Good Artists Copy...

...Bad Artists Steal. At least that's what one famous artist once said. I wonder, though, if he would have made such an off-the-cuff statement in the age of the Internet.

I've thought a lot about the subject of where we find our inspiration and what we do about it. And I'll admit that I see images all the time that I would love to be able to produce. But here's the thing - I can't. If it doesn't come out of my head and my heart, then it's just not an image I can make. Steve and I spend very little time looking at the work produced by other wedding photographers - we find our inspriation in fashion, movies, music videos, the light outside and the people we're with. In other words, we use our own lives and those of our clients to create our work. Apparently there are plenty of other people who are working in the visual arts that don't have or use that skill.

Examples? Well, I'm not not writing this to call out other photographers who are getting "inspiration" from the work that Steve and I produce. That can't be helped...some folks just lack the imagination to come up with ideas on their own. From slogans, to attempts to duplicate our actual images, they're feeding off our ideas. And that's fine - there's room in the market for that kind of photographer.

What I am writing this for is to call out the folks that actually go into our websites and galleries and take images for their own use. Unbelievable, you say? Not so my friends. We have several images currently gracing the pages of web sites around the globe. None of which is being used with our permission or knowledge. Well, until we stumbled across them, that is. And here's the kicker - these images are all being used on websites that have a copyright disclaimer on their home page. This would suggest, to me at least, that they are laying claim to the design and content of their sites and don't want anyone else to steal those items. Hmmmm, it's interesting then that they have STOLEN our images. Not borrowed....STOLEN.

And these aren't images that were ever published anywhere but on our website. They are all images that were on our site prior to October, 2004 and so they have been used by these companies without compensation to us for over 18 months, at least and probably closer to over 2 years.

How long do you think they'll keep using them? Until they are caught? Until we send them a bill for usage rights? Until we name them and shame them right here and now? Until they find an image on our site they like more and just "borrow" that one (oh right, it's not as easy now that we've protected our images a little better).

So, what can we do? How do we, as artists and as wedding photographers, not only protect the copyright on our images, but also our clients' likenesses? These sites don't have permission to have our clients' images on them. Maybe we should have our clients go after them as well.

I want to know what you all think. How would you feel as clients or artisits yourselves to have your work ripped off the pages of your website and plastered all over a product that you don't know anything about? Let me know what you think. I'll put together some of your suggestions and then maybe we can find a way to stop this sort of thing from happening more.

And the irony is, if they had asked, we would have let them purchase one-time usage rights with all the proper releases for what is now a relatively low price.