Stealing. Stealing ideas, work, time. I have had it in my heart to write a short blog about photography theft. A great and talented photographer friend of mine and I sat drinking coffee the other morning talking about how its so easy for some people in our profession to claim to be these incredible photographers, and charge rates that are ridiculous only to find out that A) they stole their whole marketing plan from a fellow photographer and B) the work they have up on their site isn’t theirs. It’s a shame really. Not only do they do a disservice to themselves, but also to the photography community and, most importantly, their clientele. The biggest issues here is trust. The one thing in humanity, in my opinion, that is so hard to attain once it’s been lost.
I recently heard of a case where a “photographer” stole from various photographers for iamges on her website, even her bio was stolen. Imagine… to not even be able to write a bio for yourself! Her clients I’m sure were in for a rude awakening when they saw that the work she did for them was not as the one she promoted. On top of that she was charging incredibly high rates for mediocre work by marketing with someone else’s work. Incredible.
For those photog readers who have had to deal with this unfortunate situation, I found that this blog actually details really well how to handle images being stolen: A Photo Editor.com
Here are the basics…
*Always watermark your images when posting them on social network sites
or any public website where your images are most vulnerable.
* Shrink wrap your images (if you are not sure what this… its where someone tries to grab your image, but they end up with a blank image instead.)
* Block right click … put up a no right click block on your java script on your site.
At the end of the day, there is no full proof way that your images can not be stolen… but at least with these steps, you can try your best to prevent your photography from being stolen.
Tanori Photo 