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You may get sued big time if you aren’t careful with what you upload to Unsplash

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Unsplash has in a short time become a major player in the photo-sharing industry. 174,000 photographers have uploaded images to the site. The platform this month boasts 5,000 views and 27 downloads per second. (PER SECOND!) People download images for blogs, classes, and other purposes, but also for commercial use. There is a big debate in the industry asking if Unsplash is good or bad, but it is not what I want to talk about today. Today I want to talk about the legal risks you face when you upload work to Unsplash. Not as the end-user, but as the photographer.

Photographers use Unsplash for exposure because of the enormous traffic the site generates. A company may hire a photographer for commercial assignments or simply want to license a high-resolution version of an image it found on Unsplash.

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Couple stages wedding for reshoot because their wedding photographer used stock photos in her portfolio

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I have warned people multiple times to do their research before hiring a wedding photographer. However, it seems that sometimes even that isn’t enough. A UK couple reportedly hired a photographer based on her portfolio only to discover that she had used stock photos in it. Their wedding photos apparently turned out so awful, that they had to restage the wedding for another shoot.

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The Canadian Internet Registration Authority has a free stock photo library, and it’s hilarious

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Even though it’s not their primary purpose, stock photography websites can be a source of hilarious images. But the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) made a stock photo gallery with the sole purpose of being funny. The gallery is filled with photos that poke fun at most common stereotypes about Canada, and it’s absolutely hilarious.

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Getty Images is dumping rights-managed “creative” image licenses to go exclusively royalty-free

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Getty Images has announced that after poring over sales data and customer research, they’re ditching the rights-managed licensing options and going over to royalty-free for their “creative” images. Announced over email, the news makes sense from a business standpoint. This will make it a better deal for customers and make Getty more money. But, it’s not necessarily such a great deal for photographers.

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Photographer faces legal action after using a photo he downloaded from Unsplash

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Many photographers argue that Unsplash is a disaster for the industry. But it seems that it can also be harmful to those who download and use photos from the website. Photographer, cameraman, and presenter Simon Palmer recently got into legal trouble after using a photo from Unsplash on his blog. Although the photo was from the “source of freely usable images,” Palmer got a copyright infringement notice from Copytrack requesting him to pay a license fee.

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Thieves may be selling your photos on Shutterstock

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While looking at my own images on Shutterstock, I noticed the Shutterstock algorithm was suggesting my photos as “similar” images. I thought it was a bug on the Shutterstock website until I noticed that others had downloaded my photos from other sites then uploaded them to Shutterstock. Shutterstock’s similar photos algorithm then noticed this and suggested the stolen photos along with my photos.

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After three years in stock photography: is it really worth it?

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Are you thinking about starting shooting stock photography? There are different opinions whether it’s a good move or not, and the experiences of photographers differ. If you’re still trying to make up your mind, I believe this video from Rachel Lerch will help you. After three years of shooting and selling stock photos, it’s time for a recap: is it really worth it? Listen to Rachel’s experiences and thoughts about both good and bad sides of stock photography.

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This photographer uploaded a photo to a royalty-free stock site only to find it on over 500,000 Walmart products

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Canadian photographer and filmmaker Michael Stemm recently sold an image through Shutterstock, earning $1.88. Little did he know that it would end up on Walmart products: 500,000 of them! A friend let him know when she noticed his image at Walmart, and the photographer believes that the company is taking advantage of him.

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Adobe is killing off Fotolia for Adobe Stock

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Stock photography website Fotolia is coming to an end. After Fotolia was acquired by Adobe, Adobe Stock was launched in June 2015, with its core asset collection coming from Fotolia.

Adobe Stock is now natively integrated with Photoshop and the Creative Cloud, and there just doesn’t seem to be a need for Fotolia anymore. So, it’s disappearing. Specifically, the Fotolia website will close on November 5th, 2019.

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How a model release turned an author into the poster child for…everything

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While a university student, author Shubnum Khan signed a model release in exchange for professional portraits as a part of a project by photographer XX billed as “The 100 Faces Shoot.” Unbeknownst to her at the time, the photographer started licensing the images as stock photography, and Khan’s visage started to appear in advertisements around the world selling everything from McDonald’s hamburgers to hyper pigmentation cream to management course materials.

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