“A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it.”
–Alfred Korzybski

“That which is created by mind, is more real than matter.” – Charles Baudelaire

Getty has selected 9 images from my October work.
They will soon be available for licensing. Stay tuned!

Wishing you all very happy holidays.

“True form is magnificently illuminated with gleaming fire. True wisdom is total silence amid the ringing of the wind chimes.” –Hongzhi Zhengju

Because he believes in himself, he doesn’t try to convince others.
Because he is content with himself, he doesn’t need others’ approval.
Because he accepts himself, the whole world accepts him. –Lao Tzu

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
–Albert Einstein

“The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.” –Ezra Pound

Some people out there have no scruples whatsoever (and I can comfortably say that the number is more than we’d like to think).

Take for instance Fortune, an ideological French/Swiss news-gathering blog who outright stole one of my Getty-licensed images. Blatant copyright infringement and plainly unlawful.

How ironic that I had titled the image Tower of Babel – Human pursuits are sometimes a peculiar State of affairs. Indeed they are.

No request to use was emailed to me. No credit was given. No link back to my website. Nothing. Nada. Not only that but every time someone viewed the article, my bandwidth was being used to retrieve the photo. 20,000 people saw my image, but unfortunately no one knew (nor probably cared) who the creator was.

Artists in all disciplines are too often taken advantage of, virtually or otherwise.

Well, I decided to give them something to think about. I switched the photo they were linking to with this one:

The text reads: This image is licensed by Getty Images, if you want to purchase the rights please consult gettyimages.com: Creative (RM) #92377894. tanyajohnston.com

The image was on their blog no more than 10 minutes before they took it down and replaced with a public-domain image:

Don’t get me wrong, them choosing my image is a nice tip-of-the-hat, but that doesn’t put food on the table, you know?! It is also a fact that this is nothing compared to what we see happening in our world today…

I am hopeful that the people responsible will be more vigilant in the future.

Lesson Learned

I had been thinking about how I could protect myself from this kind of abuse, which is proliferate on the web. One of my options was to add a watermark to my images, but I wasn’t crazy about the idea of defacing my creations. Needless to say I’ve now taken that step.

I will now take some time and reevaluate where and how I put my intellectual property out there.

“I feel it now…there’s a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world. I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it.” –Rainer Maria Rilke