Sometimes you know your work when you see it.. You know your images and you know your edits. Because there is a strong element of art in photography. Sometimes images are difficult to work with, so you go home and sit down at the computer and work your magic on them. I was exhausted and about to fall asleep tonight when someone posted a news story that was in the local news. KSWO story on Mascotry. The lead photo was a brightly painted storefront in Rush Springs Oklahoma. I blogged about Rush Springs and their use of the Redskins mascot in March in my post "Of Melons and Mascots."
So I look on a Facebook forum and see this posted... But... this storefront isn't that bright.
Whoa there! Hold on that image looks suspicious and there is no credit for the photo-journalist who did the work! WOW... that's my image. Not WOW in a how cool they stole my photo way. WOW in the I'm incredibly ANGRY way!!!
You see I had to edit THIS image to get that great pop of color. I know how heavily I edited this image to get the outcome that I desired.
So I took this image to this... See this is what editing does. I don't always take great photographs. I often take a lot of boring, uninteresting images and make you believe what I want you to.
So while KSWO covered the issue of hurting people by using Native imagery (which is good). They USED MY imagery without permission. To add insult to injury I drove to Rush Springs specifically to photograph the Native imagery in the town and their "journalists" could not even use the common courtesy that I ask for to use this image. I can definitely say this is my image because of the amount of detail work I had to do on the edit. I'm disgusted.
You can get from Lawton to Rush Springs in 40 minutes and do your own live shots. You can drive to local towns and pull your own imagery; or you can email your area writers and bloggers and ask for permission.
I get a steady stream of requests to use my images now. I grant image usage large and small without pay for credit only for many people. I deeply appreciate the courtesy I've recieved from large organizations and small in the usage of my images and I'm flattered by it. It is called courtesy, you do not take anothers work and call it yours. You certainly don't use it as your lead and clickbait for your web traffic. It is professionalism, what all journalists learn about when they study ethics.
So please do not be "this" journalist. Don't steal bloggers work. We are working out of passion alone. We aren't taking home a paycheck. We are taking our time and money to build a body of work. Native Americans are NOT YOUR MASCOT. Bloggers are NOT YOUR PHOTOGRAPHERS, you pay people on staff to do that.
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