Tammy Green

On New Year’s Day I had a rival food review site use one of my photos without attribution. My first reaction was to fire off an angry email about not reading the Creative Commons license that accompanies the photo, not to mention the bad manners of swiping images from a competing site. I wrote the email and sat there tapping the keyboard, ready to send it to the so-called editor of the site.

And then I took a deep breath and wrote a very different email.

This one explained why the license prohibited use, and how the photo’s presence on their site diluted the uniqueness of their site as well as mine. I told the editor to keep it on the site, but to give me the attribution for the photo and link love. I finished up by offering to license photos in the future or quote jobs for freelance photography projects. Heck, I figured if they liked my photo well enough to use it now, then they might be a future customer.

It was a great idea, but it didn’t pan out. The editor wrote me back and in two sentences apologized for the trouble and said she deleted the image.

I’m still upset that the image was used at all, but now I have a more commerce-minded way of dealing with the inconsideration. I’m going to try this approach for a while. I’ll let you know if it does anything for my blood pressure, to curb uncredited use of my photography, or to generate income. *fingers crossed*

Written by tammy

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