CalevPhoto

My first stolen photos

Well, it was bound to happen at some point or another.  Someone has stolen several of my photos.  In this case they were real estate photos and ironically are not some of my better photos.

Some time ago my wife, who is a real estate agent, had a listing that I took photos of.  The shoot was quite difficult and I wound up having to reshoot the property.  In retrospect, it was an important property for me because it was what eventually prompted me to move from pure HDR to exposure blending.

The shot above was one of the photos stolen and certainly has its flaws – the worst of which are probably the incorrect verticals.

Unfortunately, after quite a bit of work by both myself and my wife, my wife realized that this wasn’t going to work out so she cancelled the listing.  The seller then relisted the property several months later with a different agent.

Of course, the new agent helped herself to my photos, and I have of course insisted that these photos be removed.  If they are not removed soon, I intend to send her the bill for my services and pursue this in court if they are not removed.

What bothers me even more though was the response from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS).  When I contacted them asking what I needed to do to get the photos removed, a rude woman responded that they will not take any requests from photographers.  The listing agent must submit a complaint.  Luckily the previous listing agent in this case was my wife so she filed the formal complaint using the form she mentioned.

So far NWMLS has not bothered to reply to the complaint, which has me even more angered.  I am half tempted to file a lawsuit against them for copyright infringement.  This is simply not correct.  If a photographer sends them a certified letter demanding his images be removed from their site, they must do this.  NWMLS must understand that real estate agents do not own the copyright for these photographs – the photographers do.

Introduction to Microstock Photography – Copyrights and Trademarks

In this post I will begin to discuss the types of things that will result in a rejection.  There are a number of things that will result in a rejection that include

1. Copyrights
2. Noise
3. Focus
4. Framing
5. Bad lighting
6. Not stock worthy
7. Similar images
8. Releases

Over the next several posts I will discuss all of these in depth.  At the end of this series I will include a number of sample images.  Today, however, I will touch on the extremely lengthy subject of copyright protection.  I will begin by saying that this is an extremely complicated subject that I know little about.  For instance, I’m not exactly sure what the differences are between trademarks and copyrights.  However, I suspect that most of us don’t really care.  What we do care about is whether we can sell a given picture.  Therefore I will simplify this discussion into what you can sell photographs of, and what you cannot.

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