ACME Photography

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.

This week I’m talking about photos and how they can be used appropriately, as a win / win situation between photographers and bloggers or online publications. Sometimes one or both party can cause a failure. This is the second post on this subject. [first post here]

**UPDATE**
Kineda apologizes and makes good as seen here.

How ironic is it that an online fashion lifestyle magazine would use one of my images without permission or photo credit to solicit votes for a contest which is for Publishers. The infringes are publishers, and they are publishing content that is NOT THEIRS asking for votes an industry award.

I had to laugh, as I thought it was strange.

From the Kineda website as seen here. (If they remove the image, screenshot here)

The 2008 Glam Network Awards are here and Kineda has been nominated for the Best Lifestyle Publisher award.

Head over to the Glam Network Awards website (no registration required) and show us your love by voting for Kineda in the Lifestyles category.

Terry Ng & Tami Ng used my image of Justine Ezarik and Brian Shaler as seen here on my flickr stream.

Here is the image:

I overlaid the image from their site, (yellow box) on the original so show you how it was cropped. Don’t you just love how the crop “conveniently” cut off the acme logo, as well as the Acme Photography website address? Notice how the logo for Glam Media (sponsor of the contest) was placed on the photo by Kineda, yet my logo was removed.

What should have happened? Kineda should have contacted Acme Photography and asked for permission to use the photograph to help them recruit votes for the contest. While the photo used is more of an editorial style than a fashion photograph, the audience which reads Kineda and other sites in the Glam Media network probably include those in the fashion industry who may be interested in hiring a commercial photographer for advertising or a print campaign. If they had contacted me, I would have asked for some “link love” and proper credit, and this could have been a “win win”. I may have even blogged about the photo use in a positive light and sent them some of my traffic.

What’s going to happen now? I have yet to contact Kineda, or Glam, It would be funny to do something like “Rick-Roll The Mets” and have everyone vote for ONE RANDOM COMPANY who is NOT Kinda. I’m going to drop them both an email, however I have a meeting to go to. Maybe tomorrow!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter. Leave a comment below.

Adam Nollmeyer
Phoenix Arizona Photographer
acmephotography.net

I was working on a photography project and finishing up some work for the day. In the corner of my screen I was occasionally scanning message alerts which would pop up when I have twitter turned on through my instant messenger program.

I saw this message from Scott Beale a twitter contact:

So for some reason this guy thinks it’s ok to just upload other people’s photos to his Flickr account: http://twurl.nl/ynwsr7

Sure enough, Amit Agarwal a “well known professional blogger and personal technology columnist for national newspapers” had stolen my photograph of Seth Godin as seen below. He did not simply embed the photo on his blog, he re-uploaded my photograph, and then marked the photo as Creative Commons (CC) which means that he is allowing others to use, share and re-mix a photograph which HE does not have rights to.

*Update* If you want to check his flickr account to see if your photo has been stolen, click here.

Then a few minutes later, Lane Hartwell a San Francisco Photographer and online friend through flickr said:

hey, look, one of my shots stolen! http://tinyurl.com/38gfsp let’s tell the guy he’s a douchebag! (to which many people did!)

If you are looking for photos to blog or use for a project, you must look at the Copyright status of the photo. If the photo is marked as © All Rights Reserved on the right under the “additional information” section, then you must contact the photographer to ask permission, or see if there are any notes on the photo about usage.

Now for the ironic part!

I went started poking around Amit Agarwal’s flickr account and then goggled to find his blog.
Here is what I found:

• this flickr image of Amit’s warns others to not steal his content. (not sure if I should embed it on MY blog, would that be a double standard, or triple standard?)
• Argawal blogging in 2005 on About.com ripping off an article of his.
• I love this one, yet another article on “Dealing w/ Website Plagiarism: When Somone Copies Your Blog Content“once again from Amit Agarwal.
• An article here on how Corbis is letting bloggers use their images. (so why steal from Flickr Photographers?)
• Dealing with blogger.com and how to Write a formal complaint to get blogspot content removed.
• This blog post talks about 1) Cease and Desist Letter and
  2) Contacting the Web Company.
• Still no luck, how about a form letter for a DMCA notice of Copyright Infringement?

I do believe that with all the articles this “Professional Blogger” has written on the subject of copyright infringement, that what he did was no “honest mistake”…. I will give him credit for promptly removing the photos from flickr and also providing photo credit on the flickr pages as a referance. While I don’t expect everyone to be as educated on photography as a professional photographer, one should expect a professional writer (who has written on THIS subject matter several time) to at least be able to follow his own rules. Is this a fair standard?

This is NOT the first time that someone has ripped of Lane, Scott, or my photos, howver I’m going to start featuring some more of these people. If you are not an Internet junkie then you may have missed some of the previous Ripoff’s from my fellow photographers.

More reading – Here are a few blog posts from previous infringements.
Why Lane Hartwell Popped the ‘Bubble’ Video @ Wired.com
SF Examiner Uses Photo without Permission or Attribution @ LaughingSquid.com

I will be featuring a few other infringerd in the next week. Stay tuned to see what other “Professional Bloggers” are dropping down a run on the ladder by ripping off photos. I will also give you some TIPS for contacting photographers and turning photographers form “Photo Usage Nazi’s” into your friends.

Believe me, we can play nice, just remember that it is a a 2 way street. I have to go now to pick up some blank DVD media so I get these NetFlix movies copied and then posted to eBay and craigslist.

Adam Nollmeyer
Phoenix Arizona Photography
acmephotography.net