Posting Photography Online?

[Nonnavlis]

Watermarks or exif data. All of my pictures have exif data intact that says 'Copyright Edward Mowinckel', I used to watermark them, but after a few professional photographers said they don't watermark 'cause it takes away from the shot, I looked over my portfolio, and they were right. It does take away from the shot.

You want people to see your pictures, trying to restrict them or discourage people from sharing them is bad business. There's no such thing as bad press. If someone ganks one your shots, posts it to Reddit, it makes it pretty far up on the front pages, and there's no credit, that's a good thing, that's still a ton of eyes on your work. If someone goes to your portfolio, and sees that picture, they'll go 'Oh, I recognize this!'.

Don't worry about it. Put your work out there. Let people see it. It's never a bad thing to get more eyes on your pictures. You have to decide if you want to watermark your shots, or just use exif data, but never think people looking at your shots is a bad thing.

You've made some good points there, sir (And exif data is genius, I should have thought of that). Perhaps I ought to just bite the bullet.

You know you can watermark them in a way where it looks incorporated and meant to be^^

Theres also some html code that you can implement that will activate when someone tries to right click on your pictures

If I do upload them somewhere where I can edit the code, I do intend to use a right-click disabler. It's easy to get around, but I figure some people would be to lazy to bother.

There's nothing you can do to prevent people stealing your work short of not posting it online. You CAN post a large watermark over it, that way if it's taken, it's obviously yours, and it can't be photoshopped out.  Photography companies, like the ones that do senior pictures, do this, so the only way to get unedited ones is to pay for them to print them for you.

Flickr is pretty professional, and it doesn't let you directly save the images as image files. You could try Tumblr as well.

I'll admit I'm a little confused by your statement. I'm sure I've saved images from Flickr many times.

I don't really want to use Tumblr, I find it to be a mess and a half, but it is definitely a good suggestion. Re-blogging would discourage image theft, I think.

[DoctorMowinckel]

I consistently get licensing rights to my concert shots, and if I didn't put my shots out there, I wouldn't get licensing rights. If you hide your work, no one is going to see it. You gotta put yourself out there. If someone wants to save one of your pictures, and use it on their desktop, that's a compliment.
Check out portfolios of guys like Steve McCurry, Danny Santos III, David Alan Harvey, the submissions that make it to 1x, there aren't any watermarks. The people who want to take credit for your images are in in a million, don't let that deter from getting your work out there. You gotta have confidence that your shots are good enough people will want to license them, or buy prints. If you live in a hole for fear of someone saying 'I took this' when they didn't, no one's ever going to see your work, and you're never going to make any money off of it. People who make photography their living, or even a source of income on the side don't do it by keeping it to themselves.

Right now, in photography, the signal to noise ratio is so high you gotta push through. You gotta show people lots of professional quality work so they know you're not a wannabe, that you're part of the signal, not the noise. Put yourself out there.

[Nonnavlis]

You should be a motivational speaker, y'know? You make me want to do stuff. You're words speak to me. I think I will screw the internet and post some of my photos around. I'm proud of them, after all. They may not be the best yet, but I'm learning.

You're obviously someone who's been there, done that, and learned from it. Would you mind if I ask what you recommend? Do you think it would be better to go for something easy to find like Flickr or DeviantArt, or to try and manage my own site?

[DoctorMowinckel]

It's so easy to set up a good looking wordpress these days. My portfolio is a free wordpress theme I did some tweaks to, you can see it here http://www.photo.doctormowinckel.com I pay about $40 a year in hosting fees, and I have three other URLs registered with that host.

For business purposes I bounce galleries out of Lightroom, those look like this; http://doctormowinckel.com/pictures/galleries/larkin_poe/ That's ALL the shots I got from that night which are in focus, and have decent light. It's a good way for bands to pick and choose what they they might want to license. And they are watermarked, because these galleries are for business. If a band needs to forward something to a representative, they know exactly whose picture it is.

If you can't afford hosting, flickr is the free service that's most widely used by professional photographers. I'd suggest getting a wordpress or other content management system set up, and paying the $20 a month for a domain and some server space.

Also, copyrights; any original content which is made permanent by the owner is then copyright by the person who created it. When you take a picture, you legally own it, and have the rights to it, this applies to Canada, and the states. I never did photography in Canada, only music, so I don't know much about Canadian photography laws. But, if you're licensing things, it's a good idea to get the rights recognized by the government. In the states, this cost $65 per batch of photos you're getting written legal rights to. I'd only do that IF you're licensing something that's going to get a lot of eyes on it. For me, if a band that tours regionally and they want to license some of my shots, I don't register the copyright with the government, because the odds of it being illegally used are slim to none. If I were to get something licensed with a band that tours internationally, then I'll go through the US Copyright Office. You're Canadian, which has CAPIC, the Canadian Association of Professional Image Creators, poke around their site to see what you need to do to get your copyright status in legal writing.

[Nonnavlis]

Wow, your site really does look great! I don't know much of Wordpress, but it looks pretty spiffy (And your nature shots are desperately gorgeous).

