Diane Jarvis-Schuller

Do you know your rights as a writer or as an artist? If you are not a writer, illustrator, photographer, artist, musician, do you know how NOT to infringe on those rights?

I’ve written posts before about photographer’s rights, but as a writer as well, I am amazed at how people give no value at all to the rights of writers. Without professional writers there would be no history books, no newspapers, no news at all, no novels, no books of poetry, no comic books, no children’s books, no textbooks, no how-to books or reference books, no greeting cards, none of it. Protecting, or even enhancing, copyright laws is vital. With the Internet, people have become numb to or choose to be ignorant regarding the rights of the creators of words, photographs, or music. All of these works are created by someone and those “someones” should be compensated for their work, not forced to work for free.

Even if you know nothing about copyright — in fact, especially if you know nothing about copyright — this very short video puts copyright issues in very simple and easy-to-understand terms. I urge you to please watch it, understand its importance, and support the copyright of writers and artists of all venues. Please.

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For those who may not have seen my original post on “Posting Photos Online”, it deals with every person who posts photos on the Internet, whether it’s Facebook, Flickr, or other venues.

So glad you asked about that. I do have specific policies about that included in my “Client Info” tab under “Policies and FAQ” posted above and on my website, as well as in my “Welcome” package that I send to all my clients. I’ll respond with more clarification in this open letter. What I share here pertains to most photographers, not just me.

I love it when clients want to show off their images. That’s why I encourage displaying beautiful prints in your home and office. In this electronic world, the unfortunate thing is that some people assume the moment an image is online, it’s ‘free for the taking’. This confuses me because we don’t think that when farmers display their produce at the market; or clothing retailers hang their designer items on racks; or the local restaurant puts out their lunchtime buffet, that we can simply help ourselves and not pay for what we take. Yet when an artist or photographer displays photos online, some people feel it’s okay to take it.

I sure don’t want to be a big boob here but since you’ve asked the question, I’ll publicly respond with some important considerations. Pull up a chair and your favourite beverage while I begin to unravel the maze of considerations. Just as Maya Angelou says, “If we know better, we do better.” So I’m offering this so everyone will know better and be able to do the right thing.

Here are a few things to know about photographers in general plus my personal policies:

1. Please DO ask your photographer what their policy is regarding taking photographs from their website or blog, if they don’t already have that information posted. Most photographers don’t allow it – I definitely do not allow it. Most photographers use our blogs to promote our work and, as a courtesy to our clients, we also like to share a sneak peek from the recent photo session.

2. Please always remember that © is for copyright (the originator of the work owns the rights to the work whether it is words, images, or music).

3. If your photographer does allow you to use photos from their website or blog, please DO include the full name of your photographer (or the business name), including a link to his/her website – or at the very least to include the url so others can find them. Plain and simple that is a polite courtesy. In essence, the photographer has provided you with a sample to use.

4. I have recently implemented a new policy, specifically to accommodate clients who may want to share images with friends & family in online venues such as Facebook, a private blog, or other social media. With my new policy, for every image that a client orders a beautiful print, I will email a low resolution, watermarked version of that photo suitable for sharing in any social networking site, at no additional fee.

5. When a photographer does provide you with an image(s) for sharing in this way, DO NOT crop out their logo/watermark! In my policies, and with most photographers, it is clearly stated not to manipulate the photos. Removing a logo/watermark is definitely manipulating the photo.

6. Please DO NOT edit the picture. An important part of a photographer’s work is also involved in the darkroom or the digital darkroom. If you are a digital scrap booker or someone who loves to learn and use digital software, that’s great, just don’t experiment with the photographer’s photos. You may think you can do a better job or maybe you are experimenting with things like selective colour, please don’t alter the photographer’s image. Not only is it insulting but, for those who know the photographer took the picture, they will assume the photographer did the digital editing and I can guarantee none of us want our work altered in any way. Alter your own images please.

7. Please DO NOT take scans of a photographer’s photos and then try to print them. Not only is this illegal but the resulting quality is drastically lost and reflects very poorly on the photographer. If you are trying to save money, perhaps you should consider getting a neighbour or relative to take your photos and have them printed at a retail establishment. With custom photography not only are you paying for the considerable amount of time the photographer puts into every session (and editing process) but you’re also paying for expertise, packaging, one-on-one customer service, a higher quality print product, and the costs of doing business.

