Is it an infringement in copyright if you take a picture of a photo of yourself?

Is it an infringement in copyright if you take a picture of a photo of yourself? If so, why?

The fact that it is a photo of you is irrelevant.

If you take a photograph of another photo then there would be certain creative decisions you would make, such as lighting, angle, white balance, contrast, and medium that make the resultant photograph a derivative work, with two copyrights, one for the underlying original work and another for the elements you add.

Making the photo in itself would not be a copyright violation, but what you do with the resultant image if you publish or distribute it might or might not be depending on a number of factors. Is your use fair use? what are the rights granted to you? Is the underlying photo in the public domain? or a Creative Commons image and you publish in accordance with the license? And also what countries’ copyright laware the two images created under?

If the photo were of someone else then there could also be rights of publicity of the subject, or the original photo might have been taken with a model release (contract) specifying allowed uses of the image, which would likely also apply to any derivative works.

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