If I post a picture, can others just use it to sell their plants without asking me? Lynnette

Theoretically no. Realistically yes. Some members have experienced this, finding their photos on commercial sites with no prior approval (or compensation). You can opt to put a 'watermark' on your photos which discourages photo-thievery (click on the blue person upper right, settings). Personally, I think watermarks distract from the photo, and I could give a rip if someone 'steals' an image from me - I figure whatever I put out on the internet is fair game. Others disagree. Do what makes you comfortable.

I would like just an acknowledgement or it would have been nice to be asked...or for sure they don't say the picture is their own.

The practice on this site is to either submit your own photos, or to submit photos which are designated as OK to re-use, provided you give the original source/photographer credit. You will see this a lot. I don't really know how to tell about copyrights so limit my photos to those I've taken myself. It is also nice to identify the location - I often take plant photos while on road trips.

I used to find my pictures on other people's sites too.
If you check out the "watermark" that garden.org automatically puts on the pictures if you fill out that in your profile preferences...

Add a watermark to uploaded photos?

https://garden.org/users/prefs...

They may use the pics anyway... I've found my pictures with something over the watermark!

I haven't checked my pictures for a while... not online enough anymore... Not a lot that we can do... except send a cease and desist notification to the site... which they usually ignore... sometimes google will take action if we complain to them.

What site is it? I wonder how many other pics from this site they are using.

I get tree-mails occasionally from people asking to use a pic of mine. I say yes and give them a copy w/o the watermark. I put a watermark on my pics by default for this reason but it would be easy to crop off or cover as mentioned. The purpose of sharing the pics is to share the pics, but as said, it's rude to appropriate for use elsewhere w/o asking &/or citation.

On the Daylily Auction.

Yes, at least someone should ask. It is easy enough.

Bonehead said:Theoretically no. Realistically yes.

Deb is right. Whilst technically people should not use your images without asking (you own the copyright to any photos you take), there is only so much one can do to prevent image theft. As has been mentioned, using watermarks is one approach. Dave has also designed the site to make it a little harder to download images from the database (the right-click context menu is disabled), but anyone who really wants to do so can still get around this.

In the end, it's up to you to decide whether you're happy with the risk that somebody might steal your image or not. The risk is non-zero, but generally it's not very high.

TY, Lynette.

Contact the person on the Lily Auction to either give you credit or remove your image, citing the copyright infringement as listed here in the Terms of Service. If they do not comply, then you contact the auction owner Mike Longo.

I amend what I said earlier to say that I do not want to share my pics for someone else's commercial endeavor. I was contacted in this way today, about a book, and I declined on two fronts. First, if someone is going to make money from pics that I took, I should get some of that money. And second, because it seems odd to me that one would have something to publish about a plant that they did not have available and could not find to photograph.

I see that he removed it for sale from the DA. I know I would only post my own pictures if I was selling. I know a lot of people don't but they use picture from the AHS site and I think that is fine, but still you want to indicate that.