Adorama has Adobe CS6 on sale for $249.00

These deals normally last for a very short time, around 24 hours or so. If you are in the market for this software, then today is the time to buy when the normal price is $669.00 on this site.

Update: B&H has added this deal to their site as well and listed it for 24 hours. They also have bundled other software with CS6, such as Lightroom and Elements. Check out the deals at B&H.

Software notes:
Adobe® Photoshop® CS6 the world’s best digital imaging software delivers magic that helps you bring your creative vision to life. Edit raw image files and other photos with state-of-the-art photo editing. Create compelling HDR images, black-and-whites, and panoramas. Retouch images with astonishing ease and control. Design anything you can imagine at amazing speed. Paint and draw naturally and expressively. Even put your ideas in motion by intuitively creating stunning videos.

Content-Aware Patch alone is worth getting a newer version of CS6. Edit images with greater control using Content-Aware Patch, the latest addition to the Content-Aware family of technologies, which allows you to choose the sample area it will use to create your patch.

Mercury Graphics Engine and 64-bit support Count on the new Mercury Graphics Engine for blazingly fast performance when editing with key tools, and take advantage of cross-platform 64-bit support to speed up imaging tasks and process very large images faster.*

New and re-engineered design tools Create superior designs fast. Get consistent formatting with type styles, use vector layers to apply strokes and add gradients to vector objects, easily create custom strokes and dashed lines, quickly search layers, and more.

Intuitive video creation Bring Photoshop editing power to your video footage. Easily enhance any clip using the full range of familiar Photoshop tools, and create videos using an intuitive set of video tools.

Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 7 plug-in Bring out the best in your JPEG and raw files with improved processing and an enhanced control set; reveal every detail in the highlights of an image while still retaining rich detail in the shadows; and much more.

All-new Crop tool Crop images fast and with greater precision using the all-new, nondestructive crop tool. Manipulate your images on canvas, and take advantage of the Mercury Graphics Engine to see your adjustments happen live.*

Superior auto-corrections Quickly enhance your images with powerful Auto Curves, Levels, and Brightness/Contrast controls. Intelligence from thousands of hand-retouched images is built in to give you a better starting point for making adjustments.

Intelligent lens correction Easily straighten objects that appear curved in panoramas or photos shot with fisheye or wide-angle lenses and perform automatic lens corrections using tools that make adjustments based on your lenses’ characteristics.

Superior HDR imaging Create photo-realistic or surreal HDR images with exceptional speed and control. Get great results with automatic ghost removal, and precisely control tone mapping and adjustments.

Rich painting toolset Simply by painting with presets, get realistic color blends with the Mixer Brush, use Bristle Tips for lifelike strokes, draw naturally with erodible pencils and pastels, easily create the look of an oil painting, and much more.

Tools for intelligent selections Create precise selections and masks, enabling you to easily adjust or preserve skin tones; easily select intricate image elements, such as faces, hair; and more.

Puppet Warp Precisely reposition any image element to create a more visually appealing photo. For example, easily straighten an awkwardly bent arm. Powered by the new Mercury Graphics Engine, Puppet Warp lets you edit with fluid responsiveness.*

Background save and Auto-recovery Let the auto-recovery option preserve your edits without interrupting your progress. And keep working even while saving the largest of Photoshop files in the background.

New Blur Gallery Quickly create photographic blur effects using a simple new interface with on-image controls. Create tilt-shift effects, blur everything and then sharpen one focal point, or vary the blurriness between multiple focal points. The new Mercury Graphics Engine delivers immediate results.*

Dozens of user-inspired improvements Save time with more than 65 new creativity and productivity enhancements that originated as suggestions from Photoshop users via Facebook, Twitter, and more.

Modern interface Work with a fresh, elegant Photoshop interface featuring dark background options that make your images pop, and benefit from hundreds of design touches that create a smoother, more consistent editing experience.

Compatibility with Adobe mobile apps Extend your creativity beyond Photoshop CS6 with Adobe Touch Apps and Photoshop companion apps (sold separately). Intuitive touchscreen features provide ease of use and precise control for a variety of creative tasks.

* Some GPU-enabled features are not supported on Windows XP.

