Denver Wedding Photographer – Kelli Nixon Photography »

As Pinterest grows, often photographers would want to see if their stuff is getting pinned.  Pinterest is a unique social media site in that it is photo-driven.  Us wedding photographers are also photo-driven, so it is a match made in heaven.  Here is how you would check to see if your wedding photography is getting pinned on Pinterest.

In a browser, copy and paste this link:  http://pinterest.com/source/kellinixon.com  Remove the “kellinixon.com” part and replace it with your own URL.  That’s it.  It is super simple to see who is pinning your wedding photos on the site.

p.s. Don’t be sad to see very few.  As of this post, we only have a few pins.  We need to increase those numbers, so start pinning us!

Many people don’t realize that the moment a photographer presses the shutter release, they just created a copyright on the photo that was snapped.  Doesn’t matter what kind of camera you use, from a cell phone to an expensive DSLR, you own that copyright.

With digital images, it is getting harder and harder for professional photographers to protect the work that they created by “pushing the button.”  Often, we find all kinds of website owners using our work without our permission, without payment, and even with out a simple photo credit.

Perhaps site owners don’t realize that just because they see a photo on the web doesn’t mean that they can use it for their own benefit.

Google to the rescue

Google has stepped up their image search capabilities to help copyright owners (photographers) find their images which may be being used improperly by others on the web.  Here is a few simple steps you can use to protect your own work by using Google’s free image search service.

1. Go to Google’s Image Search at http://images.google.com/

You will see a screen like this one:

From there, click the little camera just to the left of the “Search Images” button.

When you click the camera, it will open a little dialog like this:

Now, you have a choice to either upload an image or paste the URL of an image file location.  If you are using a blog, then it is much easier to paste the image location that is already on the web.  Most likely, if your image was on a blog, then it is super easy for someone to “right-click” and “save-as” to take your image.  So, just copy/past that image location into the dialog here.

I pasted one of our images into the search and found this:

I went to the sites and see that they gave us photo credit in the form of a link back to our website, so I am completely cool with them using the image that we took.  I found another one in a separate search where they weren’t so forthcoming and I sent them a kind email asking them to restore the photo credit.  They complied quickly.

Remedies against errant site owners

If you find someone using your image without your permission, payment or credit, there are several steps that you can take to protect your copyright.  Here are our suggestions:

1. Contact the site owner – This is the first and easiest step.  We actually require one of four things to use our images on a website.
   • Our written permission – This is given out to our wedding couples or to magazines and professional wedding blog sites.
   • Payment – For some magazines and sites, we will sell the right to reprint or display our images
   • Watermark – We have an ‘official’ watermark that is acceptable.  There are many website owners who will display our photography with the watermark intact.  (See above link on The Wedding Row)
   • Link to our website - Site owners can provide a link back to our website as photographic credit for using our photography.  This helps in our SEO efforts.

   You may have different criteria, so you might have to adjust this list.

2. Contact the website hosting company – Professional hosting companies have to abide by U.S. Copyright Laws.  Thus, if you get an unacceptable response from the site owner (i.e. they continue to use your photography without your permission) then you can contact the hosting company for their website.  Here is how to find out who is hosting the offending website:
   • Go to http://www.betterwhois.com and enter the website’s URL.  (see below screen shot)
     
   • Once entered, find the hosting company – The hosting company will be listed beside the “Nameservers” data.
     In this case, it is “AerialHosting”
   • Send an email to abuse@{the hosting company}  – Nearly all professional hosting companies have an “Abuse@” email address.  So, if it is GoDaddy, then the address would be abuse@godaddy.com.  In the case above, it would be abuse@aerialhosting.com.  In your email, explain that the URL is illegally using your image.  The hosting company is obligated to remove your image.  They will typically do this by removing the entire site.
3. Facebook – A big place where photographers are finding their images (without their permission) is on Facebook.  Facebook has a very easy way to report the use and abuse of copyrighted images.  When you are viewing an image, simply click the “Report This Photo” link. (see below)
   

This has been quite a year for the United States.  Floods and tornadoes in the South, wildfires in the West, hurricanes on the East Coast and California always has earthquakes right?

When I see natural disasters occurring, I sometimes think to myself, “is there anything in my house that I couldn’t replace?”  Watch the interviews with people getting evacuated from their homes as a wildfire approaches.  Often they will say something like, “we grabbed our pets and our pictures and got outta there.”

Pets and pictures

Our homeowners insurance policy covers (more than covers) everything we own.  It is all replaceable.  The only things that aren’t replaceable are pictures (and videos) and our loved ones.  Everything else from blankets, couches and chairs, to kitchen appliances, clothes and computers is completely replaceable.  So, how do we protect those things which are irreplaceable like photos?

Being a photographer and having had computers crash in the past, we have become extremely careful with our pictures.  We’re obsessive with their protection.  In our business, we simply can’t afford to lose someone’s images…especially from their wedding.  As I thought about it, I figured that this would translate very well to individuals for their own personal photos.  I would, as well, like to make suggestions to you based on what we do to protect our photography.

Things you can do to protect your images

We use a combination of protective measures to safeguard our photos and videos.  Here is what you can do to protect your own photos.

• Ask yourself “Is this the only copy?” – Whether digital or printed, you must ask yourself, “is this the only copy of this picture that exists in the world?”  If the answer is “yes” then you must do something to protect that photo.
  • If the image(s) is printed, then get it digitized as soon as possible.  For some of our older photos, we used a service called ScanCafe. We sent them about 400 negatives to scan for us.  They did a fantastic job.  Here is a discount code if you decide to use them.  45121_00001 Just put it in at checkout.
  • If the image is digital then sign up for a place to store your images online.  See Below

• Back them up at home or in your studio – Most of you won’t do this, but I wanted to mention it anyway.  We use a server as networked attached (NAS) storage for our backups while we are working on images.  Our server comes from Lime Technology and offers a way to do many things.  You can store video on the server then stream it to your TV and you can back up your photos and videos in your home.  We use the large one, but for most people’s purposes, you will only need this one.   Their servers work in “Parity” which means that they are constantly making sure that the data that you put on them is backed up.We backup both at home and online (see below).  Why?   Because, backing up at home gives you one more level of security for your photography.  Plus, it is easier to work with images that are in your office.  You don’t have to wait for large downloads to retrieve images.

  READ!! Just the other day, we had a computer completely crash.  We were unable to use our editing program for photos and could not get it back up and running.    However, because we have the server, not one image, video or document was lost.  Not one.  It happens folks so you should really consider protecting your stuff.

• Online storage of digital images and video – Don’t learn this the hard way.  You NEED to keep your digital images online in a secure, storage facility.   It doesn’t have to be a flood or storm that takes your computer.  You could simply have a computer crash or a virus.  If that happens, you could lose all of the digital images you have stored on it.
   
  • Here is what we do for our professional images – We use a company called SmugMug for our images.  We have over one hundred thousand images and videos stored with them through our pro membership.  You could use the personal membership however and store unlimited images with them for an extremely low annual fee.We use SmugMug because they have secured backup upon secured backup.  This way, we can be assured to never lose an image that we want to keep.
  • DISCOUNT CODE: Use this discount code and get $5 off when signing up:  OY14a2mJJXz1M  (if you are a professional photographer reading this, then you will want to use their Pro version) .

Comments?

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