8. Don’t forget, a professional photographer whether s/he works full time or part time, as I do, is a business person. We have all the costs of doing business that other entrepreneurs have including office supplies, product samples, office equipment, photography supplies and equipment, marketing, insurance, shipping costs, professional development, and a wide range of other expenses. When someone helps themselves to photos we have displayed online, it is no different than shoplifting from our store.

“If we know better, we do better.” ~ Maya Angelou

I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of positive experiences this past year with my clients. I know some photographers are not as fortunate as I have been with some of the experiences they’ve had with their clients, in terms of photo shoplifting. Unfortunately over at Flickr I’m no longer posting photos because of the high incidence of theft.  I’m so glad you asked this of me because it gives me the opportunity to openly share my thoughts and policies with you. Even if you have hired someone else this past year to take your visual keepsakes, I hope you will adhere to the photographer’s policies with respect to the images they display in their online store/gallery. We can’t sell our products and services if we can’t safely display our wares.

That nicely segues into the ideal opportunity for me to thank each and every one of my clients particularly this past year – THANK YOU! My business has grown by leaps and bounds considering I have chosen to keep it as a part time business. I have new and exciting things to offer my clients coming in 2010 and I look forward to capturing more of your special moments through my lens!

This post and all photographs on this blog are Copyright © Diane Schuller. All Rights Reserved. That means it is illegal to copy any part of this or to copy and use any of the photographs for any purpose whatsoever. If you wish to reprint this information, you must contact Diane Schuller to make a request. You are welcome to create a link in your blog or website to this page, however. Thank you for respecting my copyright.

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MORE INFORMATION:

Protect Your Online Images plus  Posting Photos Online (especially of children).

Diane is an on-location natural light photographer serving Edmonton & Grande Prairie, Alberta. Visit Diane Schuller Photography.

{This will be much longer than most of my posts, due to the nature of the subject. I must also warn that this was written with my own personal views and, as you’ll discover, I have some strong opinions on this topic.}

As soon as we post a photo online, it’s out there, a sitting duck for anyone who may wish to do so, to come and grab a copy of it and use it for who-knows-what purpose. It happens and it happens more on certain sites than others. This is particularly important to be aware of if we are posting photos of children and you can guess why that is. In this digital world photos are easily manipulated in ways that I will leave to your imagination. I wrote a post earlier this year about protecting your online images and, if you haven’t read it, that may be an ideal starting point in realizing how often & easy it is to steal other people’s photos. You’ll notice that in the past year or more all the photos I upload either have my watermark or have the copyright © symbol attached (Notice how big and almost obnoxious it is? That’s intentional). This doesn’t necessarily stop someone from stealing it but it makes more work for someone who might be wanting the photo. I also have the right click disabled although people can still take screen shots if they really want to grab a photo. Even though this is totally illegal and against all copyright laws, people do this kind of thing everyday. I’ve already gone slightly off track. Let’s talk about posting photos of children online, specifically about posting them at public photo sharing sites such as Flickr.

I admit that I did post a few photos of children on my Flickr account. I never used to but earlier this year I began to think it couldn’t be that bad. Each time (and that was only 5 or 6 total photos) I did not add tags and was very careful about the title I attached. Why, you wonder? Because those creeps out there who are looking for photos of children to put on their website, to manipulate the photos in ways that are disgusting, search using the keywords many people put in their tags: child, children, baby, toddler, kids, bath time, girl, boy, and so on. Those creeps also go to public sites such as Flickr, in particular, because there are thousands of photos of children posted free for the taking, many of which are tagged. They can find them anyway even if they’re not tagged but they have to work a bit harder to get around that — but they do. When they go to Flickr, for example, they also head straight to the Groups where thousands of images in one subject area (kids, women, babies, etc.) exist and make it so easy to pick and choose whatever they want.  The reason I have pointed out Flickr is because it’s a known ‘playground’ for these people who steal photos for any purpose but that includes weirdos who want photos of children. They also know that there are public places (such as Flickr) where the pickings are easy and plentiful so they tend to go for the easy fishing holes. After all, why head out into the big wide ocean (or Internet) when you know there are these great spots where there are so many fish you can actually pick and choose?

