Category Archives: Internet Tips

Imagery Theft on Social Media

Being on social media and publishing and sharing your work  helps to get you noticed and sometimes become famous. Having a lot of followers with lots of likes and sharing your images makes you feel good. However, there is also a downside sharing your work. It doesn’t matter if you put a watermark as there are people with bad intentions out there. I came across an issue where a photographer started a discussion on sharing photos without giving credit to the photographer on Twitter. The perpetrator in question not only misappropriated images, but also  cropped photos so that AI Image search services would not find the photos and also removed watermarks. After doing a deep dive into this, I noticed that the Twitter profile in question stole many photos, telling these were all the thief’s own photos, taken in Vancouver, Canada. The problem was, that some of the birds probably don’t even exist in Canada (one photo apparently taken in Canada was actually taken in Scotland by a well known Wildlife photographer. You cannot make this s#it up!

In this particular case, someone wanted to cause damage to a photographer by impersonating them. This is a very bad thing to do. I am not sure if the perpetrator was identified and caught, but as you can see, we live in a clown world today.

Once you call the individuals out, they will most likely block you and continue their shenanigans with the same account or setup another social media account. Oftentimes they also use the name of well established photographers and impersonate them. They may even want to defraud innocent people into buying the stolen photos to make a quick buck or two. Never purchase anything from unknown people until you did a thorough background check and also talked with the artist personally over the phone (Zoom / Google meet).

Fortunately, you are not alone and your fellow photographers will most likely give you a heads up if they see your work being ‘stolen’ by others. You may be able to hire a lawyer and submit a Cease and Desist Letter to the person committing a Copyright Infringement, but with Twitter allowing anonymous accounts, may be difficult and costly to do. Probably best to report the infringement to the Social Media operator and have the account committing the Copyright infringement terminated. The perpetrators will most likely setup another account and start the scheme all over again.

One thing you can do is to be vigilant and use tools like images.google.com and/or TinEye.com To be honest, TinEye doesn’t work great for me and I had more luck finding copyright infringement cases via images.google.com

I hope this article was somehow helpful and gives you some insight on the issues that can arise when you upload your photos on social media. In some cases, your photos can be used for nefarious causes and get you into troubles as you are the copyright owner of the photo, especially if you share photos with recognizable people and/or property. Just be vigilant and careful with what you share. For covering you from a legal side, you can see if the “Contracts & Forms Bundle for Photographers” works for you. (sponsored link).

Fortunately, this episode had a happy ending as of the writing of this article, the account of the perpetrator has been deleted.

 

 

 

In addition to my 5 cents, you can read the below article found on contrastly.

Here is a detailed article talking about this topic:

 

 

Photography Contracts Bundle

Many peer photographers asked me if I could provide them with some guidance on contracts every photographer needs at some point in time, especially when it comes to photograph people. I have found a Forms Bundle for Photographers that might just be what you were looking for.

Running a full-time photography business is tough. Being the creative head, photographer, editor, and marketer yourself, photography contracts & forms take a backseat. You definitely don’t have the time to create them yourself. And hiring a lawyer to do it for you is expensive.

Is it then wise to proceed without a contract? No way!

You are literally putting yourself out there without a security blanket. Everyone wants to work with good clients. It’s hard to imagine that sweet couple you photographed at their wedding taking advantage of you.

But the truth is that any client [even friends and family] will look out for their own interests!

From copyright disputes, payment issues, and unrealistic expectations, a lot can go wrong. Not to mention you also need to set your terms and conditions.

Result? misunderstandings, fights, delayed payments, and eventually loss of a client. Sounds incredibly ugly, doesn’t it? This is where photography contracts and forms come into play.

Contracts not only sustain your clients but also helps you gain new ones.

Growing your photography business

This guide is offered by Picfair, our #1 place to sell our photos. We hope this article will help you to grow your business in the new year.

If you need a compelling domain name, here are a few suggestions:

Below some great ideas:

Apertureshots.com
This domain name was used by a photo studio in the past. Great name and easy to remember.

Aperture.pictures
This is a called domain name, Meaning, the entire domain name is the website. No dot com or so to add to it. Very catchy and unusual.

