![]() When you get down to it, random people from the massive networks like Facebook are much more likely to take a photo and put it online than are photographers on a smaller photo sharing site. As I said before, I go on a site by site basis when it comes to watermarks, and the reason is simple. I'm still seeing my photos all over the place with the watermark on it. ![]() It also didn't seem to have any effect on the number of sites that were sharing my work. Yes, it's a bit distracting and not ideal for viewing, but adding that extra watermark seemed to deter anyone from bothering to put the time into cloning the whole thing out. This led me to adopt a more noticeable watermark that covered the actual subject of the photo. ![]() This really had no effect on anything as I realized people were just cloning out my watermark in a matter of seconds and going about using it in the same way they were before. After that I started using small watermarks in the least conspicuous way. It struck me that my photo was being sent out to all these people and no one had any way of knowing how to get a copy for themselves, should they want to. What struck me right away wasn't that someone had taken my photo and used it in this email. Inside these emails i'd often find my own images. The kind you get from your aunt that read "you have to see these cute baby animal photos" or something of that nature. A few years back I started to get emails forwarded to me. I see so many photographers out there get up in arms about this. What I'm talking about is those who unknowingly (or knowingly) take a photo to post it to a blog, an email forward, their own website ect. That isn't ok with me, but thats a whole other topic which I won't cover here. I don't watermark my photos because I think it will prevent image theft (believe me it won't) I've definitely had to deal with some frustrating times when I've found my images on a website being used for their profit with no credit to me. I believe that when you post an image online you are doing so with the knowledge that people WILL steal it and use it for whatever they want, the internet is still the wild west in a lot of respects. Do I use watermarks because of this? Yes, but not because I'm paranoid about someone stealing my 700px wide 72ppi low res photo. The number one reason people use watermarks is because of rampant image theft on the internet. I understand where they are coming from, but I'd like you all to take a look at watermarks from a different perspective. Now, a lot of people find watermarks obnoxious and distracting and aren't afraid to share that opinion with me. to funnel people to my website, which is where I do business. Facebook, G+, Twitter, 500px, flickr, ect. I'm writing this from a business point of view and in todays world social networks are one of the biggest tools we have to reach our customers. It's sort of a natural progression from what some would say are overly watermarked photos, to not marked at all, and that's exactly how I want it. On my personal website I don't use any type of watermark whatsoever. On photo sharing sites I use a small watermark that usually says something like "©date" On the larger social networking sites like Facebook and now Google+ I add a second more obtrusive mark on the center. I for one, do use watermarks on a site by site basis. ![]() (see above for a ridiculously over-egaggerated example) For those of you who don't know, a watermark is any kind of "stamp" you put on your photo to let people know that photo is yours.
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