Watermarks. I’m not a fan and really don’t like using them. But, when it comes to protecting our copyrights, incidents of late have made me rethink our whole policy.
While I can appreciate the fact that someone likes and wants to share an image, I can not allow theft of our images. There are sharing icons under an image for just that reason. If a person shares our images via one of those links, they and I can be assured that whomever sees the image will be viewing it as intended and that our copyrights are protected. One of the features of our host for galleries is those images can not be downloaded. In the past that was enough of a deterrent.
Recently, someone that we photographed made a frame grab of an image on one of our galleries and uploaded it to Facebook. They didn’t attribute the image, just posted it. Aside from the fact that the person did not have permission, one of the problems I have is the fact that the frame grab is not a finished product and totally misrepresents our work. The image file size is at least 3,800 pixels wide when I upload to my site. Most times when viewing on my site the image will display at at least 900 pixels wide. Those images are optimized for viewing on the site at that size. Then someone views the image on their iPhone and makes a frame capture of that picture. That image size is roughly 400 pixels wide. When posting the image on Facebook it looks nothing like we originally intend or want.
When we do find that someone has posted one of our images on Facebook without permission, we immediately report it and have it removed from Facebook.
There is a huge expense in producing high resolution images. Each camera costs at least $3,000 and then you factor in travel time, fuel, tolls, insurance, car insurance, etc., it adds up quickly. We can’t allow people to STEAL images from our site and post them somewhere without our permission.
We reserve the right to control how an image is reproduced because that is how we stay in business.
It seems that people generally do not understand that when we make a picture, we own the copyright of the image as well as the right to reproduce that image any way we see fit. We may chose to have an agreement, in writing that the client can reproduce the image, but that is at our discretion. And the client NEEDs to have permission via a written LICENSE to reprint pictures.
So, for those reasons, you may see some of our gallery images now feature a watermark like the one above. Proof CD’s will also now come with watermarked images.
Print orders will not be watermarked.
I do apologize for any inconvenience, but we need to protect our work and copyrights.
Please do not infringe upon our copyrighted work.