So, if you’re going to stick with using a public photo sharing site, there are ways to make it less easy (notice I didn’t say hard) to access photos of your children. You can change your settings (but this is NOT foolproof) so the images are not public but only available to friends or family. It’s really important to leave titles blank or not to use titles that say things like “Timmy in the tub” or “Baby Brenda bare on the rug” — you get the idea. Avoid tagging the images especially with some of the words/phrases I mentioned earlier in this post. Don’t post images in Groups at Flickr. Check every single person who “follows you” or becomes “a contact”: if they don’t have images, block them; if they have questionable images, block them. Don’t post images of children posed in adult-like poses. I have seen two different ‘photographers’ on Flickr who have posted photos of children (theirs, I think) and they have them posed in seductive Hollywood-like poses — I’m talking toddlers and elementary aged children. It’s disgusting in my view but talk about tempting the weirdos. Or, you can do as I’ve done and remove every single photo of a child from Flickr.

Is there a safe online place? No. But if you’d like to have a way of sharing your children’s photos, why don’t you simply email a few to grandparents, aunts & uncles, or friends? Or better yet, mail a few prints to them. Consider avoiding these sites altogether and burn photos to CD and mail it to family & friends. If you really, really want to have an online spot for your child’s photos there are places that are less dense in terms of numbers and that require password protection. That is likely what I would suggest as an alternative to the public photo sharing sites. For anyone who has a Mac for instance, you can use the online gallery (MobileMe) with the password protection turned on (again, don’t tag them) and make the url available only to grandparents, relatives, and close friends. Also, change that password from time to time; don’t use the same one all the time. Password protection is a help but it definitely is NOT foolproof either. If you don’t have a Mac then seek out a place where you at least have the password protection for people to view the photos such as FamiPix, but there are others out there. (By the way my personal view is that I am adamantly against the use of Facebook for photos of any kind. But that’s a long topic all by itself.)

One quick note about blogs. If you post photos of your children on your blog, be sure you are (daily) checking your comments and those who are linking to you. Get savvy in realizing that many of these creeps attach themselves to blogs by saying things like “Love your site” “what great information” “I’ll come back” and other smarmy, flattering things. Many are spelled incorrectly, some aren’t using proper English (though some do), many use women’s names (that are surely false btw), but they are a bad kind of spam. Many of them are ‘feeder’ blogs (linking to you and linking to ___ ). Get rid of them! I have visited some of your blogs and have seen these in your comments; I’ve even given a hint in my comments, so hope the hint was caught. Be careful because this sort of spam is for sites that don’t respect children, if you understand what I mean. Don’t be flattered — that’s what they are counting on; check them out, thoroughly.

So now, some of you are wondering about why I post photos of children here on my photo journal. I’m not alone and you’ll find that nearly all photographers who photograph children and families, do post those images on their websites and blogs. These are harder to find for those weirdos out there because they go where the fishing is thick and easy. Would they or could they grab a photo from a photographer’s site? They could, but ours are harder to locate in terms of tags but also harder to capture (unless they do screen shots). It’s so much easier for them to head to those public places where they can pick and choose and help themselves so easily, I doubt they head off into deep water much at all. And then they have to get rid of the watermarks and so on … it’s so much easier to head to their favourite fishing hole (Flickr and Facebook public pages).

There’s more to discuss about this topic but I hope this gives people food for thought. Feel free to share these thoughts with others or to send the url of this post to others. Get a discussion going. Consider safer ways to share photos of your children. I think a lot of grandparents, in particular, would prefer to get actual snapshots of their grandchildren in the mail rather than those online glimpses. {Yes, I practice what I preach: although I do email a few photos to family, I regularly have images of the grandkids printed and send them in the mail! Who doesn’t love to receive mail?}

Recommended Resource:

“How Safe are Photo-Sharing Websites?” this addresses another important aspect of safety ( I recommend printing this article out and sharing the url with others so they can do the same. )

UPDATE (July 2010) FYI: The same principle now applies to posting photos on Facebook. Those same creeps who have been using the thick pool of photos-in-one-place for stealing photos of kids, babies, or women are now doing the exact same thing with Facebook. That is why I deleted my Facebook business page earlier this year and now only have a personal page for friends-only (and I have NO photos posted there either).

This post and all photographs on this blog are Copyright © Diane Schuller. All Rights Reserved. That means it is illegal to copy any part of this or to copy and use any of the photographs for any purpose whatsoever. If you wish to reprint this information, you must contact Diane Schuller to make a request. You are welcome to create a link in your blog or website to this page, however. Thank you for respecting my copyright.

As soon as we post one of our photos online, it is immediately at risk of being stolen and used in other people’s blogs or websites (often as their own), manipulated and posted who-knows-where for who-knows-what purpose. Some images are even used to make money for the person who has helped themselves to your photo.