You can purchase the software through this link and help keep Enticing the Light going! CS6 at Adorama for $249.00

Cheers and good shooting
-Peter Zack

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Related posts:

1. Adobe Lightroom 3 on Sale at Adorama for $150 (maybe one day only??)
2. Adobe Photoshop CS5 at a Great New Price. Also Lightroom 3
3. Photoshop Editing Technique 3 – Creating an Action, Watermarking an Image

Start a FREE trial at zenfolio or get up to $25 off your subscription by using discount coupon E6P-UJA-UCX

Please consider purchasing through our affiliate stores. If you visit one of the stores through the links below and place an order, EtL will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. We hope you don't mind these ads; revenue from commissions is how we keep EtL running. Thanks!

B&H	Adorama	Amazon	eBay	Best Buy

© Peter Zack for Enticing the Light, 2012. All rights reserved, do not reproduce without permission. | Read article with proper formatting.

It had to happen and frankly, I’m surprised it took so long to have a camera maker move into this market segment. I like the idea and it’s long overdue. The missing link which I am sure will follow soon, is cellular in your camera. For millions of cellular users who routinely use their cell phones as their main camera (ask me how many weddings I’ve shot with 2 dozen iPhones taking photos), this would be the perfect device. Instead of carrying a point and shoot or other camera and a cell, they can eliminate the cell phone. The perfect vacation or carry anywhere unit.

With this new Nikon S800c camera, you get an Android OS enabled point and shoot with a 10x optical zoom 4.5-45mm (25-250mm 35mm equivalent) f/3.2-5.8 lens, a larger sensor (physical dimensions) than most smartphones or tablets at 16 megapixels. It also features GPS and WiFi wireless connectivity. The camera can take still pictures and Full HD 1080p HD video as well. List price $349.95 USD.

The big plus for people who use their phones and tablets as cameras is, the lens will be far better than any cell/tablet camera that will use a digital “zoom” to get wider or closer to the object. Digital zooms are terrible at the best of times and greatly reduce an already below average image quality these devices routinely produce. The larger sensor “should” produce greater dynamic range and cleaner images in lower light situations. Add to that, the image stabilization in this new camera and your pictures should be far better in almost any situation. Focus speed and image capture should be faster as well. How many times have you only captured a blur of someone moving because your cell took so long to focus the shot?

Another feature most users will like is the SD card slot. Unlimited image capture and very easy transfer to other devices. No more wires to transfer images to your computer.

You can read the full specs here: Nikon USA Press release

The camera is now available to order on B&H here.

Cheers and good shooting
-Peter Zack

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Related posts:

1. Nikon Releases Their First APS-C Prime Lens for DX Cameras: AF-S 35mm f/1.8G
2. Nikon Instant Rebates on Cameras and Lenses
3. Instagram App Now Available for Android

Start a FREE trial at zenfolio or get up to $25 off your subscription by using discount coupon E6P-UJA-UCX

Please consider purchasing through our affiliate stores. If you visit one of the stores through the links below and place an order, EtL will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. We hope you don't mind these ads; revenue from commissions is how we keep EtL running. Thanks!

B&H	Adorama	Amazon	eBay	Best Buy

© Peter Zack for Enticing the Light, 2012. All rights reserved, do not reproduce without permission. | Read article with proper formatting.

Microsoft has issued an updated Codec to allow viewing of various camera file formats, including RAW in supported software such as Window Live Photo Gallery as well as other software that is based in Windows Imaging Codecs (WIC).
There is a huge list of supported cameras and some dating back well over 4 years. Supported operating systems include Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

If you are not sure what a Codec is, it’s a update to the Windows operating system that allows the OS to read and open the image file(s) for your particular camera model and brand. Without it, you need specialized software like Photoshop (and many others will work as well) to view RAW files from the camera.

