Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Permissions

The other day a friend of mine was looking for a way to protect her property.  She was finding her photographs on various sites across the web without credit or permission.  Her pictures are well composed, often deeply moving, and she can make the simplest thing appear to be tinged with magic.  Often I can tell it is hers just by the feel of the picture, before I note whose it is because they are like looking into a dream.
So imagine my surprise when, last night while searching for the answer to a random question that arrived by email, I stumbled across this:

That's my kitchen with my still in my picture from my blog.  No credit.
Later, looking for something about making tinctures, I found this:
Come on now.  I can recognize my own handwriting on this picture of my tinctures from my blog.  I ate the salsa that came in that squatty jar behind the holy basil tincture.  No credit, but the author IS asking for tips.  I have one...
We're not naive enough not to realize that putting things online means they can be considered up for grabs, but seriously now, would it be that hard to note where the picture came from?  Give the person who did the work a little notice?  In the past, I've run across entire blog posts copied with pictures included, and pasted to another blog.  That's a whole different animal that required some reporting to the host, but pictures shouldn't be this tough.
8 years ago this blog was started, and pictures are often the catalyst for a post.  A camera is nearly always with me, and when my childhood friend Patty showed me the macro setting 3 years later (yeah, really...) all hell broke loose.  In that time 1000's of photos have been posted here on the blog or on the magazine's Facebook page.  I am not alone.  All of my herbie friends share this penchant for showing each other the offerings of nature and what we create with those leaves, blossoms and roots. For many of us, it's part of what we do for a living.  So there's a very easy answer.
Just add credit.  Better would be a link because often that gives your reader even more information.  The pictures above led to A) a full step-by-step pictorial view of a distillation and B) simple ways to preserve herbs. 
You want to make a friend?  Ask for permission.  Who knows?  Maybe the originator will even want to link back to your piece, but at the very least they won't feel like you ripped them off.  I don't know anyone who would deny permission for their photos to be used with proper crediting (although I probably shouldn't try to speak for everyone).

4 comments:

Tanya Murray said...

So far so good, I haven't come across any of my material that hasn't been credited or linked but I do think about it a bit. I guess we just trust someone will do the right thing. It must be gut wrenching when someone betrays that trust, whether one knows them or not.

latisha said...

this started happening to me last year as well. i have a bit of a different approach, but when some photographs started appearing on bloggers with super high integrity, i had to contact them and find out what was up. turns out my photos were being shared on a 'royalty free' photo stock website. clearly, taken and placed there without permission. so, and i have no idea if this is the case here, it may not be the blogger trying to 'steal' but using images from photo stock sites that are really acting with no integrity. a lot of bloggers use photos from these sites, so it is possible this could be the case. sorry, this happened. its always super lame.

Anonymous said...

I have been trying to get in touch about my ezine order. Email keeps bouncing back undeliverable. I ordered the ezine on 3/27. My order id was 4196. I have not received any information on how to receive the ezine or anything. You can contact me at kringle831@aol.com. Thank you.

Tina Sams said...

Kristine, I just resent both the Mar/Apr and the May/June to you, to the address that you gave me on your order. I don't know what email you are using for the magazine, but either tina@essentialherbal.com or essentialherbal@aol.com should come directly to me. Let me know if you get them, please.