In our copyright class in school, we were taught that photographers do give up copyright in the specific case of work-for-hire (with all the criteria for determining work-for-hire that entails; a la CCNV vs Reid).

I've certainly had to get "work-for-hire" verbiage stricken from client contracts, but I'd love to be wrong about that.

As far as I'm aware though, except for that, copyright is granted to the "artist" who created the work[1].

[1] With one famous exception: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110713/11244515079/can-we...