For San Francisco Street Artists Only

Dear SF Street Artists:

graffitisf.com now features over 1,000 images of murals and other forms of street art in San Francisco, so it’s likely that your contributions are represented here, and if they’re not yet, they eventually will be.

If your street-art-work appears in one of the photos included on the site, you’re welcome to that photo for your personal or promotional use. You can use that photo in your own site or in any publication about you. You can put it on your business card, make a T-shirt or whatever you want…

If you ask, I will give you a copy of the original files (usually a RAW or .jpg) and the processed files (usually a .tiff or .psd, sometimes a .png).  Let me know of any specific file preference or requirements.

You’re welcome to link directly from your web site to the file at graffitisf.com (but if you do this let me know so I won’t move the photo from that location) or you can place a copy of that file in your own server (my preference). Remember that the files used on the website have been optimized for the Internet and are much smaller than the original and the processed files.

The only thing I ask is that you credit the photo appropriately (Photo by Jerry A. Sierra/graffitisf.com) when you use it.

This offer applies to creators of murals, wall paintings, sidewalk stencils and anything else that decorates our public spaces with meaning or noise… and it applies equally to visiting and local artists whose works appear in photographs on the site;

If your work appeared on a public space in San Francisco, and I took a picture of it, and that picture is on the site, you can have a copy of that picture. In some cases it may be that I have other photos of your work at other locations that have not made it as far as the web site yet, and you can also have those.

Graffiti providers should keep in mind that I do not wish my images or emails used to identify your work in court and send you to jail, so if you write me, don’t admit to an art “crime” in an email that could be read by garden-variety spooks and who knows who else.

For the record (and not that this would ever come up) photos which show defaced murals will not be made available to those who vandalized them, only to the creators of the vandalized work, should they want them.

It has always been my intention that these photos exist to illuminate, not to prosecute… to help enlighten art lovers and promote street artists and showcase the unique beauty and turmoil of our times as reflected across the public space.

-

Some say that photographers are like hunters with “the killing instinct,” but not the “desire” to kill… Instead of death we deliver “eternity…” or the illusion of eternity.

It is this illusion that drives me to photograph street art locations, and I hope this serves as a proper thank you to the many street artists that make this such a unique and wonderful place in which to “hunt.”  

- Jerry