From the Microsoft announcement including the download link, here are the supported cameras:

Canon: Digital Rebel XT, Digital Rebel XTi, EOS 10D, EOS 20D, EOS 30D, EOS 40D, EOS 50D Digital, EOS 60D, EOS 300D, EOS 350D, EOS 400D, EOS 450D, EOS 500D, EOS 550D, EOS 600D, EOS 1000D, EOS 1100D, EOS 5D, EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 5D Mark III, EOS 7D Digital, EOS D30, EOS D60, EOS Digital Rebel, EOS Kiss Digital, EOS Kiss Digital N, EOS Kiss Digital X, EOS Kiss F, EOS Kiss X2, EOS Kiss X3, EOS Kiss X4, EOS Kiss X5, EOS Kiss X50, EOS Rebel T1i, EOS Rebel T2i, EOS Rebel T3, EOS Rebel T3i, EOS Rebel XS, EOS Rebel XSi, EOS-1D, EOS-1D Mark II, EOS-1D Mark II N, EOS-1D Mark III, EOS-1D Mark IV, EOS-1Ds, EOS-1Ds Mark II, EOS-1Ds Mark III, PowerShot G2, PowerShot G3, PowerShot G5, PowerShot G6, PowerShot G9, PowerShot G10, PowerShot G11, PowerShot Pro1, PowerShot S90, PowerShot S95, PowerShot SX1 IS

Nikon: 1 J1, 1 V1, Coolpix P6000, D1H, D2H, D2Hs, D2X, D2Xs, D3, D3s, D3X, D4, D40, D40x, D50, D60, D70, D70s, D80, D90, D100, D200, D300, D300s, D700, D800, D800E, D3000, D3100, D3200, D5000, D5100, D7000

Sony: DSLR-A100, DSLR-A200, DSLR-A230, DSLR-A300, DSLR-A330, DSLR-A350, DSLR-A380, DSLR-A500, DSLR-A550, DSLR-A560, DSLR-A580, DSLR-A700, DSLR-A850, DSLR-A900, Alpha NEX-3, Alpha NEX-5, Alpha NEX-5N, Alpha SLT-A55/A55V, Cyber-shot DSC-R1

Olympus: C-7070 Wide Zoom, C-8080 Wide Zoom, E-1, E-3, E-10, E-20, E-30, E-420, E-450, E-520, E-620, EVOLT E-300, EVOLT E-330, EVOLT E-400, EVOLT E-410, EVOLT E-500, EVOLT E-510, PEN E-P1, PEN E-P2, PEN E-PL1

Pentax (PEF formats only): *ist D, *ist DL, *ist DS, K10D, K20D, K100D, K100D Super, K110D, K200D, K-5, K-7, K-r, K-x

Leica: DIGILUX 3, D-LUX 4, M8, M8.2, M9

Konica Minolta: ALPHA-7 DIGITAL, DiMAGE A1, DiMAGE A2, DYNAX 7D, Maxxum 7D

Epson: R-D1

Panasonic: Lumix DMC-G1, Lumix DMC-GH1, Lumix DMC-GF1, Lumix DMC-LX3, Lumix DMC-LX5

Casio: EX-FH20

Kodak: EasyShare Z981, EasyShare Z1015 IS

Samsung: NX11

Cheers and good shooting
-Peter Zack

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Related posts:

1. Nikon D800, not the Camera We Wanted.
2. Nikon D800 Is Officially Launched. First Review Comments. Feb 7th, 2012
3. CliQ 2011, Sept 6th: Nikon D800 Release? Here’s My Wishlist

Start a FREE trial at zenfolio or get up to $25 off your subscription by using discount coupon E6P-UJA-UCX

Please consider purchasing through our affiliate stores. If you visit one of the stores through the links below and place an order, EtL will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. We hope you don't mind these ads; revenue from commissions is how we keep EtL running. Thanks!

B&H	Adorama	Amazon	eBay	Best Buy

© Peter Zack for Enticing the Light, 2012. All rights reserved, do not reproduce without permission. | Read article with proper formatting.

From The Huffington Post

For me, this is what photography is all about. An image that tells a story. In this case a very touching story. Schoep (Shep), a dog that ‘John’ rescued as an 8 month old puppy, is now 19 and suffering from arthritis. He has trouble sleeping and John takes him down to Lake Superior to float and sleep in the warm summer water. Photographer Hannah Stonehouse Hudson of Stonehouse Photography, took the photo above during a short session with John and Shep, sleeping on his friends shoulder.

