Viewing post #715588 by jacqueg

skylark said:well, IF you have a professional photo displayed in full resolution for sale - it would make sense to put a watermark on it for viewing and remove it after the purchase.
as the inet photos go at 1000 pixels wide max - it's a low-res and cannot be used for any professional purposes, except may be putting it on some site (blog? on-line catalog?). which is a very minor infraction, so to speak...'cause it's hard to find and nobody really tracks stuff like that (unless you're a well known photographer and want to spend big bucks threatening with infraction lawsuit; but then you won't be putting stuff on-line left and right for free either ;)).
it's a personal choice of course, but i feel that protecting low-res snap shots is quite silly. it does detract from the picture, even the sigs at bottom 'copyright.. ' etc.
i don't stamp mine and don't watermark, but then i don't upload full photo's either ;). IF i were a pro or aspiring to such a career, perhaps i'd be more careful. but i am not and hence don't bother.

I get what you are saying, but I still want to mark my photos. Not because I think they are so artistically great - I know they're not - but because it irks me when people pass off other people's work as their own and even use the "borrowed" work to make money.

I am thinking of a woman I know who, at significant expense, imported a fancy strain of show chickens and started breeding and selling them. Naturally, she posted her own photos. A year or so later, she ran across her photos being used on a competitor website. She emailed the competitor and asked the person to either credit her for the photos or take them down. The competitor replied with an incredibly insulting email and insisted that the photos were original. My acquaintance had, however, watermarked and coded the metadata and was able to prove that the competitor was lying.

I just don't think that people should be able to get away with that crap. My acquaintance was not demanding royalties for the use of her photos - just credit. That is not the only story I know like that, but it is one of the most egregious.