Not his photo !

heartyfisher

Well this guy posts some wonderful wildlife photos on facebook and after a while it did not seem right as its from all over the world so I searched for some of the photos and indeed they were taken from all over the place but I could not easily find the photographers(owners) of these images. so it may have been him but it is more likely not. looked on face book and there is no way to report him unless you are the owner of the images.. so how do I find the owners?

Just irks me ....

PB_PM

Unless the owners copyright information is still in the EXIF data there is no way to track them down.

Bokeh_Hunter

http://www.google.com/imghp

That is the google image search. Just drag and drop a photo from a site in a window into the search bar and it will pull like images. Many times you can track images down to the owner.

heartyfisher

I tried www.tineye.com/ and it found many pictures of the same image.. but still no owner ..

Bokeh_Hunter

With so many photo FB groups who knows where most of them came from. That is just part of the this world now.

Never seen tineye - thanks for sharing!

sevencrossing

But if you add a copyright sound track, to a YouTube slide show, it will deleted in seconds

[Deleted User]

http://www.google.com/imghp

That is the google image search. Just drag and drop a photo from a site in a window into the search bar and it will pull like images. Many times you can track images down to the owner.

Does not work for RAW files here.

heartyfisher

so there is no solution .. people can just keep posting and taking credit for pictures that are not theirs ..

FlowtographyBerlin

http://www.google.com/imghp

That is the google image search. Just drag and drop a photo from a site in a window into the search bar and it will pull like images.

Does not work for RAW files here.

Well, just convert it to a web-compatible format, like JPEG. It tracks images that are on the web, and since RAW file cannot be displayed on the web.... blabla, you know what I mean.

heartyfisher

Paraphrasing the evil Obadiah Stane:
"You really think that just because you took the photograph, it belongs to you?"

http://ochre.is/tools/safeguarding-truth-in-photojournalism-ami-vitales-survival-guide/

“There is a broad mentality of entitlement on the Internet,” “If it’s there, then it’s free, and I can use whatever I want without permission, credit or compensation.”

dissent

Nice post, HF. Fascinating story; and lots of useful links.

Bokeh_Hunter

so there is no solution .. people can just keep posting and taking credit for pictures that are not theirs ..

That is correct. That is why many photogs used flash based websites as the files were embedded in the player and couldn't be downloaded. That is also why many post their samples in gif or low resolutions so one can tell the difference.

Copyright laws in different countries can help, but if something goes viral and not used for commercial uses, there is little you can do.

CEBlueclouds

Is there a way to confirm if an image is yours? Recently saw an image used in a promotional flyer by an institution which looks very much like a crop of one of my images on Flickr. Is there a way to digitally confirm this please?

spraynpray

AFAIK it is difficult if you have not embedded a tracking device in your image before posting it. Have you taken a copy of the image and opened it as a layer in photoshop then overlaid it with your image on 50% opacity to compare? Only rough, but it will show you whether it is worth getting excited about.

Photobug

Great tip spraynpray. Did not know that.

MegapixelSchnitzel

heartyfisher said:

Paraphrasing the evil Obadiah Stane:
"You really think that just because you took the photograph, it belongs to you?"

I certainly do. And this is one of the reasons I do not have a website or post my photographs of the past 45 years online.

NSXTypeR

On a bit of a side note, do any of you guys have objections to people downloading photos they like for their own use? For instance maybe as a background on a phone or computer?

spraynpray

I tend to think in black and white to avoid setting precedents or blurring the line so the answer to that is yes. If someone wants a snap of mine, they have to ask me. If it is for their phone, they can have it small.

CEBlueclouds

spraynpray said:

AFAIK it is difficult if you have not embedded a tracking device in your image before posting it. Have you taken a copy of the image and opened it as a layer in photoshop then overlaid it with your image on 50% opacity to compare? Only rough, but it will show you whether it is worth getting excited about.

Thanks spraynpray for this tip!

Coastalconn

I run into this all the time on FB. Now that I have so many followers, people are often my eyes and message me when they see one of my images in a place it shouldn't be.. This just happened with one of my Osprey images again (it had already went viral last year on twitter)and had over 4k shares with my watermark cropped off. I had to join a few groups and found the original poster, sent a friend request and asked him politely to take down the image as it was mine. FB strips exif from images so that won't work. Unfortunately it is just part of the digital age and why watermarks are a must nowadays..

Photobug

Sadly I am not surprised Coastalconn. It's sad but it happens.