Of course it’s gone a bit crazy on Facebook and is being shared everywhere. Have a look on the Stonehouse page. If you would like a copy of the photo, visit their online gallery for various versions that are available to purchase which will also go toward Shep’s care.

We hope your remaining time is peaceful Shep. Cudos to John for giving back to his companion.

Cheers and good shooting
-Peter Zack

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Related posts:

1. Photo Dough, the deal site helping a photographer with Ovarian cancer
2. Free Photo Software Resources
3. Which Online Photo Editor Is the Best?

Start a FREE trial at zenfolio or get up to $25 off your subscription by using discount coupon E6P-UJA-UCX

Please consider purchasing through our affiliate stores. If you visit one of the stores through the links below and place an order, EtL will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. We hope you don't mind these ads; revenue from commissions is how we keep EtL running. Thanks!

B&H	Adorama	Amazon	eBay	Best Buy

© Peter Zack for Enticing the Light, 2012. All rights reserved, do not reproduce without permission. | Read article with proper formatting.

Normally I wouldn’t post something like this, we try most of the time to keep things light but unfortunately a photographer colleague, has a clinical trial cancer treatment she’s trying to get into.

Jen Thompson is a 37 year old mother of 2 boys and professional family photographer based in Oregon. She’s got Ovarian cancer and if you know anything about this particular disease, it needs to be treated as quickly as possible.

If you haven’t heard about Photo Dough, you should consider subscribing to the site. Lots of great deals on everything regarding photography. They are taking a break from photography deals and are using the service to reach out to photographers to help Jen with $10 donations to get her to the Mayo Clinic. You can read the full Story on Photo Dough (and make a donation if you like) and you can see more of Jen’s story on this blog, which contains a donation link as well after the 5 day Photo Dough page will close. You can also as see some of Jen’s work on her site even though she currently isn’t able to continue shooting.

Good luck Jen! We’re cheering for you.

Cheers and good shooting
-Peter Zack

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Related posts:

1. Amazon Deal of the Day: Pentax K-7 DSLR for $899!
2. Deal of the Day: Tamron 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 for $230
3. Free Photo Software Resources

Start a FREE trial at zenfolio or get up to $25 off your subscription by using discount coupon E6P-UJA-UCX

Please consider purchasing through our affiliate stores. If you visit one of the stores through the links below and place an order, EtL will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. We hope you don't mind these ads; revenue from commissions is how we keep EtL running. Thanks!

B&H	Adorama	Amazon	eBay	Best Buy

© Peter Zack for Enticing the Light, 2012. All rights reserved, do not reproduce without permission. | Read article with proper formatting.

Pinterest has gotten very popular for a wide variety of businesses and in theory, it’s a great way to promote your business. People will spread the word for you if you have a product or item that gets people’s attention. Unfortunately it might just be too easy. Spammers have found a new way to get to your friends and customers.

Michelle Espinoza a jewellery maker reported to Bloomberg that some of the images posted of her work redirected people to pornography and other spam sites.

Needless to say, that could cost you big if you use social media sites such as Pinterest to promote your business. From the article:

“Social spam can be a lot more effective than e-mail spam,” said Mark Risher, chief executive officer of anti-spam software provider Impermium in Palo Alto, California. “We see a lot of it, and we see it increasing. The bad guys are taking to this with great abandon.”

Spammers create as many as 40 percent of the accounts on social-media sites, Risher said. About 8 percent of messages sent via social pages are spam, approximately twice the volume six months ago, he said.

Read the full article here on Bloomberg. I would suggest you check your account regularly to see where your links are going but unfortunately after you stuff has been shared on other people’s boards, you might loose control of it.

Where Pinterest falls very short is how they police the site. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have invested heavily in reducing spam and check items posted for content. Pinterest is relying on users to report a pin they feel is suspicious. That doesn’t work very well, I’ve reported items a couple of times and never heard a reply back. These items exist on the site today, months after reporting them on more than one occasion. Pinterest appears to be somewhat amateurish in how the site is run. Maybe it’s a case of being understaffed or underfunded. Issues like photo sharing rules that we reported on earlier seem to be developed on the fly and not well thought out.

