGAZINE – By the people, for the people.”

When we first met, he understood what the issues were, and felt that with a tiny staff, getting credits was too tough, but he would try harder.
And he did. Does.

The mag is beautiful and shares some great work. Photographers have told me that to be in his mag is a huge boon to their career.
But riddle me this: if there is no photo credit, HOW DOES ANYONE KNOW IT’S YOUR WORK ?????

©dwebster2009

We visited Patrick at his office today to get a better sense of who this cat was.
Pretty frickin’ cool history.
He’s directed some of the best music videos, and shot most of the top celebs.
But the path was kind of bass-ackwards from what you may think. He went from motion to still. Not the usual path.
He learned from Herb Ritt’s partner all he needed to know to get him started in photography. And that relationship occurred from standing outside smoking many cigs, and a meeting of the minds.
The studio has 2 Epson printers high atop cabinets, ready to make the latest promotional book. Prints are stacked on the wall, in layers, as are the huge collection of photo books. His assistant sits 15 ft away typing into her laptop, and you know she is keeping things in his world in a collected manner.
As we discussed his first photographic works, where everything was Tri-X shot at 200, he reached under our couch and pulled a print out to illustrate his style at the time.
Yes, he speaks in visuals.
This place was an epicenter of his world, his mind. And he knew exactly where everything was.
It may have been made tragically easier as a fire in 2001, destroyed all of his work, negatives, everything.
But he rebuilt, grew and continued to press forward.
This man’s energy and enthusiasm is boundless. He loves what he does.
His stories are fascinating, and we’ll bring you those in a video shortly.

And his first feature is breaking soon. Check out the trailer:

Now at the top of the article you may have felt this was going to become a blast on a cool new on-line pub using ripped off images.
So did we.
But we know now that the leader of the team, never intended that to happen. As concerned as he is for his copyright being honored, he wants the images included in the mag to be credited. And recently he added a call to all to see if your image has been included, to shout out either your credit line, or your wish to have it removed.
Quite honestly, with the people that check this pub out, you would want to keep it in. But get that credit you are due.
So we advise you to go Pilfered, see if any of your images are included (check those back issues too), and do what you gotta do.

And in the meantime, engage and enjoy the purity of the layout of this fine new on-line photographic experience.
Wait till you see the video interview. Very cool stuff.

So, what do you think? In this current tornado of rights arguments and Facebook owning or not owning your posted materials, where does this sit in that spectrum?

Add you comments below, and don’t worry if it says there was an error. It came through. Our tech dudes are working on it.