I'll admit Lightroom and bouncing galleries is going a bit over my head (I don't know what you mean by either, though I presume Lightroom as in the editing software). But, I don't think I'll need to be doing anything like that soon.

I can't be putting money towards my own domain at the moment. I'll be honest and admit I've just made it to adulthood and haven't had any real jobs yet, so I don't have income to be spending on webpages. I'll probably go with Flickr, then. Thank you very much for all of your information, DoctorMowinckel.

Edit: Oh, proper copyrights! I hadn't even considered that. I don't think it will come up, but I'll definitely look into it. And I must say, you're dreadfully clever to even know about CAPIC. I'm Canadian and I've never even heard of it before.

[DoctorMowinckel]

Lightroom is photo editing software, it's called Lightroom, because it's the contrary to 'darkroom'. It took me about a year to realize that. Anyway, most of what you do in Lightroom is stuff you'd do in the darkroom. Colour correction, levels, brightness/contrast, those sorts of things. You're not going to be doing HDR or anything like that in Lightroom. It's for keeping things looking natural, as opposed to the ultra high contrast super saturated gobbledygook you see so much these days. I really recommend it. Lightroom 4 is only $150, it's a pretty darn good deal for the price.

There's a feature in Lightroom which will create web galleries with the click of a button, just select the pictures you want in it, the theme, and hit export. It's really handy if you have a lot of pictures you want to show off.

Oh, proper copyrights! I hadn't even considered that. I don't think it will come up, but I'll definitely look into it. And I must say, you're dreadfully clever to even know about CAPIC. I'm Canadian and I've never even heard of it before.

I just moved from Canada less than two years ago, and I know a lot of photographers, so I've picked up on things like CAPIC.

[banditpony]

I recommend having a 72 dpi image that is no bigger than 600x800. Or at least, if I posted pictures online, that's what I'd do because it could not really be used for much other than viewing, then. Then again there is always rez up softwares too, haha...

[Nonnavlis]

You're definitely not the first I've heard to say good things about Lightroom, Doctor Mowinckel. It's definitely something on my mind for when I'm willing to upgrade my hobby (a DSLR will be next, I think. Though, I'm impressed what can be done without one).

I had never heard it could make galleries for you, though. Brilliant the things software can do these days.

I recommend having a 72 dpi image that is no bigger than 600x800. Or at least, if I posted pictures online, that's what I'd do because it could not really be used for much other than viewing, then. Then again there is always rez up softwares too, haha...

I do intend to keep with lower quality images. As crazy as I am for quality, I don't see why anyone but me needs to have access to the originals of my photos.

[Stuntmang]

Then again there is always rez up softwares too, haha...

Personal pet peeve of mine: Software like this doesn't exist in any working capacity. It's just not a possible thing to do, due to the current nature of all image formats used to store photographs. You can't derive enough data for an extreme close up from pixels in an image. The only image format where this is true is vector, and even then vector can only do simplistic-ish drawings and gradients, nothing near an actual photo.
/endrant

[banditpony]

Well, Stuntmag... I know what you are saying, but software like that does exist. And no, it does not exist for the magic purpose of taking a 100px x 100px image and making it into a poster. It does has it's usefulness, and there are many print businesses that use it to push the limits of some photos/art. But I purely said it as a joke -- but I've seen it happen too. Where people take stuff of flickr, and size it up (although not properly), and used it for personal work----- instead of going through the trouble of asking to use it.

And even more so, you are under estimating vector art as well. You can create photorealistic art with illustrator. (Other programs, not so sure).

The point is, to put up an image that views nicely, but you would half to jump through hoops to actually try to steal it and make profit on it. No one wants to jump hoops. But if someone wants it, and they want to go through the effort, they will. And more than likely, they won't want to. But it could happen.

I need to point out having an image be 72dpi, and a smaller size, does NOT lower quality. Everything on screen views at 72dpi anyway (yes, this isn't exactly 100% true but that's /really/ technical).

[Nonnavlis]

I need to point out having an image be 72dpi, and a smaller size, does NOT lower quality. Everything on screen views at 72dpi anyway (yes, this isn't exactly 100% true but that's /really/ technical).

Well, sorry for the misinterpretation Technical jargon is way over my head, so I just presumed.

[banditpony]

oh ! no worries ~  I just wanted to say it will look just as good :3

[DoctorMowinckel]

Then again there is always rez up softwares too, haha...

Personal pet peeve of mine: Software like this doesn't exist in any working capacity. It's just not a possible thing to do, due to the current nature of all image formats used to store photographs. You can't derive enough data for an extreme close up from pixels in an image. The only image format where this is true is vector, and even then vector can only do simplistic-ish drawings and gradients, nothing near an actual photo.
/endrant

Check out tiled printing, halftoning, and the whole reporgraphy industry. Here's a 16x20 print I made from a 1280 wide image;

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You can totally enlarge things if you have a good source, and know what you're doing.

[Nonnavlis]

Here's a 16x20 print I made from a 1280 wide image;

Okay, that print is magical.

[DoctorMowinckel]

Oh, it's not my shot. I wish it were, haha. It's a picture of Kate Davis, she's my favourite musician. I'd like to do a shoot with her, but it seems unlikely that I'll ever get to.