Lifestyle Images: Good Friends, the Lake, and a Bottle of Red...

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Good Friends, the Lake, and a Bottle of Red...

We had a great time at Percy Priest Lake Saturday afternoon with our good friends, Scott and Sarah. They have a nice boat, and are gracious enough to invite us out several times a year. When we woke up that morning, it was stormy and raining, so we thought for sure that our plans would be cancelled. But towards lunchtime, the skies began to clear, and we decided to head over to their house. We had a nice little picnic lunch on the boat, and let Logan swim while Liam napped. Kelly and Sarah enjoyed a nice bottle of red, we sat around chatting for a while. We went for a swim after dark, and finally headed back to the launch point at around 10 PM. The lake was so peaceful at night! Now Kelly is talking about buying a boat for next summer!
Sarah was nice enough to take some photos of Kelly, Parrish and I, since Parrish is leaving for college in a couple of weeks.

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A Note To All Blog Viewers

Please remember that all content and images on this blog belong to me, and are protected by U.S. Copyright Laws. It is illegal to copy, save, print, or reproduce in anyway without my express written permission. To do so is theft. Please, don't.

Why Are Professional Photographs Watermarked?
by Cristy Nielsen & Yolanda Rowe

As parents, we do everything we can to protect our children. We teach them to look both ways before crossing the street and many other ways to be safe. Photographers have the same responsibility to their work. Each photograph is important--not just because they are our livelihood but because they are portraits of special people: our clients. To protect our work and our clients, we watermark every image that appears online. We hope to discourage unethical people who steal from photographers by copying and using images for their purposes without authorization or compensating the copyright owner and subjects.

For example, let's say your photographer posts preview images on a social networking site such as Facebook or Myspace. These photos are intended to show the client a preview of what their session images will look like. If they are not watermarked they cannot be identified back to the photographer who created the image and they could be stolen by a third party and used without permission. This has happened on numerous occasions by companies who will use photographs for their marketing campaigns and then photographers or their clients have found their images and photos on the sides of buses, on billboards, etc. Imagine finding a photo of you or your child on a flyer or website for some random company when you didn't give permission for it to be used in that way and you will begin to understand why photographers watermark to protect their work.

Federal law is very clear on the copyright of images. The creator of the image (the photographer) is the owner of those rights. A client pays the photographer to take those images, but it does not give them ownership (rights) to what is created. Even if the client purchases a file or print it does not give the client copyright to the image. They are given a license to do certain things. This is called a Usage License and it is illegal to scan or copy it and use it in any way other than which it was intended: displaying the print itself. Even purchasing prints does not give the client copyright to the image and it is illegal to alter, scan, or copy it and use it in a way other than its intent. Copyright is held by the image creator for 70 years by law and infringement is punishable by up to $150,000 in fines PER image.

While it may seem like no big deal to make additional copies of an image, or crop out watermarks in web versions of photos, truly it is a big deal. A photographer works very hard on their images, and this is their livelihood, source of income and how they feed their family. When you copy and scan images you are taking part of the income that they depend on to stay in business and serve their clients in the first place. Watermarking is a necessary evil to protect photographers, to protect their work and their job security. As Yolanda says "Copyright is like your vehicle. You can give someone the keys to drive it (granting permission to a client) but it doesn't make them the owner of the vehicle."
For more information on copyright please visit

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Good Friends, the Lake, and a Bottle of Red...

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