can of worms: protection or promotion?

I have had several interesting conversations regarding the issue of watermarking images in the past few days with my husband, a client, a fellow shooter, and a third party. One participant felt watermarks were completely ineffective.  Two persons felt that services rendered implied the client had ownership of the pictures to post and do whatever they pleased, and all queried whose benefit the watermark was for, since many people feel that a watermark ruins or takes away from the picture.  There was an accusatory tone to some of the comments. Or maybe there wasn't.  But I felt immediately defensive about my decision to start watermarking. So why the red flags?

~It was about grade four.  For some bible story, in art we had to cut out a pair of large fish shapes from Kraft paper, then paint them and sew them together with yarn so they could be stuffed with crumpled wads of tissue paper.  There had been a thunder storm that had blown a transformer up the street and we were all sitting there listening to the rain in the dark.  While all the teachers congregated in the hallway, smoking and discussing whether we should all be sent home or not, to pass the time until they figured out what to do we were given the opportunity to work on our fish.  

I finished my fish before the electricity was restored (bummer but probably fortunate since the Orange Fairy was on the bus and unable to collect us anyways) and had forgotten to put my name on my stuffed painted fish, and when it came time to claim them, someone else took mine.  He didn't even DO his because after failing to entice me, I distinctly remember him spending most of the power outage trying to get one of the other girls in the class to go in the boot room and look at his penis.  The boy had red hair and freckles, he was my nemesis all through elementary, and I remember crying bitterly when the teacher, who I KNOW knew damn well it was mine said, "Well, let this be a lesson that next time you remember to put your name on it."  The other boy took my stuffed painted fish (and my A+ grade) home, sneering as he walked away.~

There are people who watermark their images for self-promotion so that people will know who to congratulate on the fantastic picture.  There are people who watermark their images as a means of preventing theft.  (Bill says that watermarking is like putting a bike lock on - at least if someone tries to steal it they have to work a bit...  lol)  There are people who watermark their images as a means of obscuring the image and making reproduction difficult if not impossible so that they retain the ability to charge for prints.  There are people who watermark their images as a means of advertising.  Some may claim one reason above the other, but they are all legitimate reasons, and all go hand in hand.

I could give a rat's patootie about promoting myself. If I seriously wanted to put on some kind of advertising campaign I would - I went to school for arts management and so I suppose I could muster some kind of marketing strategy that involved something a little more aggressive than a couple of unlisted blogs and a DIY website... And I take pictures of other people for very selfish reasons, and that other people like them is merely a pleasant side effect of me doing what I happen to genuinely enjoy, and if not a single person liked my pictures I'm pretty sure I'd still be out there shooting at will anyways - for me, a day without pictures is like a day without oxygen.  So though it's always nice to hear a compliment, watermarking definitely isn't about kudos.   And although I take pains to make sure the watermark is sort of attractive without completely obscuring the image, if it's going to be even remotely effective as deterring theft or wrongful use, it's SUPPOSED to detract from the image...

The digital age has changed the face of photography in ways we never could have imagined, some good, others not so good.  The best way to keep your images from being stolen up until the last decade or so was to hang on to your film negatives, but when scanners got good enough for people to make their own scans at home of the prints, we lost the ability to control how and where our images were being distributed.  Having had an image attached to some media I didn't like, having been plagiarized, having had credit taken a few times, having had countless images posted despite copyright restrictions, having stumbled across post-designers and printers who feel no moral or legal responsibility to treat copyright of the images they are reproducing like anything more than an idle threat and empty words, maybe I'm a little bitter, and maybe that makes me a bit defensive.  I can deal with that.

I started watermarking in January of this year under the premise if you can't beat them, join them.  By providing a watermarked low-res set that people were licensed to share online, I have received nothing but positive feedback.  It has allowed people the freedom they wanted to share the pictures they love, while giving me at least some small sense of security that my images aren't being thrown about carelessly in cyberspace for anyone to snag and abuse without having to pick the proverbial bike lock.  People have been very understanding and supportive of this policy, and some people have even asked for watermarks on their full-resolution sets, kind of like a signature.  (I don't do that - the watermark *does* detract from the picture and frankly I'd be a little embarrassed having my name slathered on an 8x10 the way I place them lol.)

At the end of the day, after it's all said and done, those are MY pictures, and I want my name written on them. I made them. They are my art, no different than a painter's painting or a sculptor's sculpture, and no one should feel they are entitled to alter them. They are special to me, and I do not want them to be cropped or tweaked or made into cheesy photocards or edited to look like a charcoal drawing on Facebook. I watermark my images because they are like the shirts I send to camp with my kids. They are like my painted stuffed fish.  If they get 'lost' (like if someone posted them in a child porn site) I would want to know, I would want them returned. If someone likes them and wants to steal them, it's always my hope someone else will notice the name and alert the rightful owner.

Until and unless I decide to make my pictures completely unavailable to my clients, my only defense is to write my name on my damned pictures, and for that I make no apologies.