{"id":1310,"date":"2013-10-18T15:25:17","date_gmt":"2013-10-18T19:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cmphotography.goodgallery.com\/blog\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2015-02-19T14:42:29","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T19:42:29","slug":"stealing-makes-me-angry-not-sad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cmphotography.com\/blog\/stealing-makes-me-angry-not-sad\/","title":{"rendered":"Stealing Makes Me Angry, Not Sad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, I have to say that I received the single most ignorant email response I\u2019ve ever read. Now, lets not mistake ignorance with malice. This person wasn\u2019t mean. They were just ignorant. With all of the recent fervor on the web lately about people stealing content, I\u2019ve somehow been able to shrug it off, and I just sort of chalked it up to a sign of the times. Lately, there have been some prominent names who\u2019ve been caught stealing- for whatever reason- and my name was used to basically endorse photographic products sold by another photographer. I happen to like that person who did this, and I figured it was something they just overlooked. Shit happens. <\/p>\n

Again, I shrugged, and just kept moving on with my business of shooting, teaching, and being a dad and husband. I do my best not to stir up too much shit, except when I feel strongly about something. Well, today, I feel strongly about people stealing because the real reason for all of it has been exposed. <\/p>\n

When the question of \u201cWHY\u201d someone would steal from another photographer is asked, many different answers have been thrown around. \u201cMy web guy did it\u201d, seems to be the most overused. \u201cI was too busy to realize what happened\u201d, is another. \u201cThe images were placeholders for a mock site\u201d is also a good one\u2026. <\/p>\n

However, all that said, today I heard the absolute pinnacle of excuses. It\u2019s perhaps the single most appalling excuse BECAUSE IT WAS THE TRUTH! I\u2019m not going to expose this individual on this blog post because he was being truthful. However, the truth is MORE disturbing because it\u2019s the single, most prominent reason for theft out there today. I\u2019ll also state that I think it\u2019s more prominent with wedding photographers than any other genre. <\/p>\n

Bjorn Thiele was kind enough to email me about the theft. The image below was shot for the Nikon D800 campaign, and it was a full page spread in that brochure. <\/p>\n

My friend Corey Ann has a sight called Photo Stealers<\/a>\u2013 where she calls out thieves. I took a page out of her book, and I screen capped the thief before he took the image down. He \u201cfound\u201d it on Google, and thought he\u2019d boost his portfolio with it. <\/p>\n

\"stolenimages\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I emailed the offending photographer, this is how he replied-This is his email:<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry for the inconvenience Cliff. Did not expect to do that. Found the pic as a RAW on google.
\nTook it off now.<\/p>\n

Trying to start something, but only have a view wedding pics in my portfolio. Wanted to boost it up a bit.
\nWell that was a mistake, sorry again.<\/p>\n

By the way, really breathtaking work on your homepage.<\/p>\n

Best,
\nXXXXX<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t say his web designer did it. He didn\u2019t say it was a placeholder. He didn\u2019t say it was a mistake. He flat out told me the truth- a truth that I believe is the reason why every photographer steals from others- THEY DON\u2019T HAVE CONTENT OF THEIR OWN AND THEY WANTED TO \u201cBOOST UP\u201d the perception of their work. <\/p>\n

Sorry to sound like the old geezer that I am, but what\u2019s happened to hard work, experience, and an effort to develop your skillset? Screw that. Just take it off of Google, and off you go- might as well steal from the web and make me look better than I am. <\/p>\n

Why develop skills and experience, when it\u2019s right there on Google for you to steal? <\/p>\n

I\u2019m incredibly angry. I\u2019m angry because I see honest, hard working photographers busting their asses to learn, and they\u2019re building their businesses through hard work, relationships, and craftsmanship, and then you have assholes like this who just think it\u2019s OK to just steal. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s the crux of the issue here. The sheer fact that this person was so callous that they felt it wasn\u2019t even necessary to lie!!!!!! For god\u2019s sake, I think I\u2019d rather have been fed a line of bullshit than to hear the truth. <\/p>\n

The truth hurts. The truth is that many people out there just steal and think it\u2019s no big deal. They think it\u2019s ok to \u201cboost\u201d their portfolio by stealing. <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s all face the facts. That\u2019s the reason. They want to take shortcuts. They want to intentionally mislead clients in to believing they\u2019re someone they\u2019re not. Clients pay dearly for this in the long run. That photographer can never produce the work they \u201cPRETEND\u201d they can produce, and they disappoint the client. The entire industry looks bad when this happens. Everyone suffers because of those who are so desperate to cheat and steal their way to success. <\/p>\n

I honestly don\u2019t want this person being publicly shamed. This person actually took responsibility and told me the real reason they stole. This was the very first time someone actually told me the truth. It\u2019s refreshing- in a very, very disturbing way. I wish all of the thieves out there would just fess up and tell it like it is. You\u2019re a thief, and you just want to take shortcuts and pretend you\u2019re someone you\u2019re not. <\/p>\n

Stealing makes me angry, not sad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, I have to say that I received the single most ignorant email response I\u2019ve ever read. Now, lets not mistake ignorance with malice. This person wasn\u2019t mean. They were just ignorant. With all of the recent fervor on the web lately about people stealing content, I\u2019ve somehow been able to shrug it off, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weddings","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cmphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3212,"href":"https:\/\/cmphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/3212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}