NoBs Digital Dogbowl

A True Story by James Hodgins

Last week, I got an email from a woman stating that she almost booked a wedding photographer because of MY photography. What? I don't understand. Well, it seems that another photographer (in a nearby city) had been using my images in their portfolio to book weddings. After much searching and puzzle piecing, I managed to figure out exactly what was going on. It seems that this "photographer" managed to save the images onto her computer from facebook and then proceeded to print off 4x6 prints. She would also send prospective brides an email with all the files attached, and even the filenames were not changed. This prospective bride sent me the email that came directly from the photographer, and low and behold, all my images were in there. I checked this photographer's website (blog) and noticed that none of my images were on there. Well, good, but I still couldn't prove that my images were being used in violation of copyright. All I had was the email I had from this woman. It's not my nature to leave enough alone, so I started searching more and more on this photographer's blog. I noticed that there was a REALLY great image of a newborn baby. This image was in vast contrast to the other baby/children images on the blog. I right clicked and got the file name of the image, and entered it into Google. Sure enough, it belonged to another photographer just four hours south of me. Well, well, well. I cannot prove that my images were being used, but I just proved that someone else's were. I contacted the violating photographer and expressed my concerns, and not surprisingly, this photographer denied everything and had no idea how the baby images got on the blog. The next day, the baby image was gone and all the wedding photos as well. Dang. I never thought of checking those, as there were some really good ones, and all the images of the photographer's children were just snapshot quality. How can that be? There was one awesome baby image, some great wedding images, and all the images of children and pets were of very, very subquality. This just doesn't add up.

 Alas, Google has a "cache" option where you can view stored pages. So, away I went on my copyright violation hunt. I checked all pages, all files, and discovered that four other photographers images were on this blog, along with numerous free classified ads throughout the net using the same images. Of course, I emailed all photographers in question and notified the violating photographer of my progress.

I am still waiting to hear back from this photographer as her lawyer appointment is this week. I wonder what the lawyer is going to say. Hmmmmmmmm. What I want to know is, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? How would you explain to the Bride and Groom after the wedding why the images taken did not look like the images presented at the consultation? This is how all this came about. A bride was going to book this photographer because of the wedding images presented. This photographer even went as far as telling this bride how the images were taken, how they all got along so well, and that they were such good friends that the wedding photography was done for free. Funny thing, the bride recognized someone in the bridal party, and after speaking to the person discovered that the images were taken by me. Small world.

There is a saying, "fake it till you make it." Well alot of us know, that sometimes faking it can get you in ALOT of trouble. And, there is a huge difference between acting, thinking, imagining, visualizing a certain outcome, and aspiring to achieve a certain level of quality in your photography skills, but there is a huge leap over to outright theft and fraud. I mean really, what were they thinking? Obviously nothing.

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