Today I had the singular experience of seeing one of my cupcake photos used in an email blast from a local PR firm. What’s remarkable about it is I was never consulted on the use of my photograph. It was stolen.

They found it through a Google search and probably never thought that they would run into the owner of the photograph or get called on their shit. I understand that bloggers are on a learning curve and don’t understand Google, copyright and licensing photos. They don’t appreciate that people work at photography and earn a living from it. I expect more from a PR firm.

“We found it on Google and there’s no way to know where the photo came from.” That’s an exact quote from a PR firm manager. What bothers me most is that they think finding an image on Google absolves them from the responsibility for finding out who that image belongs to. If a PR firms plans to use an image to represent a client they have two real options — pay a photographer to take the photo or find a photo from a photographer and pay to license it. Anything else, and they’re opening themselves up to litigation and risk exposing the client to negative publicity.

They other thing that bothered me was her assertion that they didn’t misuse the photo and use it negatively. Like that matters. Still, since she brought it up, this is what the photo is supposed to look like:

Cupcakes, before they were stolen

Basically, it comes down to this — if you’re sending cupcake photos to cupcake enthusiasts; people who are active online and have a vested interest in the topic, then you’d better make damned sure you’re not serving their own content back to them.