Sunset at Ballintoy Port in County Antrim

[jmd56]

Its very sad to see people steal fine photos. Its worse that legal system options are always fruitless
and costly. Having spent well over $10 Million US. for various legal matters, I can assure everyone here
that the last place you want to be is in a courtroom chasing some alleged infringer. in the end,
you will always get nothing but another bill from your attorney.

I have an excellent solution. Its not high tech, and its not hard to figure out. Basically, its quite simple.
Never post your most important pics at any size to the Internet. Accept that anything posted to the Internet
is economically unprotectable, and therefore defacto public domain, and thats it.
Watermarks, thats cute. 20th century thinking. They are about as effective as Japanese tsunami walls....

This is good advise from a pro. I appreciate the pro advise i read about fine photography here, and I hope
I never have to type letters regarding the correct path to take re legal things again. // James

[Isaac]

However, is it your intention to re-create scenes exactly the way they exist (or how others expect them to be)? Or do you prefer to use "artistic licence" when making a photograph? Or a bit of both?

Or close to what the human eye can see?

Ya I know Scott, you love your silhouettes. But which is closer to what the human eye can see??

[Isaac]

I can assure everyone here that the last place you want to be is in a courtroom chasing some alleged infringer. in the end, you will always get nothing but another bill from your attorney.

Here's a different experience --

I've yet to actually have a copyright infringement case get to court, but I have settled out of court many times. Why? I try to register all my copyright with the Library of Congress. When the apposing council finds out that the infringement is of a registered copyright, the attorneys tell their clients to settle or else face punitive damages plus attorneys fees (which can be far more than actual damages).

[Enda Cavanagh]

To be honest guys I think you have to take it on a case by case basis with grabbed images. I think this site in the States was really dubious. I mean he was "selling" some pretty iconic pictures. His Google page rank was 0 which doesn't say much about the size of his empire. He took it off the site as soon as I sent a pretty stern email. I think in the circumstance it was about the best outcome.

In relation to not putting posting my best stuff. Well I post my best images on my website. It is my online gallery after all. I sell my images and they have to be my best images otherwise I wouldn't be rolling around in cash like I am now. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaa right.

[Isaac]

That seems sensible to me.

What I learned from the discussions back in April is that, even though we're going to take it on a case by case basis, we still need to be prepared - and one of the basic steps is to register your valuable photos with the US Copyright Office, because that presents abusers with the threat that they will have to pay statutory damages plus costs.

[Enda Cavanagh]

Thanks for the feedback Slobodan.
Always good to get another pair of eyes to look at the image.
I've played around with the image. I increased the brightness and contrast of the sky, darkened the shadow areas and cooled the water on the right a tad. Here's the 2nd version.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I like it better.

[Enda Cavanagh]

Sometimes it's good to have a break from looking at a photo. Slobodan. You were completely right about the color tones of the shadow areas. They were just to warm. I cooled them down an image a good bit bar for the sunlit areas on the left. I also removed the 2 branches of seaweed. I found them distracting.