Yes, you read correctly. I have one or more pirated photos on my site that I need to identify and remove. For the past month I have been working on a new website for my photos that is being hosted by ZenFolio. Although the site is technically live, it is weeks away from being ready for me to officially announce and promote it.
This afternoon I got a call from a photographer who said that I was using one of his photos illegally! After I got over my initial shock (I am very sensitive to copyrights w.r.t. photos), I apologized and said I would remove it right away. The problem is that I was very distracted when I took the call and I did not get his name or contact info and I am not sure which image he is referring to.
After much thought I could only identify two potential culprits (after all I am posting my own photos ). The first is my logo. I wanted a simple logo that consisted of a Canon DSLR with a 70-200 F2.8 lens and my name. I was working on it late at night and in a moment of brain freeze went online and found a suitable photo from Google. I did not see any copyright info on the photo itself, so I imported it into Photoshop, masked out the background, added my text, and exported it as a GIF file. My bad! FYI, Zenfolio asks for three sizes of the logo - one for the home page, one for videos, and one for the favicon.
The only other possibility is that my site does have three photos another photographer took of my daughter in a dance competition. These photos are located in a private folder for my viewing only. Maybe I missed some privacy setting? I am also using this site as an online backup of my photo library and I do have maybe 50 or so \"third party photos\" out of my 25,000+ images.
I am hoping someone in the forum can help me identify the culprit. To this end, I created a new gallery and uploaded all the possible photos into it. You can find the gallery here:
In terms of the logo, today I remade it the way I should have in the first place. I took a picture of my camera and then rebuilt the logo.
Thanks in advance for your help. Once we identify the culprit I will delete the above gallery and cleanse my site.
Thank you!!
PS. After I got over my shock I was very impressed that this photographer was able to track me down. First off, the site has only been indexed by Google for a week or so. Second, it has a PR of 0. Third, if it is the logo I am surprised his info can survive the Photoshop process I used. Can anyone tell me how he did this so I can correctly apply the same protection to my photos? Is there some kind of hidden link back embedded in the code? How could he have found my site unless he knew my name? Or can you run a Google Image search on your EXIF data that excludes your own website?
PPS. Moral to the story, do not work on this site after 1 am when the brain is half asleep.
Feb 02, 2012 at 12:17 AM
Previous versions of ChipinSD's message #10302702 « Help Identify "Pirated" Photo on my Website »
). The first is my logo. I wanted a simple logo that consisted of a Canon DSLR with a 70-200 F2.8 lens and my name. I was working on it late at night and in a moment of brain freeze went online and found a suitable photo from Google. I did not see any copyright info on the photo itself, so I imported it into Photoshop, masked out the background, added my text, and exported it as a GIF file. My bad! FYI, Zenfolio asks for three sizes of the logo - one for the home page, one for videos, and one for the favicon.