I wrote a post on my previous blog about protecting ourselves against this type of theft and will reproduce it here for easy reference. The reprint of this post also explains to those who help themselves to photos (whether they realize it is illegal or they don’t realize that fact) the correct way to go about asking for permission or where to find photos that are open to be used with permission. This is not a definitive article by any means but is an introduction to the topic providing links to more in-depth articles for detailed information. Here now is the reprint from this blog:

As many of you know, once you put your images online, you risk having them stolen by people who seem to think they are free. Some of these people help themselves to our photos for their blogs or websites and others are making money from them. We need to know how to protect our images.

Thanks to Roberta of Uncommon Depth, she has shared information for those posting at Flickr who are concerned about people who help themselves to our photos. It’s such important and helpful information, I too am passing along this helpful article on protecting your images.

That article by Greg Cope spells out specific ways to protect your images and I encourage you to read it and take steps for protecting your images from theft. You’ll notice that I have begun adding a watermark and, in some photos, I include both a watermark and a copyright notice. Sure someone can still steal the image. With the small copyright notice on the bottom corner that many people use, it’s so easy for anyone to clip that off and use the photo. The watermark is a bit more difficult to remove but people can do it — if they want the photo badly enough. My hope is that most who steal photos will be discouraged when they encounter my photos with a big watermark (or two of them) appearing on the photo.

I’ve also begun to make the photos smaller in [resolution] size over at Flickr plus in this photo journal have disabled the right-click feature so it can’t be downloaded to start with.

This past week I deleted a bunch of my photos over at Flickr because they are real easy to steal plus Flickr is a hotbed for photo theft. No doubt you too have heard many stories of those who have experienced photo theft. I’ve actually had people tell me to my face that if they need a photo for their blog, website, (and a teacher who uses them for teaching tools) or other purpose the first place they go is Flickr! And you can bet your bottom dollar they don’t ask the artist for permission either. That is theft, pure and simple. So, I have decided that in the next month I will be removing a bunch more of my images from Flickr and the ones I plan to leave there will be replacing them with a duplicate that has my watermark plastered prominently in the image.

It has always astounded me that a person might see a neighbour’s tools in the backyard but they’d ask permission to borrow them yet the same person won’t think twice about helping themselves to a photographer’s photos (or a writer’s writings) and then slip away in the night.

If you’re on the other end however, as a person who is interested in using images found on the web, there IS a proper and legal way of doing so:

• If you see an image you are interested in using for your own blog or website, check the person’s website/blog or photo sharing site (such as Flickr) for information on their copyright or copyright policy. You’ll usually find this information on a page or sidebar such as the “about”, “copyright”, “permissions”, “profile”, or similar page/area.
• If the copyright notice indicates “All Rights Reserved” — they are definitely not yours for the taking.
• Now you need to contact that person (and that information is usually always available as well) to request permission to use their image. Don’t be afraid to do this; some people are flattered and will grant you permission. Some will ask for compensation. Don’t take it personally if they choose not to provide permission. After all, it does belong to them.
• If you don’t get permission and are really in need of a particular type of photo for your blog or website, use your search engine using keywords, “creative commons + [keyword for type of image you need]“. There are some people who have images available under licence as creative commons. Those are images where permissions will be granted for your use, yet you likely will be required to provide attribution (give credit to the specific owner). Flickr has a listing of their members who provide creative commons images as well as a simple explanation in the sidebar on what the particular type of creative commons entails.
• Not so difficult, right? And this way it’s legal.

Jenn and Karina over at Tiny Choices blog are a great example of the correct way to use other’s photos and how to give proper attribution. (Note that they use photos from Flickr that fall under “creative commons” and that they correctly provide attribution & a link directly to the individual; it is not correct to give attribution to Flickr because Flickr does not own the photos.)

I hope this is helpful in providing information on how to protect your images online. On the opposite hand, if you know of someone who may benefit from learning about the legal way of using online images, please share the link to this particular post. You are also welcome to link to this post from your own blog or website to share with others.

“If we know better, we do better.” ~ Maya Angelou

PS: I want to re-emphasize reading that article noted & linked to at the beginning of this post (the one by Greg Cope). My post is an effort to begin the conversation and to offer some tips and suggestions. Mr. Cope’s article is much more indepth and provides very specific how-to information in this regard.