Be careful if you have a board there to promote your business and check your boards regularly or maybe better, delete them before you get caught up sending ‘member’ enlargement pills to your customers who wanted to see your hand made afghans.

No related posts.

Start a FREE trial at zenfolio or get up to $25 off your subscription by using discount coupon E6P-UJA-UCX

Please consider purchasing through our affiliate stores. If you visit one of the stores through the links below and place an order, EtL will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. We hope you don't mind these ads; revenue from commissions is how we keep EtL running. Thanks!

B&H	Adorama	Amazon	eBay	Best Buy

© Peter Zack for Enticing the Light, 2012. All rights reserved, do not reproduce without permission. | Read article with proper formatting.

Go to Google Images to check on possible copies of your work

Update:
We’ve had a lot of interest in this topic and if you have a situation where you hired a fake photographer or had your content stolen, send us the details. Get clear information, screen shots of the site, email and if possible physical addresses and phone numbers. Record any data on professional organizations that they claim to belong to. Proof is key! Send us an email through our Facebook page with the information and any attachments. We’ll create a group on that page and also here on the main page for everyone to see. A public record of these thieves for both photographers and clients to check. Remember, some of your content might be stolen but as in the Meagan Kunert case, she stole from many different ones and by exposing the thief here, you can help the entire community.

Update 2
A colleague has begun a blog post t make these fake photographer’s sites and names known. You can visit it here -Photo Stealers- and if you have something to submit there, just follow the instructions above. I’m also going to add this blog site to our main index so it doesn’t become lost in the archives.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

To follow up from our earlier article on Meagan Kunert’s theft of multiple photographers work that she posted on her web site. Photographers are checking to see if the same thing has happened to them. In my case, I found a wedding planning site that was using one of my images as their own and have had them attribute it to me. Now a colleague has also found a direct and large scale rip off of his work on another photographers site. I’ll show you that further into this article.

First how do you protect yourself? Go to Google images and you’ll see a way see if your published work is posted elsewhere on the web. You will see a small icon that looks like a camera in the right hand corner of the search box. Click on the camera and then you will open a new window where you can check your images. Post the image URL in the search box or upload a published image from your computer. Other than Internet explorer, you can drag and drop the image to check it and use smaller web sized images to speed up the process, just make sure the EXIF data is intact as well.

Google image check step 2

You can do exactly the same thing with a site called TinEye. I would recommend trying both as Google images tends to look for ‘similar’ images and you might get a bunch of green grass shots that look similar to your green grass shot but are not the same. Another tool you can use with Google Image search is here and it works very well.

Second to check text, go to Copyscape and put your web page URL in the search box. It will check to see if your content has been copied. If you are using a WordPress Platform, you can use these various Plagiarism tools to protect your work. You could also use Google Alerts to check for certain content keywords. Yet another would be Digital Fingerprints for WordPress.

Sadly the other partial protection is to clearly watermark your images. It’s not foolproof, as a person who wants to make the effort will remove the watermark if they have the Photoshop skills or recrop the shot if the watermark is only along an edge of the shot. Also put unique keywords in your text. If you have references to XYZ photography somewhere on the page so if it’s copied, it will be more easily found.

Digimarc. If you want to take the extra step to protect your images, you could use Digimarc which is an Adobe Photoshop plugin. From the web site: allows you to embed imperceptible, persistent digital watermarks into your images to communicate ownership and other information, wherever the images travel across the Internet. A digital watermark embedded in your image carries a unique ID and can link to contact information or a website for viewers interested in learning more about you or purchasing your artwork. The watermark stays with your image regardless of the path it travels across the Internet. No matter where your digital image ends up, others will be able to determine your copyright ownership and find you.

Another case of a Professional Photographers work being stolen

Ashton Lamont is a colleague and excellent photographer based out of Reading, Berkshire UK. With all the theft of real professional’s work happening, he decided to check who might be using his work. He used some of the tools I mentioned above. Well unfortunately another photographer based in Victoria BC copied his work and posted it as his own. Really what a dumb move. The photos are clearly taken at old world locations. Victoria BC is pretty far from old world. It’s blatantly clear who owns the work.

