This evening I discovered that a company's commercial blog used one of my photos at the top of one of their blog posts. The photo is one I took in July of 2012 and which I uploaded to Fine Art America in September of 2013 and which has sold once.
My photograph of old paintbrushes and paints appears at the top of a blog post; right under my photo is an advertisement.
I wasn't contacted by this website asking permission to use my photograph. They just took it. And that's what bugs me and that's what hurts.
This website apparently receives payment to have ads from major companies appear on their site. So they're getting paid for their work. They're using my work to make their site more appealing. I sell my work for a living, yet they did not ask me if they could use or if they could license my photo.
Do I know for a fact that they're getting paid to run ads on their site? No. But it doesn't really matter. What matters is the concept of taking my art to make their site look better without asking.
I took numerous screen shots of their page as well as the page where I believe they snagged my photograph. And this is the e-mail I sent to them this evening:
Dear Anjana Love Dixon,
Regarding your post of October 22, 2013 -- “The Passion of the Artist” http://theanjananetwork.net/2013/10/22/the-passion-of-the-artist/ -- I noticed you used a copyrighted photo I had taken of old tubes of paint and paintbrushes.
I first published this photo on my own blog in July of 2012. http://carolleigh.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html
You did not contact me to request permission to use my photograph on your commercial blog. If you had, I probably would have granted it, but since you did not, please remove my photo from your website.
I certainly would not copy one of your articles and publish it in my blog; I expect the same courtesy from others regarding my photographs.
Thank you.
Carol Leigh
http://carolleigh.blogspot.com
I'm posting this here because most of you are photographers and perhaps many of you have encountered the same situation. There are all sorts of legal measures I could take, but I'd just rather ask them to remove my photograph from their website and then hope that they'll think twice before taking someone else's work to decorate their words. I'll let you know how it turns out.
©Carol Leigh
