Harry the Hat from mm.com
A photoshoot to me is the taking of photos for the financial benefit of either of the participants or a third party. In other words, if the photos are taken for the purposes of generating income then it's a photoshoot. There are also formal indentifiers of a professional photoshoot, such as release forms (don't know what you call them in the States), allowing the photographer usage of the images for a defined period of time and in defined media.
Take for example Tre and Gene, who Mike mentioned earlier. They may or may not pay their models, but if the photos are to be used in their members' sections, then they are part of the fresh material each month that members pay for, and material that will keep the members paying the following month.
Any set of images that requires people to buy into something - magazines, members sites, etc - to view them are de facto photoshoots and can be seen as contravening any other deals of exclusivity an athlete may have.
In this instance - I'm not totally up to speed on this case, so someone correct me where I'm wrong - this was an amateur photographer, not using a professional lighting rig, taking images that were placed in a free-to-access medium. It doesn't seem in any shape or form to constitute a 'photoshoot' as I'd understand it.
The only other question is - if no monies exchanged hands for the actual shoot and no one derived financial benefit from the usage of the shots - did the images cause financial loss to the party holding an exclusivity agreement with Silvio?
This is where the waters get very muddy. Will these shots cause a loss of sales for a print magazine or loss of subscriptions for a members' site? Both highly doubtful. Will they (I assume Silvio is an AMI athlete) cause a drop in traffic to the Flex site that would be detrimental to Flex Online's ability to attract and keep online advertisers? Also very unlikely. If anyone can prove that these shots created income for someone or deprived someone else of income, they're doing well.
The thing is, if we're here to gossip and speculate - and hey this is a message board after all - I don't think the present dispute has anything to do with the shoot or Silvio. I think it's all to with Milos. It goes back to the thread about the athletes' rep job.
Milos is making his pitch for the athletes' rep job and the IFBB don't like it. They like Bob - his intelligence, his personable manner and most of all they like the fact that he's fully house-trained. He represents the IFBB point of view well and communicates it clearly. Milos would be a different prospect, at least in theory. If he got the athletes' rep job, I don't believe that Milos would be either as revolutionary or antagonistic as the noises he's currently making. Milos is smart, he understands politics and he'd work the system, act as an IFBB insider and represent the IFBB views pretty much exactly the same as Bob is doing. But to get the job - like any good politician - Milos has to stake out a different ground to his rival. And that's what he's doing. He can create a few waves along the way, stir up a few revolts - which is what the IFBB are worried about - but at the end of the day he'll play the game. And he'll do so because if the athletes' rep job is a lucrative gig for Bob, its potential for Milos is many times that. Milos can raise his own profile, raise the profile of Team Milos athletes and increase the number of athletes in Team Milos. It can be a hugely important moneyspinner for him.
Meanwhile the IFBB are starting to fight back and Silvio is the first casualty in the wider battle. The fact that Bob is involved tells you why it matters to him and the fact that Shawn apparently chose to tell/text something to the effect of 'You're in deep sh*t big guy' to Silvio while the NY Pro was actually in progress tells you (a) Shawn's a big a tool as they say he is and (b) they wanted to scare the living sh*t out of Silvio.
And it worked. Silvio has split from Team Milos (I should imagine after someone had a little whisper in his ear that it would be beneficial to his long term prospects) and Milos is on the back foot. There will be a debate this Saturday between Bob & Milos -
http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=150026.0 - so expect a few more blunt objects to be wielded. There'll be tears before bedtime.
znaci idemo dalje , u subotu je debata izmedu milosa i boba, javim vam se kako je ispalo , inace ovaj text je fenomenalan