That photo of a nine-spotted cucumber beetle on a zinnia petal was taken by me. I posted it on the internet somewhere, probably GardenWeb, and not too surprisingly it was "purloined". The surprise is that an official government guy is claiming to be the owner. Ask him where he got the picture.

ZM

I just saw this comment, @ZenMan, but I'm replying anyway because I also know this to be your picture and I want the admins to change this.

Maybe contact through this site: https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/im...

No, I'm speaking about this website (Garden.org). At the very least, this website should be responsive to its members and not give away credit for their work to outside persons.

Jai, I agree, but I was thinking that ZenMan should contact the site I listed and express his displeasure with them for using the photo under the wrong name.

Hi Rj,

I did contact the USDA website through the link you gave and left a message informing them that they were using my photo without my permission and were claiming it was theirs. I got an automatic email response informing me that they had received my message, and that they would respond later. To be continued.

ZM

It appears that no one ever called @Dave to this thread so that he can be aware of the issue.

Thanks! Our photos are often switched out for better ones, and occasionally a mistake is made in editing the article to reflect the switch. It was taken care of as soon as it was brought to our attention.

Hello Trish,

I still don't see any mention of my name regarding that Nine Spotted Cucumber Beetle photo, despite my recent email contact a few days ago to Garden.org when the picture was getting full onsite exposure again. Just so everyone can see it, I will include a much-reduced version of the original photo from which the photo in question was cropped. As the person who actually took the photo, I can do this. You can click on this for a somewhat closer view.

As you can see, the cropped version is only a small fraction of the original photo. The original photo had a lot more pixels and a lot more detail than this version. It came from my camera in Nikon's proprietary NEF 16-bit per pixel format and I also have the metadata for it, so there is no question whose photo it is. The government never contacted me about their false claim of copyright on the photo. I am kind of disillusioned that our government would stoop to such a deliberate theft. Oh well.

ZM

Zenman,

Evidently the two of us are talking about two completely different things.
Your photo was cropped to showcase the beetle and added to the Pest Control Library as an example of a Cucumber Beetle.
As we discussed in email, permission to do that is part of our terms of service. I think we are all in agreement that this is all legit.

Regarding the USDA- I have no knowledge of this at all, and have no prior knowledge of it, and have not seen a link on their site of your photo.
We do not work with the USDA, and are not in partnership with them. If they are using your photo without your permission, it has nothing to do with Garden.org.

Hello Trish,

" Evidently the two of us are talking about two completely different things. "

Yes, that USDA thing was discussed previously. The subject at hand is simply my request to receive a credit for my Cucumber Beetle photo that you are using. I agree that you have permission to use my photo as part of your Terms of Service. I am simply requesting that you give me a name credit as the supplier of the photo. For example, in today's Recently Popular Photos you say "By the name" of the supplier of each photo. You could do the same thing for my Nine Spotted Cucumber Beetle photo.

Just to clarify, I am not making a demand here, I am simply making a request. In my opinion, including credits for member's photos would be the "polite" thing to do. You already do that in many cases, including the aforementioned photo credits of the member's names in your daily Recently Popular Photos feature.

Sincerely,

Burton Ogden
aka ZenMan