The work that was stolen is samples of albums that Ashton has made for his clients. Creating these albums cost a huge amount of money, takes hours of design work for each album and takes time to properly photograph to present in an appealing way on his web site. To just go and rip this off is frankly appalling. What’s even worse is the photographer who stole the work is a member of several professional photography associations. A direct quote from their site:

We take our photography seriously and are bound by standards of practice and performace by being charter members of the Professional Photographers of Canada (PPOC), Wedding and Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) and Canadian Association of Photographic Art (CAPA).

So here is the work that’s been stolen in Ashton’s Album section. If you click on his link (it will open in a new window), you will see the originals that are identical to the screen shots below. The screen shots are of the pages from (how ironic is that name) Noble Photography. Now a couple of the really dumb things about this theft is, because Ashton embosses his albums with the names of the bride and groom, the thief has to use the same names in the descriptions. Very hard to hide from that. Second is the quality of the work. Ashton has a solid high quality body of work that is very consistent. If I were to assess the Noble samples, I’d recommend they get a job flipping burgers and sell their gear. They are in no way capable of matching Ashton’s work.

Now, it’s clear Ashton’s work has been used without his permission. The penalty in Canada is $1million and/or 5 years in jail per occurrence. I would hope the aforementioned professional bodies would support Ashton’s claims and strip this thief of any accreditation and also assist him in any prosecution he decides to follow. As has been discussed before, Gary Fong received a $240,000 award in US federal court for a very similar offence. Let’s hope Canada’s copyright act is equally enforced.

I’ll save you a step, share this article on Facebook on the Noble Photography Facebook page here and tell them what you think of these actions.

Yet again, another photographers work stolen.

In this case, not only the photos but the text and 95% of the entire site. Martin Leckie is a multi-award winning photographer (see below) who just discovered his site was stolen. I don’t understand the thinking of these thieves, Martin has a high profile and his site and work would be easily recognized. These people will be found and I hope face either jail time, big fines or both. I guess it’s a case of ‘So you want to avoid all the work and learning of getting to this level? Steal his entire online portfolio and jump the years of hard work it takes to be a professional.’ If you steal from someone with that type of profile, you will get caught, I hope no matter what your profile level, you are not faced with someone stealing your work. We will continue to publish articles like this to help the photographic community find and expose these thieves.

The link to the stolen work is here. Martin is currently taking actions to have this removed and is speaking to lawyers with the intention of further action. So I suspect the site will disappear shortly. Here are some screen shots of the offending site and Martins to compare. You can see more of his work here. Click on the images below to see larger versions and use the back button to return to this article.

You will see identical pages on the fake site, only the background colour and photographer's name has changed.

One for Homer Simpson. Martin's signed photo on Coleen's site. Theives always screw up somehow.

Martin used Copyscape to discover the site and it found the fake site in about a minute. If you think your website host or designer will check if the material you are submitting is stolen, think again. Swiftcreations used this web site as a portfolio example on their site until they were notified by Martin’s lawyers about the stolen content and the example was removed.

Martin’s Awards:
Martin A. Leckie L.B.I.P.P. L.M.P.A. L.S.W.P.P.

Sim 2000 UK Wedding Album Designer of the Year 2009
SWPP 2 Gold Awards for Wedding Photography 2008
SWPP UK Children Photographer of The Year 2007
SWPP Runner Up Overall UK Photographer of the Year 2007
MPA Scottish Portrait Photographer of The Year 2000
MPA Award for Avant Garde Wedding 2007
MPA Gordon McGowan Award for Innovative Portraiture 2004/ 2007
MPA Complete Wedding Award of excellence 2007
MPA 33 Awards of Excellence 1989 – 2007
BIPP Scottish Photographer of The Year 1997
BIPP 17 Awards of Excellence 1989 – 2005

I never ask a reader to do this but I feel this is an issue that needs as much exposure as possible. Copy the article to your blog, post it to a sharing site like Stumbleupon or Digg. Share it on Facebook and any place you think other photographers might see it. We need the community to find out if their work is being copied and go after these thieves.