Black and White themed domains
The following domain names are ideal for photographers, galleries, photo labs and printing companies
Monochrome.one
Monochrome.li
BlackAndWhite.li

Camerasutra.Art
A catchy domain name if you want to sell branded merchandise, prints or just showcase and sell your photographs.

MyndWorks.Art
The name MyndWorks comes from the Icelandic word Mynd, meaning Picture, Image, Imagination. A photo is the work of your imagination. The Top Domain Level ‘Art’ is self explanatory. Wonderful and unique domain name to showcase your art work.

Phottips.com
Great domain name for photographers to showcase their work, offering training classes and more

Rangefinder.one
Great domain name for photographers to showcase their work, offering training classes and more. Someone also suggested, that this domain name could be of interest of people in the Golfing industry. Not sure about that as I do not play golf.

Shutterspeed.One
Photography themed domain name. Easy to remember and a great domain name to showcase your services, portfolio or products.

Viewfinder.One
Photography themed domain name. Easy to remember and a great domain name to showcase your services, portfolio or products.

 

WordPress: Using Short Links 2

Now, you have setup a website, signed up with a few affiliate programs and want to share some of your posts and pages to your social media. These links can be lengthy and cause issues if someone wants to copy-paste the links. There is a solution for this for WordPress. Search for URL Shortener plugins and install the one that fits your needs.

You can set a short code for your affiliate or other URLs that are very long; this is very useful, especially for affiliate links.

The link that visitors will see is the domain name + shortlink as shown in the above screen shot. The plugins also have many settings and keep track on the clicks for each shortened link.

https://affiliateprogramme.com/r.cfm?b=1273891&u=3105195&m=84077&urllink=www%2Eaffiliatexyz%2Ecom%2Fdeals%2Fwatercolor%2Dphoto%2Deffect%2F&afftrack=asdfasf

will become https://yourdomain.com/shortlink

Domain name Ideas .ONE 💡

Besides the popular .com, .net, .org, there are a lot of additional TLD’s*. One of these is .ONE. Top Level Domain names are very useful to transform the entire domain name as a whole, without having an additional TLD. For example, Google is using goo.gl and LinkedIn is using Linked.in. We did some brainstorming and came up with a few domain names, mostly targeting the Italian market.

The issuer of this TLD has already reserved very popular domain names, such as panett.one, lim.one, mascarp.one to name a few. You are certainly familiar with the meaning of these words as shown below!

We have reserved some popular domain names that may be of interest to you.

  • Seduzi.one – Seduction – no further explanation needed
  • Abitazi.one – Abitazione – Means, dwelling, home – Maybe Habitat for Humanity rings a bell?
  • Affar.one – Affarone – Great deal in a sense, you made a great bargain with a purchase.
  • Edizi.one – Edizione: Edition. Great domain name for an online News blog or if you intend to write or sell 1st Edition products. The ‘One’ is figuratively also suggesting 1st Edition
  • Educazi.one – Education. Ideal domain name for online courses and educational books. Maybe rating website for Colleges and Universities?
  • Iniezi.one – Injection – A domain name for the medical field or blogging about … you know what I mean.
  • lozi.one – Lotion – for beauty or personal care related websites…
  • Ragi.one – Reason – inspired by an Italian News agency La Ragione
  • Selezi.one – Selection – inspired by the ‘Reader’s Digest’ publication. The Italian version (if still exists) is called ‘Selezione’.
  • Liquidazi.one – Liquidation. For auction houses and liquidation services. Popular these days as companies can sell their overstock online with this eye catching domain name

We are negotiating with domain name owners for similar high value domain names.

Another use for the .One TLD is for companies who market themselves as No. 1 in the business or have the word or number One in their registered name. Below a few ideas:

Liquidation.one This would be a easy to remember and compelling domain name for a liquidation project or company name.

Monochrome.one A great domain name for photo labs and/or photographers (product, landscape, real estate photography)

We hope this article is inspiring you.

 

 

* A TLD (top-level domain) is the most generic domain in the Internet’s hierarchical DNS (domain name system). A TLD is the final component of a domain name, for example, “org” in developer.mozilla.org.