Photography Thailand Forum

[CW Lawrence]

My apologies to you all for the watermark that you will see on any of my images that are posted on the web. After several years of displaying online galleries I have come to the decision to only post images with a clear watermark. Unfortunately, this degrades some of the viewing pleasure. It really bums me out, but I have read too many times about the illegal and unethical use of someones image. For example, websites that sell everything from posters to coffee mug illegally using an image; designers and 'artists' ripping off someone's photograph or image; websites that 'borrow' images for their own purposes, and even friends who use images for desktops or even print them out...

So to nip this trend in the bud, I watermark all of my images. It wont completely stop anyone from illegally using my images but it will surely help. In the end it might just lead to a loss of business but that is a cost I am prepared to pay.

What do you think? Do you watermark it?

[bjorn slis]

To be honest, somebody that can use photoshop, can easily remove the watermark, you could build your website in flash so the can't take the image off your website, or a little javascript to avoid right-clicking on your image, but with a simple screencapture that you can still grab the image, so imho it's completely useless to try and protect your images (untill somebody finds a real solution)
Also, a magazine once used one of my images without asking, and just printed it with the watermark on it....
But a serious company will still hire a photographer if they need good quality images, and I (being a graphic/webdesigner) refuse to use any "illegal" images, and I think all serious designers should do so.
Since you can't protect your images anyway, I choose not to put any watermark on it but just a copyrights note on the website.



ps. in general, think about this when downloading illegal software/mp3's etc.

[Marc Schultz]

Bjorn is right and I can tell you also as a working photographer that I think you don't need to be that paranoid about copyright infringement. It is of course prudent to be careful, but I have worked with many publishers and my experience is that the ones that are in a position to pay you a decent sum of money for rights to publish your work are not the type to try to use it without paying for it.

The main reason for this is publishers rely upon photographers to provide them with good quality material, so stealing images from a photographer, in light of the big picture, is only going to sour their reputation and earn them a public image as a dead-beat publisher.

The ones who might attempt to use it somewhere without paying you what you deserve for copyright usage are sure not to be ones who really have any value to you as potential customers anyway since they probably can't afford to pay what it is worth.

In addition, the low-res images we post on the internet are not really print quality above a small print size, so again there is not so much to worry about there. They can be used for web site purposes and I have had a few cases where I saw an image of mine being used on a web site without being paid for, but it really does not happen that much I found.

I hope that helps to put you at ease.

[Paul Whitehead]

I have a very strict personal watermarking policy. I had an incident a few months ago which made me change the way I watermark (someone had used a number of my pics on a website and cut off the watermark) - I now put a very bold watermark through the centre of all my pics. I too worry about the affect it has on "viewing pleasure" and have had my own little mind battles with myself because I figure anyone who would lift the photo would probably not pay for it anyway. For now I am sticking with watermarks for any photo I offer as stock but I am stil not fully "comfortable" with it.

[Regis Madec]

I have found my pictures on other websites or even in one Thai magazine. So I add a copyright statement with Photoshop as a reminder where it is coming from.

Also once the pictures are copied from my website, there is no way to know their origin without this reminder.
It may help to bring visitors and show my work.

I have thought of different solutions:
One solution could be to use a big watermark that would deform a part of the picture, preventing it to be corrected with Photoshop.

One solution is to reduce the size of the picture but it is not great to show the pictures details.
Some Thai magazines use pictures 400*300 and you can easily see the pixels on the magazine.

The best solution is no website and no pictures! But it doesn't help to promote your work and prevent to share the beauties of countries such as Thailand and China.

I have seen some websites using flash animations in order not to use jpeg pictures.
Some other websites use a bad jpeg compression quality to discourage steal.

One issue is that many people believe that everything on Internet is free (pictures, text, music, video) and don't see the hard work behind it.

Regis

[thebelge]

Webmaster friends of mine told me that even flash animation are not enough to protect your image as you can always sucks an entire websire with all his flash animation then simply remove the jpeg from the flash animation with some programs.
But as long as the resolution is down (72 dpi) and small size i dont see any possibility to find your pics elsewhere than on Internet. At least if protect you from be copied in the press magazine.

Fred

[bjorn slis]

Just found out that some of my pictures are used for concert posters of jean "toots" tielemans troughout holland with somebody else's name and a copyright under them, can't help but feel sorry for the photographer that needs to do that, same time the stuff is in my portfolio and it brought me some nice assignments. You will never be able to avoid this, watermark or no watermark.
Just keep making and posting great photographs and you will be noticed by companies that will hire you for assigments.

ps. thebelge, you can't get source files (pictures) from a flash file other than with a screen capture (low res/72 dpi)
ps2. paul great bird photography on your site, what lenses do you use ?

[Marc Schultz]

Good words of wisdom Bjorn.

On Flash files that is not entirely true though. If it is a self contained Flash file with the images all within the SWF file then there are programs for decompiling SWF files and you can extract image out from them. If it is a Flash movie that uses XML technology to reference images kept in a separate directory on the server then it is trickier to take them out of the Flash movie.

As you said though, screen dumps work on anything.

[Paul Whitehead]

Bjorn,
thanks

the 80-400. I hanker for 200-400 or a 400 prime (and a TC) but I cant afford them.

[bjorn slis]

thanks marc, didn't know that about swf files, goes to show you, whatever superb software they build to protect your images, theres always somebody that will find a way to hack it

[Marc Schultz]

Your welcome. There are two programs that are commonly used if you want to read about them. One is called SWF Decompiler and the other one is called SWF Quicker. Both are made by a company called Sothink. The 2 programs do slightly different things. Quicker edits SWF files and Decompiler actually exports all the elements out from an SWF file in order to recreate the original FLA authoring file or something close to it along with all the indidivual JPG files seperately. If you go do www.download.com you can read about them more there.

[David Salmanowitz]

Paul--I knew you took nice u/w photos, I see you do alright with the avian stuff as well.    A friend just bought the Nikkor 80mm-400mm as he was not all that happy with the Sigma. Like pretty much all zoom lenses with such a wide focal range, do you notice a sweet spot in the middle and not as sharp when you get closer to the 80mm or 400mm range? I was photographing part of last month and November with someone who was using I believe the Canon 70-300mm. I mentioned about the sweet spot and he agreed, as he had noticed it fell apart a bit at the edges when he was either zoomed in or zoomed out.
BTW, one guy on this trip I was on had a Sigma 300mm-800mm, aka the Sigmonster. Had read about it but had never seen one--yikes, it is like a bazooka and I think it weighs 15 pounds if not more. :-(

[Paul Whitehead]

do you notice a sweet spot in the middle and not as sharp when you get closer to the 80mm or 400mm range?

Hi David, To be honest I dont know as I dont use it much - I bought it just to do birds because it was a cheap way of getting a 400. I use it at 400 pretty much all the time, even then I need to be no more than about 12 feet away to get a decent half to a third frame full. The autofocus is slow and noisy. I tried the 200-400 and the autofocus was in another world - but it was about 200,000!!!