Do you post your photos on Facebook or Flickr?

[ilzho]

Hi:

I'm sure this has been hashed out before, but since I do not have a website, where do you post your photos online? 

I'm not a professional, I'm a beginner and when I get some nice shots, I'll email them to the parties as an album that I created in Flickr.

Curious to know, for beginners like myself, what is a safe way to post photos without them getting stolen?

Not that anyone would steal mine, lol, but since I do not have a digital watermark program, I'll take suggestions.

Thanks,

David

[TTMartin]

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@ilzho wrote:

Hi:

I'm sure this has been hashed out before, but since I do not have a website, where do you post your photos online? 

I'm not a professional, I'm a beginner and when I get some nice shots, I'll email them to the parties as an album that I created in Flickr.

Curious to know, for beginners like myself, what is a safe way to post photos without them getting stolen?

Not that anyone would steal mine, lol, but since I do not have a digital watermark program, I'll take suggestions.

Thanks,

David

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I use Facebook for sharing with friends and family. I use Flickr to archive a copy of the photos, and generally do not make my photos there public. 

[cicopo]

I have lots of on line albums plus some on Facebook pages. I have an album set for Cozumel Mexico which is linked to the Tripadvisor Forum for Cozumel, plus another album set for my aviation stuff which is well known by all the R/C clubs in our zone & across Canada too. That said my on line photos are at a low resolution which if printed won't make a decent print larger than a 4 X 6. Photos uploaded to FREE sites are the property of that site & the user agreement gives them the right to use them if they want, but it also frees them from having to protect them since you aren't paying them to do so. There is no fool proof way to protect any photo you upload to any public site, so if you're worried someone might steal your work (happens daily) don't upload it.

[Waddizzle]

"Curious to know, for beginners like myself, what is a safe way to post photos without them getting stolen?

Not that anyone would steal mine, lol, but since I do not have a digital watermark program, I'll take suggestions."

The only way I can think of to post photos online without them getting stolen is to just simply not to post them.  As noted, anything you post to "free" sharing site becomes the property of the host site....at least according to the "Terms of Use Agreemensts" that most of them have.

Even if you post photos to your own public site, people will still have access to your photos.  However, if you have your own site that requires people to register [terms of use agreement] and log-in, then you just might be able to control who has access to your photos.  Will that stop them from being "stolen"?  No, of course, not. 

[tinwhistle]

I will occasionally post an image or two, for a contest or the like, but very low resolution. I simply don't care to have my work out there for the taking. 

[Waddizzle]

"Not that anyone would steal mine, lol, but since I do not have a digital watermark program, I'll take suggestions."

Yes, you do.  It's called Lightroom.

[ilzho]

Well I do have watermark capability, which I use, but I was told that it can easily be cropped or taken away in Photoshop. A few people said a 'digital watermark' is the way to go.
I have Lr 6, and only saw the regular watermark capability when I export a photo, the digital watermark is different, so I was told. I was also told for a subscription to the digital watermark company they can search and see if you photo with the digital watermark us being used elsewhere.

[cicopo]

Funny you mention the company that tracks down "suspect" use of photos. I got an email about 3 months ago from one of those business who found some of my photos in use at a web site. Fortunately they were being used with my full permission so I didn't persue it any further but it makes me wonder what they might have done & at what cost. I have both my name & my email address embeded in the EXIF of my photos.

[RobertTheFat]

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@cicopo wrote:

Funny you mention the company that tracks down "suspect" use of photos. I got an email about 3 months ago from one of those business who found some of my photos in use at a web site. Fortunately they were being used with my full permission so I didn't persue it any further but it makes me wonder what they might have done & at what cost. I have both my name & my email address embeded in the EXIF of my photos.

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But I have to suppose that if the Web site had been using your photos without your permission, it's likely they'd have removed the Exif data.

[diverhank]

I don't make a living with my photography.  I post mine online on Flickr where you can limit the size of your displayed photos and you can disable downloading for non-friend and non-family members.  This will not prevent theft but minimize it somewhat.

I generally do not worry about my work getting stolen.  Once in a while, they'd be referenced on some travel brochures or wildlife articles without my permission even though they credited me as the author (usually outside of the US -South America, Asia and Russia, in my case) .

In general, people are very honest.  They would generally ask my permission for use or offer to buy my pictures.