As described by the creators, “Validation is a fable about the magic of free parking.”  Yet I say it is so much more.  From Flixxy.com, ” A short film about the magic of looking for the best in people. This movie has played at 34 film festivals worldwide and won 17 awards.”

Starring TJ Thyne & Vicki Davis. Writer/Director/Composer – Kurt Kuenne.  Please if you do not have 15 minutes right now to watch this, come back at the end of your day and watch this short movie.  You’ll thank me later.  

Now that you’ve watched this film, please share this link.  This film was great to me as a photographer because part of my job is to capture the emotion in a person’s eyes and the part of them that makes each person unique. 

I see beauty in every person, and capturing that emotionthrough a one still photograph is equally as important as the best lighting or great composition.  I’ve photographed teens who have self esteem problems as well as beautiful women who believe that they are sub par or barely average.  I’ve photographed corporate businessmen who are handsome, yet don’t smile because of a tooth which he think looks funny, so he never smiles.  In the corporate business world if we tell someone they look great (and if the person takes it wrong) it may border on sexual harassment, yet how often do we give somone else a true compliment.

I see it in one’s eye when I tell a client that they look good, or that what they are doing is working.  A smile or a 1/2 smile instantly goes to a full or real smile.  I get to compliment people when I’m behind my camera, but I try to carry this into the “real world”.  How about you?

Adam Nollmeyer
http://acmephotography.net

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.

The “Win / Lose” (Kineda / Acme) situation turned to “Lose / Lose” and now it’s as close to “Win / Win” as it’ll be thanks to a collaborative blogging effort.

Kineda wrote a great blog post on “Fair Use” and what Terry learned through our phone conversation about photos and copyright.

I learned a good lesson today in the use of photos on your blog found on the web — not every image is free.

While looking for an image to use on my Vote for Kineda post a few weeks ago, I scoured the search engines for something that conveyed the feeling of being happy. Up came the perfect image that I cropped and used without second thought. It’s the usual process that I take and I’m sure many other bloggers take when looking for a matching image to go with a post.

In reading photographers ranting on forums and message boards, I’m realizing that this is a problem that can only be solved by educating fellow bloggers. Two days ago, I choose to blog about this before I contacted anyone. In fact Terry commented on my blog, sent me an email AND left a voicemail after he was notified by Glam Network of my blog post. It’s great that he was motivated to be proactive.

In the past I’ve emailed websites who infringe and they say, “Ah, sorry, We didn’t know.. but we removed it.” (Or blamed it on an “intern”.) If I were to ask for link credit on an old blog post, how much credit would that be after the post is buried in the archives? I shouldn’t have to blog this stuff every time, and it would could get old, however it is interesting to see the power of blog post, and self journalism.

You can find a TON of information on Copyright at Standford University Library.

There are many sections and here are a few brief highlights.

In talking about websites they have 5 tips.

#1 is the most important

• Assume it’s Protected (click for all 5) . — As a general rule, it is wise to operate under the assumption that all works are protected by either copyright or trademark law unless conclusive information indicates otherwise. A work is not in the public domain simply because it has been posted on the Internet (a popular fallacy) or if it lacks a copyright notice (another myth).
• The Basics of Getting Permission. (in depth via the link)
  1. Determine if permission is needed.
  2. Identify the owner.
  3. Identify the rights needed.
  4. Contact the owner and negotiate whether payment is required.
  5. Get your permission agreement in writing

How about You?

Have you had your work used and represented as someone else’s? Did someone use your WordPress theme, steal some code, or remix your work? How did you go about contacting the other person? How did that work?

Until next time,

Adam Nollmeyer

Phoenix Arizona Photography

acmephotography.net

**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 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

Yes it’s Easter Sunday, and I’ll show you how I know!

Empty Tomb – Sunday Morning

IF you know me, then you’ll know that I’m a big fan of Flickr as a photo sharing website. If you are a mom, dad, high school student, college student, hobbyist photographer, grandmother, blogger or business owner than flickr is a tool you can use. A few months ago flickr released a statistics tool for those who have pro accounts. (Pro accounts are about $25 / year… but you don’t need to pay for a basic account)

Here is a look at the stats for the photo seen above:

It’s interesting to see that 1/3 of the views on this photo have been in the past 7 days!
If you haven’t turned on your stats, you need a pro account, then go here.

Having the ability to track the trends is a nice feature of flickr. This is nice if you are using flickr for your business, as a promotional tool, or if stats and numbers or SEO is of interest you. I believe I tweaked the Title a few weeks ago when I noticed that some our ACME’s Stock Easter Photography Images on flickr were getting more hits than other photos which normally receive many views. I think the previous title was a little less descriptive… possibly “Easter morning” or just “Empty Tomb”.

The easter photos do have good tags, which helps in aiding the photo in being found through google, yahoo images, as well as other search engines and flickr’s internal searches.

Remember, if you find photos on flickr, that does not mean that that they are free for the taking to use for whatever purpose you want. The photos still belong do the photographer, so it’s important to look on the flickr page to see if the photographer allows you to use the photos for YOUR blog, power point presentation, or for stock use. Some photographers may license their photos as “Creative Commons” (CC) or they may be marked “All Rights Reserved”.

I mark most all of my photos as “All Rights Reserved” (ARR) however if you CONTACT me and let me know your intentions I’m usually happy to license the photo to you, or in some cases let you use them for a nominal charge and in some cases for free, depending on your use. I’ll then require proper link credits, which is the proper thing to do on the Internet anyway. Watch my photography blog for an upcoming post on using photos from flickr and some tips for contacting photographers you find on line.

Have a great Easter!

Adam Nollmeyer
Phoenix Arizona Photographer & Flickr Expert.