If you have tried the tools we posted above to protect your work and found cases where someone has stolen your work, we want to hear your story. Please post a comment below. It’s important to “out” these thieves who are not only stealing your hard work but your income and very likely tarnishing your reputation and the reputation of all photographers who do an honest days work (7 days a week!)

Cheers and good shooting
-Peter Zack

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Related posts:

1. Stealing photographers work to start a business – Exposed
2. Protect Your Photos with TinEye
3. Bad Photoshop Work – No Wonder the Movie Was a Flop!

Start a FREE trial at zenfolio or get up to $25 off your subscription by using discount coupon E6P-UJA-UCX

Please consider purchasing through our affiliate stores. If you visit one of the stores through the links below and place an order, EtL will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. We hope you don't mind these ads; revenue from commissions is how we keep EtL running. Thanks!

B&H	Adorama	Amazon	eBay	Best Buy

© Peter Zack for Enticing the Light, 2012. All rights reserved, do not reproduce without permission. | Read article with proper formatting.

Images on the left side are the copyright property of Sean McGrath. Stolen images on the right were on the site of Meagan Kunert (Reed) but are also the copyright property of Sean McGrath.

Images above are the copyright property of Sean McGrath

Update
We’ve posted a lengthy follow up article here and would like everyone who read this article to have a look at how to protect your work.

Well this is old news now (about 24 hours old and in internet terms, that’s a lifetime) but a so called photographer, Meagan Kunert (Reed) of (Conway) Little Rock, Arkansas, who appeared to have some talent, decided that taking shortcuts was the quick way to a ‘rock-star’ career in wedding photography. She ripped off the work of several established pros to build a Facebook page, Flikr site, Zenfolio account, blog and web site. In fact you could find her almost everywhere as she also had a G+ site, Linkdin profile and was on [b] School. How she thought no one would notice her copying other peoples work, is beyond imaginable. The internet might be global but it’s also a small and closely watched place in so many ways.

So this exposure of stolen images went viral very quickly. The theft by Meagan Kunert (Reed) was pretty extensive. It encompassed the work of at least 5 other photographers that I was able to determine and I would assume, there were more that just haven’t become known. The thief was using this work to book business and passing off the posted work as her own. Even to the point of watermarking the stolen photos as her own work. One photographer Amber Hughes had a large section of a wedding stolen, then another and then a third. You can see the originals on her site and a few of the copies looked like this:

You'll note the new watermark on Amber's work

The following morning after this was discovered, it had gone viral before Meagan had gotten out of bed. There where a flood of posts on various forums and Facebook pages, one of the most notable being David’s Hobby’s Twitter feed (of Strobist fame). The internet in it’s various forms, exploded with condemnation and anger. Meagan began by just deleting comments but the flood kept coming. Eventually the web site, blog, Flikr account and a few others were shut down. Later on May 9th, she issued a public apology on her Facebook page but some claimed the reply comments were being filtered to only include supportive posts or ones that were less of an attack nature. Since she’s taken that apology down and it’s resulting comment section, there’s no way to know everything that was said. When I visited, the bulk of the comments were supportive.

Her Pinterest account at the time of this writing remains active. I’m sure that will change so I’ll post a most curious item in one of her boards:

The Pot calling the kettle Black.

Her blog was full of tips about how to create a successful wedding photography business and like the image above, she had stolen a “how to” blog post that was put on her site on April 17th. The post was a copy word-for-word from Shannon Holden’s Blog site found here and the top section which was stolen from Digital Photography School. Comments like :
“RESPECT YOUR FELLOW PHOTOGRAPHER”
“Operate with Integrity”
“Be honest, be bold, be genuine, be loving, and be humble. Your clients will appreciate you more for it.”

The list of ironic quotes goes on. I don’t think you need me to explain how hypocritical she was in posting the written work of others containing phases like this. The curious thing was, Shannon was freely sharing her thoughts with everyone and only asked if you posted it on your own web site or blog, that you linked back to Shannon’s site and gave her credit. Meagan took it as her own.

You can see that what was posted on Meagan's site was a copy of Shannon's earlier writings, posted in 2008.

