Monthly Archives: April 2014

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Dana Nichole Photography in Kansas City, Missouri

Gallery 432 Comments

Website: http://www.dananichole.com/

Blog:  http://dananichole.com/blog/

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/dananicholephotography

Craigslist: http://kansascity.craigslist.org/bfs/4405757468.html

Crowd Savings:  http://www.crowdsavings.com/kansas-city/23486-dana-nichole-photography

Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/dana-nichole-photography-kansas-city-2

One question I get a lot is why is wedding images the most featured here.  Partially it is because I’m a wedding photographer so that’s what I’m naturally drawn to but also these images tend to be the most stolen.  Many photographers start out doing portraits but then decide they are going to “break into” weddings because they see that’s where the money is at (never you mind that weddings are more expensive because they are much harder!).  Since they do not have their own portfolio to draw from for advertising, they use others.  This happens in other genres too (boudoir is second runner up!) but weddings seem to be the biggest money draw is so therefore it’s the category that’s most often featured.  I’m going to be doing a FAQ post soon, feel free to comment with your burning questions.

Her website appears to  be clear due to the lack of wedding images but the other sites are not so clean, including her blog which I find amusing that she disabled right clicks on.

Update 04/17/2014 @ 9:00AM

The owner/husband of the owner have commented below claiming the issue was only with the ONE Craigslist ad and the images were all from free wedding image websites.  I already showed images from the blog and Facebook, added images from the second Craigslist ad that included the recessional with the petals.

Note, it doesn’t matter if you are using free stock images (which all of these images are not stock imagery) it is dishonest to use these images to represent your personal body of work as a photographer, often it is also against the TOS of the stock image site.

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Blink Photography AKA Melissa Reina Photography AKA MRP Photography in Miami, Florida

Gallery 46 Comments

Instagram: http://instagram.com/blink_photography_miami

Instagram2: http://instagram.com/melissareina_photography

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blink-photograpy/643430482381345

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/Thepaleodivas

Typically I prefer to have some kind of URL or website for any fauxtographers that I out but I decided to go with this one since it seems that she’s getting a decent amount of bites out of her instagram only portfolio.  There are so many different names for this business that it makes me wonder if she’s been caught before.

Also, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about my listing of “unknown original source” due to a posting on slash dot.  When I list a source with “unknown original source” it means that while I am fairly certain the original source isn’t the listed photographer, it’s impossible to determine who the original source is because it’s everywhere on the internet and/or I don’t have the time to dig through hundreds of pins to find out.  I do not list images that belong to the photographer here.

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What to Do If Your Images Have Been Stolen

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You have found that your images have been stolen… now what?  You have a few different options on what you can do besides only reporting the theft to Photo Stealers.

1.  Send a Cease & Desist letter.  This is an email (you can find various form letters via Google) where you are requesting removal of your intellectual works from the website within a set amount of days before you pursue legal action.  This is not a requirement.  If you choose, you can skip to any of the following steps.

2.  File a DMCA. Often the stealer refuses to remove the copyrighted works so you need to move on to reporting the image as your intellectual property to the online host of the image – be it a website, Facebook etc.  To file a DMCA for a website, use Who is Hosting This to find the website host.  Here is a great walkthrough from the Photo Attorney.  If you need help with this, please feel free to contact me.  Facebook makes it pretty easy to file a DMCA – use the report feature and follow the links until you get an option to flag the image as your intellectual property.  Most other social media sites have a similar report feature.

3.  Send an Invoice.  Send the photographer/business an invoice outlining your cost for the use of the image for the length of time and purpose they used it for.  I highly recommend this method if you have had images stolen by a business but many have had luck with this method with photographers as well.

4.  File a lawsuit.  If you have had enough or have had no luck with the above steps, call a lawyer and file a lawsuit.  Note that you can sue even if the image was taken down when you requested.  You get more damages if your watermark was removed and/or if you have registered the image so make sure you are doing both!

 

Information

How To Find Out if Images Have Been Stolen

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Are you curious if your images and/or written works have been stolen?  Here are some sources to use online to track your intellectual works.   If you want to narrow down the selection, I suggest starting with the images most pinned on Pinterest that you’ve taken and going from there as that’s one of the most typical sources for stolen images.

1.  Google Reverse Image Search.  This is my default go-to for looking out sources of images.  You click on the camera icon in the search bar and upload the image.  Google then brings up the sources for the image that you searched for.

2.  TinEye.  This works in a similar way as Google Reverse Image Search and the results are usually the same but not always.

3.  Copyscape.  This works in the same way as the above but for written words instead of pictures.