Tag Archive 'intellectual prooperty rights'

I won’t be writing a feature or post about an update on Iloilo rather I’ll be talking about improvements on ExploreIloilo.com particularly about my watermarks, which I know some (or most) of you might have some negative comments about.

Let me share to you a little bit of history about how I started with photography. It won’t be too long, I promise.

I started taking pictures of Iloilo 8 years ago, I was still in high school and was using a low-tech webcam (0.3 megapixels) with built-in memory to take pictures of Iloilo for a project I did in high school. Soon after, I discovered Skyscrapercity.com (SSC) and began posting my pictures on a thread about Iloilo. While I was posting these pictures on SSC and discussing about Iloilo, many Ilonggos joined the site and we had a little Ilonggo community. Sometime in between, some pickpocket had stolen my camera while I was trudging along Iznart St. and I was forced to borrow cameras from friends and relatives.

Whenever I posted pictures, fellow forum members started to give positive reinforcements, which fueled me to take even more pictures of Iloilo to share online. More people noticed my pictures and I was surprised to read some compliments about them since I didn’t study or had any background in photography and I just do it for fun.

Thereafter, a fellow forumer donated a camera to me after my incessant posts about “how I don’t have a camera and how I can take even more pictures if I had one.” I still “exclusively” use the camera to date by the way. Plug: Thanks gd manong Wecky! That camera you invested to me has opened a passion for photography, priceless personal development and opportunities.

As I started to blog on IloiloOnline, I put a relatively unobtrusive watermark on the bottom right side of my photos. And then, I went on to ExploreIloilo.com and did the same thing.

Unfortunately for me, as the popularity of Explore Iloilo grew so did its spread throughout the internet and even in real life. People started to copy/paste my pictures to their blogs, websites, and even friendster profiles. This part is okay with me but the thing that ticked me off was that a few websites had used my pictures for commercial use and posted them without any credit and what’s worse is that they even cropped out the watermark. My frustration was later aggravated after seeing my photos in the frontpage of some of the local dailies. Uncredited, no permission, plus with cropped out watermark. I’ve already anticipated people doing that but didn’t expect such “respected” media entities to disregard such basic media ethics. Thus the start of the huge, obtrusive, annoying watermarks on all of my pictures.

Recently, a fellow blogger and forumer (aka IAMME) posted his pictures on the internet and I was surprised to see that he has removed his center-photo watermark. I was like, what was he thinking? I later thought a lot about it and started to remember all the people who’ve told me to remove my watermarks and the times I told them about how they were necessary. And then, I started reminiscing about how I started with photography and how back then, I did it because I loved showing my captured moments (or my interpretation of it) to the world.

I’ve realized now that I got carried away and that I have lost track of the reason why I was doing these things in the first place. In light of that, from now on I will be taking my watermarks off the center part of my photos but will still retain the watermark on the bottom part of the photo to let people know who to credit the photos to.

With regards to possible copyright infringement violations in the future. I don’t take it sitting down. As of the moment, a demand latter is already being processed to a big company who has posted my photos without permission. I am serious in putting an end to people just taking pictures from blogs and using it for their company to profit.

Hint:

ExploreIloilo.com has certainly grown bigger than me and there will be more changes in the website, hopefully they will come out as improvements. You will notice them in the coming weeks.

That’s all for now. Comments are appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this post and continuing to support Explore Iloilo.