Just had an interesting email which shows the importance of watermarking your images.
Photograph by Chris Willson (not Youko Maeda!)
The webmaster of a model / photographer website contacted me saying that he was suspicious of a new member’s application. The new member, a photographer named “Youko Maeda” from “Hawaii”, uploaded some examples of her photographs (including the one above) all of which had TRAVEL 67 watermarks on them. The webmaster decided to visit http://www.travel67.com found out the photographer was a Chris Willson and not a Youko Maeda and got in touch. The new member’s application has been denied, hopefully thwarting some dirtbags plans.
A simple watermark gives potential clients or customers the ability to find who the owner of the copyright is, and hopefully dissuades others from stealing your work.
Having said that people can still crop or photoshop watermarks away. This is one of the reasons why I don’t have huge images on the web. I once got an “Okinwan Souvenir” on Facebook of some Taketomi Island star sand. Ironically the tiny gift image had been taken from my website by the application creator without my permission. I contacted the creator, Fernando Nakasone, but got no reply. Whether this was incompetence or maliciousness I don’t know but it is another reminder that photographers need to protect their work.
TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography 
Contentious issue, and one to which there isn’t one single answer. You work professionally and your paying audience is offline so it makes perfect sense for you to do this.
An amateur like me isn’t really in the same situation. I have no expectation of getting paid for my pictures; in a way, the finished images are less important to me than the process of taking them. Just getting the images seen is enough for me, so rather than trying to fight reuse, I allow people to use my images as long as they credit me and don’t sell them for profit.
It’s surprisingly rare for me to find anybody not complying with those terms (some images of mine tend to show up where I’m likely to notice). And almost without fail, once I gently remind them that they need to credit me or link back to me they’re only too happy to do so.
And it’s not completely without its rewards. People sometimes want to use them for profit, and I get paid – in money or in other ways. Just yesterday I found a UPS package at home with a children’s book on robotics that used two of my images; the deal was, they can use the images and I get a copy of the book. A book that gives me much more enjoyment than a few thousand yen would have.
Janne’s comment is typical of most amateur photographers and although I understand the sentiment, the reality is that in not protecting your images you undermine the whole of the photographic industry. Taking images without your permission, whether malicious or intentional, is stealing. The only difference being that it is done with the assistance of the internet – rather than by picking a lock.
If Youko Maeda had broken into Chris Wilson’s house and stolen that picture off the wall or from his files, I suspect people like Janne would understand the issue more.
It is stealing. Nothing less. You may not need, or desire, payment for your images, Janne, but you are condoning a crime which has a massive impact on the photographic industry. You are encouraging these people to take the bread off my table and the money out of my pocket.
It is not stealing. I give explicit permission for non-commercial use, provided I am credited. The images are mine to do whatever I want with, and if I want to share them with others in this manner it is neither legally or morally wrong. It’s really no different from open source programmers giving away their code, scientists giving away their research papers or people sharing their food recipes with others.
And no, I am not undermining professional photography, any more than giving your recipes away undermine professional cooking. Chris and others are not really selling pictures any more than a restaurant chef is selling food. After all, anyone can learn to cook a decent meal or take a decent picture. They’re selling the expertise and experience that goes into making the exact product the customer wants, and doing so legally, reliably and on time, every time. That is not threatened by amateurs, whether they’re wielding spatulas or strobes.
Her phone number. My inbox. You know the rest!
Shocking that you’ve had images stolen though. On a much lower level than you, I’ve had someone in Brazil of all places copy a bunch of my photos from a drag race event and post them on some car forums as their own. For me, anyone can use my photos pretty much as long as they ask me first. I understand it’s very different in your case where you get commissioned to do these photos and are actually good at what you do.
The name “Youko Maeda” and “Hawaii” were both made up. The person, possibly (or perhaps probably) a guy rather than a girl, is we think based in Japan. In the case of the surfer shoot the issue is someone using my images to masquerade as a photographer and possibly con models by claiming to do portfolio shoots and then requesting a deposit to reserve the session.
If the guy who created Okinawan Souvenirs asked for my permission to use it for free I might have said yes. However, if you can make money from applications when they are used on Facebook I would probably have asked for a small fee.
I think Flickr has a great system where it is clear whether an image is All Rights Reserved, Creative Commons or all the variants in between. The only problem however is that images have a tendency to migrate (or spawn) from one website to another so comments about image rights or attribution may or probably won’t stick with the photograph unless they are actually a part of the image.
Who’s the surfboard girl?
Interesting read. I’ve decided to remove all of my highres photos from flickr. I’ll be uploading only watermarked medium-res images for the public from now on.
I’ll probalbly still post non-watermarked images for family and friends. If someone needs a highres image to work with, they can always contact me and make arrangments.