Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
If the real world worked like the online-photography world of stolen photos posted to websites and ads:
<insert crying>
Why is everyone so mad? I never said it was MY car. And I didn’t know it was wrong. I mean, I saw a car that I really wished my car looked like, and it was unlocked and the keys happened to be inside and so I just used it to run errands and go to work and drive around town. And when people said, “Hey, I love that car!” I said “Thank you,” because I love it, too.
In 2015, the city of Calgary commissioned artist Derek Michael Besant $20,000 CAD (around $15,500 USD) for a public exhibit. Two years later, the exhibition has been taken down because it turns out that Besant used copyrighted images without permission.
A traveler to Calgary noticed that one of the images in the installation resembled UK Comedian Bisha Ali. After Ali was notified, the deception began to unravel and the artist was exposed for fraud.
If you are a good photographer and you upload your photos online, it’s inevitable that someone will steal them at some point. Although it’s in a way flattering that someone likes your photos, it’s by no means the way to express their liking.
If you want to check whether someone has stolen your photos and where they are, Anthony Morganti discusses four possible ways of doing it. Three of them are free and one is paid, and all of them can do a fair job in finding your images on online places where they don’t belong.
It’s a fact of life these days for photographers that our work may be stolen if we post it online. No matter what level of photography we’re at, if you post enough images to the web, it’s simply become an inevitable consequence of sharing out work with the masses.
Sometimes it’s an honest mistake, somebody loves your image, likes it enough to share it, and just doesn’t about copyright or crediting the auther. Other times, the infractions are a little more serious, and the intent becomes obvious, as Australian photographer Steve Arklay discovered.
Backup, backup, backup – these are three of the best pieces of advice any photographer will ever receive.
Unfortunately for Iowa photographer Haleigh Wehr, her backup process was either lacking on non-existent, and the result is a devastating loss after her car was broken into on Wednesday night.
Items valued at thousands of dollars were stolen, according to KCCI, including two laptops and Wehr’s wallet, but the most painful loss does not carry a price tag – six memory cards containing over 20 photo shoots.
Thousands of photos of family portraits, weddings and newborn photos were gone, and Wehr had to contact each client explaining that they might never receive their photos.
Whenever I’ve shot weddings, I’ve had nightmares about things going wrong, from malfunctioning equipment to missing important shots to losing the images I captured. However, for one couple and their wedding videographer, those nightmares became a reality.
Los Angeles couple Alejandra and Brian received a call from their videographer a day after their wedding stating that the memory cards containing the footage from their special day were stolen. According to KTLA5, the cards were with the photographer’s cameras and other gear inside his parked car when it was broken into sometime overnight.
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A Vancouver based wedding photographer, name removed – see update below, suffered a devastating blow this week. While photographing a wedding the photographer’s car was broken into and the thief made off with her bag which contained her laptop, the sole keeper of a heap of wedding photos. Of course the laptop is replaceable, but the 2,000 bridal photographs housed on it are not.
With how fast social media is growing, there’s an equal amount of increase in copyright conflicts as well; photography comes into the picture. In this day and age, it’s insanely easy to remove whatever watermarks you want from a photo, post it on a publication as your own work, and reap the benefits of whoever originally took the photo in the first place. Hey, it’s easy money, isn’t it? Especially if the photographer’s not some well known big-shot with clients working under their name and about 16,000 followers on their Instagram account. Most likely, they’ll barely notice that their photo was even found and posted by someone out there like that.
Fortunately, one good thing about the photography world is that no matter how well known one is, a photographer with a loyal following will always have people looking out for them. Kathy Shea Mormino is one of them, and she just found herself in some serious East-versus-West Coast style beef with a magazine publication over use of her work (Except without the rap battles. But that would have been awesome.) It started off as a simple matter of notifying the publisher and making a cease and desist. Then, for some bizarre reason, the magazine decided to respond in one of the most unprofessional ways you’ll ever see an online publication behave. Thanks to the guys over at Adweek for the information on the story.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
Find my work on My website or follow me on Facebook or My page
