I’m back home in the office, for just two days, before heading out to Moab for our next DLWS event. I had the opportunity to create this four image pano of White Pelicans while I was shooting in FL that I wanted to share with you. It was taken with Sharon’s 70-300VR, I just twisted at the trunk making mental notes of the beginning and ending points and then assembled it in a heartbeat in CS3 with Photomerge. It was a cool opportunity that I just couldn’t pass up. I just finished storing and backing up 9078 images from FL reminding me I had this to share. I would really love to make it larger for you to see, but can’t. Here’s why.
I wanted to take a moment to address what many folks are seeing lately. If you look at my images anywhere else but on MY blog, you will see a white box with my copyright rather than the image. I’ve received everything from nice emails to those from outraged folks saying how dare I block the images (seriously, how dare I). In January we had over 900 instantiates of image theft, mostly from our blog. Everything from taking just an image to stealing the ENTIRE blog and making it their own occurred. Now, I’m not sure what part of copyrighted image folks don’t understand, not sure why some reader services think they have the right to grab my images (and bandwidth in some cases) but we’ve been left with just a few options. Contacting folks and informing them they are thieves got old and a huge waste of our time. Shutting down the blog really crossed my mind because hey, this is just a freebie I do to share a little photographic inspiration. Since those options weren’t working for me, we’ve gone to implementing a viscous code so when someone steals our images (because that’s what it is, an illegal act that we are now pursing in some cases) all you see is a copyright.
This goes way beyond copyright issues. The photographs I post have a special meaning to me so I share them in the hopes that at times, they grab your heartstrings. I’m trying to point blank influence you into getting involved in wildlife photography and our wild heritage. While image theft is nothing new to us, the recent wave of over the top, gotta have and screw you attitude though has our head spinning. There’s no doubt I’m a big target (in ever sense of the word), always have been and if I’m lucky, I always will be. I can deal with that, I can’t deal though with the theft of my personal property, my heart & soul. We’re not shutting down the blog or website but we will do everything we can to keep honest people honest and the rest, well, they’re hearing from us in not so friendly terms. So, if you don’t see my images and only text, you now know why and, that you’re looking at a pirated site. You want the full bull, MooseNews Blog is the only place.
PS…those who have been very courteous and professional and shared our blog content via just a link, we thank you!
PSS…thanks for all the kind emails in support, they mean a lot to us. But please, no more emails with suggestions how to “solve” the problem. It’s not as cut and dry as one might think.