What also interested me was Meagan wrapping herself in the name of God. Her tag line on Linkedin and Google + was “wedding photographer slash story teller. lover of Jesus” The apology on Facebook was sprinkled with “pray for me” and other religious forgiveness references. While I make no comment on ones faith, I find this abhorrent to use religion as an “Opps, I’m really a good person [because I believe in God] who made a mistake. Sorry and please forgive me and pray for me.”

If Yahoo CEO, Scott Thompson can be pressured to step down (he most likely won’t have much choice) for claiming on his resume, a degree that he never earned, then Meagan should never pick up a camera again to take the photo of a paid client. This type of fraud is all too common and and can not be supported or condoned in any fashion. Unfortunately it repeated itself in the same 24 hour period with the work of Martin Leckie based in Scotland not only had his images stolen but his entire site! Someone claiming to be a photographer based in Brighton UK, copied the site and used the web address (now closed) http://www.coleensullivan.co.uk/ as their own. [I don't have any screen shots because Martin had the site closed very quickly].

So I decided to post this editorial item as a warning to others who think image theft is a good way to skip the years of hard work to build a business. You will get caught when you steal. Either the internet and those you stole from will find you or you will not be able to produce work that comes close to the fake portfolio you put forward. Your clients will soon realize you can’t do the work you claim to do. On top of that in Canada where I’m based, the legal penalty for copyright theft is $1 million and/or 5 years in jail. The USA penalties are similar ($500K/5years). This is no trivial matter and should be punished under the law. It’s not an “Opps. sorry, I’m really a good person that believes in Jesus and just made an error”.

Update
We’ve posted a lengthy follow up article here and would like everyone who read this article to have a look at how to protect your work.

Cheers and good shooting
-Peter Zack

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Related posts:

1. Photography theft and how to protect your work.
2. Pinterest. Maybe not so good for business.
3. When Photographers Go to Court

Start a FREE trial at zenfolio or get up to $25 off your subscription by using discount coupon E6P-UJA-UCX

Please consider purchasing through our affiliate stores. If you visit one of the stores through the links below and place an order, EtL will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. We hope you don't mind these ads; revenue from commissions is how we keep EtL running. Thanks!

B&H	Adorama	Amazon	eBay	Best Buy

© Peter Zack for Enticing the Light, 2012. All rights reserved, do not reproduce without permission. | Read article with proper formatting.

I have informed my wife. She wasn’t pleased.

Good light and good luck,

    —Miserere

Cartoon: ©Scott Adams.

Related posts:

1. What The Duck Giggles
2. Photo Walk – Boston (Financial District) Edition 2009
3. Don't Forget Scott Kelby's Photowalk Tomorrow

Start a FREE trial at zenfolio or get up to $25 off your subscription by using discount coupon E6P-UJA-UCX

Please consider purchasing through our affiliate stores. If you visit one of the stores through the links below and place an order, EtL will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. We hope you don't mind these ads; revenue from commissions is how we keep EtL running. Thanks!

B&H	Adorama	Amazon	eBay	Best Buy

© Miserere for Enticing the Light, 2012. All rights reserved, do not reproduce without permission. | Read article with proper formatting.

Instagram, the mobile editing and photo sharing application popular with hipsters and Zack Arias alike, is now available for the Android platform. The tyranny of the iPhone is ended, now we can all be hipsters!

Let us rejoice.

You can download the Android app from Google Play (or from iTunes, if you’re still using the iPhone). If you want to add me to your hipster friends list, my username is MiserereMei (and whoever took “Miserere”, I’d like a word with you, grrr!).

UPDATE 2012/04/09: Instagram is to be bought by Facebook for $1 billion. Yeah, BILLION with a B! Holy crap…

Good light and good luck,

    —Miserere

Related posts:

1. Android and Cameras Merge – Nikon Coolpix S800c

Start a FREE trial at zenfolio or get up to $25 off your subscription by using discount coupon E6P-UJA-UCX

Please consider purchasing through our affiliate stores. If you visit one of the stores through the links below and place an order, EtL will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. We hope you don't mind these ads; revenue from commissions is how we keep EtL running. Thanks!

B&H	Adorama	Amazon	eBay	Best Buy

© Miserere for Enticing the Light, 2012. All rights reserved, do not reproduce without permission. | Read article with proper formatting.