Ruud Koot wrote:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
Ruud Koot wrote:
I doubt the drawing preserves any features of the photograph of which the photographer could claim to have copyright on.
It does seem to preserve composition.
Yes, but photographer did not arrange it. If it wasn't indicated I couldn't have told you (with absolute certainty) that the drawing was based on the photograph, or because the author had seen that game.
That's an interesting argument. Not having ever watched cricket, I can't tell if the viewpoint chosen by the photographer if one from which people in the audience might plausibly also see the game.
Of course, in any case, the photographer presumably did pick his vantage point deliberately, and chose to record and publish that particular moment in time rather than, say, take the photo two seconds later from a point five meters to the left.
The copyrightability of photographs is a surprisingly complex question, but also one which most jurisdictions have chosen to answer with a firm "yes". Nonetheless, it is important to note that the creative content in a photo consists of only three elements:
1. Where to point the camera? 2. When to click the shutter? 3. What settings to use?
Of course, postprocessing may involve additional creative decisions, but that is not essential to the image being copyrightable. Thus it follows, as a logical consequence, that any reproduction of the subject that preserves a significant fraction of those elements must constitute a derivative work.
The drawing in question preserves the former two, together known as the composition. While it effectively masks (some of) the technical choices used to produce the photograph, the fact that the drawing depicts the same moment in time from the same vantage point -- even with the same field of view -- makes it highly unlikely that the drawing could've been created without basing it on the photograph.
In fact, having thought about it, I must disagree with your claim above. The drawing does contain enough distinguishing details, including the pose of the players and the position of the balls, that, if presented side by side, I would find the odds of the drawing being based on anything other than that specific photograph vanishingly small.