I think it’s important to bring awareness to photographers on copyright issues.
I recently had another photographer (Jaime) in Ontario steal five of my images and post them on her website as her own. She did not have my permission to do so. Jaime and I live in the same province and another photographer from our province recognized the images to be mine so she of course called to inform me of the issue.
I had a friend take screen captures (shown bleow) of Jaime’s website as soon as I was off the phone as I was in transit. When I got home I had the advice of many helpful photographers as how I should go about this issue. Just hours later I emailed her a letter and invoice for photography stock fees. She had taken my images down that night as well as many other images, her phone number and the information to the bridal show she is
hosting (
http://www.brockvilleareabridalshow.com/) this Saturday in Brockville. However, she did not reply to me. I then sent the same letter and invoice by registered mail and still she has not replied to me.
My images that were stolen by Jaime were not stamped with my logo as I took the images before I started stamping. I want to stress how important it is to other photographers that we stamp our work to avoid situations like this.
Here are the screen captures taken of Jaime’s website. Anyone that knows my work already knows those images to be mine as I posted them on my blog here in July of 2007.
Note that I have removed her website address from these screen captures:
All of these images were taken by Jenna Simpson of About Image photograpy
As advised I went to the media and my story was printed today in the Trentonian. The image from the article (shown below) in the paper is of me, holding the photo that I took of model Allana Raby on July 3, 2007. In the background on my lap top is one of the screen captures taken of Jaime's website with my image on her site.
I do work very hard as a business women and photographer to let Jaime think it is ok to steal my images and I will do nothing about it. She has been given 30 days to pay for the photography stock fees before I take legal action.