I’ve talked about bloggers stealing photos belonging to other photographers. Usually the thief will go to flickr.com thinking the photos to be royalty free stock photos because the website is promoted as a “photo sharing” community. Sometimes the blogger does not know better. Other times they know it’s wrong and just don’t care.
When I read that Orlando wedding photographer Niki Hartman was dishonest in her business practices I was a bit shocked compared to other infringements. I’m sure every business owner makes a mistake now and again, so why the concern now?
The problem is that a photographer ripped off another photographer’s work and passed it off as her own. New York / Brooklyn based wedding and Boudoir Photographer Sherri Jackson [lasadh on flickr] was the creator of the image stolen by Nikki Hartman Photography to promote Nikki’s photography business - http://www.artbynikki.com.
The stolen image was on her blog as seen in this screenshot.
© Sherri Jackson - All Rights reserved - I was granted permission to use for this post
On Nikki’s blog she posts an apology.
This summer I have had a young and upcoming high-school photographer interning with me and had asked her to find me a stock photo to post on the blog because I did not want to use a client’s photo. Unfortunately she was under the impression that flickr was for stock photo…”
This excuse is weak at best. If my photographer, assistant, intern or anyone acting on behalf of my business does anything (good or bad) it is MY responsibility to know what they are doing and oversee their work.
Nikki’s blog post is dated June 12th and today is July 20th. Nikki let an her intern write an advertisement for an intimate boudoir photography, setting prices and and publish this on line without OK’ing it? I don’t think so.
Do you really think that her “intern” made this “mistake”? Drop a comment below and let me know what you think.
Adam Nollmeyer
Phoenix Photographer
http://acmephotography.net
PS: Soon, I’ll be releasing a new “tool” to help photographers deal with this problem. RSS this blog for more info.