Railroad Forums 

  • Branding of Photographs.

  • Discussion of photography and videography techniques, equipment and technology, and links to personal railroad-related photo galleries.
Discussion of photography and videography techniques, equipment and technology, and links to personal railroad-related photo galleries.

Moderators: nomis, keeper1616

 #1447565  by scottychaos
 
To those who seek to protect a proprietary interest in posted photographs with embedded branding, such branding can easily be edited out. Perhaps there's a better way.
No, in my opinion, there is no better way..
I always put the location, date, and my name on the photos, mostly so the scene is clearly identified for future reference:

Image

yes, people can take the effort to crop that out, but in my experience that is very rare..I very often find my *entire* photo "shared" on many different sites around the internet, taken from my webpages without permission..Facebook groups are the worst for that, but 99% of the time the person takes the *entire* photo and posts it on facebook, with all my data intact. That doesnt really bother me too much, because my name and data is still on it..its just the nature of the internet.

People do put gigantic really ugly watermarks right across the middle of the image:

http://photodoto.com/photo-watermark-ideas/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

IMO that is horrible, because it basically ruins the photo..the cure is worse than the diesese..
(although..exceptions: if you are a wedding photographer "previewing" photos on a website for clients, you might want that big watermark so people will buy your photos rather than just taking them from the webpage..and ebay auctions are the same thing..but for railfans just sharing their photos, not selling them, I dont see any point to those huge ugly watermarks..it ruins the photo and turns it into something no one wants to see..why even share it then?)

So, I just put the data in the corner of the photo, then stop worrying about it..
the instances where people actually crop it are are SO rare that its just not worth getting worked up about..
the only way to prevent it is: dont put your photos on-line, at all. But if you do want to share your photos, you just have to accept some "borrowing" will happen..as long as its just non-profit "sharing" on other forums, IMO its not a big deal..
If people claim your photos as their own and try to *sell* them, obviously that is a much bigger deal! and thats criminal and should be fought..but thats probably less than 1% of the photo "borrowing" that happens online..

I look at it this way: Probably 1% of my own photos I put online get "borrowed" and placed on other forums and facebook groups.
Of those 1% that are borrrowed, 99% of them retain all the text info that I added, nothing is cropped out. Its really not a big issue overall.

Scot
Last edited by John_Perkowski on Thu Oct 26, 2017 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total. Reason: Edited by an admin during topic cleanup
 #1447618  by kilroy
 
I don't bother copywriting my photo. I've seen a few around the web but as for someone selling them as theirs, not much of a worry since most of them are not good enough to pay for (problem solved!). :P
 #1448605  by nomis
 
ADMIN NOTE: We do not condone removal of EXIF or watermark info identifying a photo. I removed the original post

John Perkowski
Asst Admin
Last edited by John_Perkowski on Thu Oct 26, 2017 8:32 pm, edited 1 time in total. Reason: Leveraging nomis' lock post
 #1469028  by Ronal U18C Indonesia
 
They're My branding photos that ussually I wear
Image