Customer
Copyright InformationYou should be aware that it is illegal to reproduce or distribute copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder. Accessing images or text provided on web sites does not give you any rights to use them as you wish. Only the copyright holder, or the owner "legal agent," can give you permission to copy, distribute, or publicly display protected material. The copyright holder for pictures on this web site is the photographer unless otherwise specified. The web site or the individual copyright owners who have authorized use on the web site own other text, graphical representation, or pictorial representations not created by the photographer.
The photographs shown on our website are of a low resolution and should
not be considered for reproduction. The original art work is available
and will be provided on request. Non profit organization requests are
encouraged. Students and struggling artists are welcome. Please email
us with your request and let us know how we can be of service. We will
return an alternate site to you and access code which will give you access
to the photographs you need and wish to download or copy. Our photographers
are very generous in granting permission to use their images, they only
request you fill out a release form .
Click here with your request and tell us what photograph you are looking
for.
Copyright Protections
What
steps can be taken to prevent digital image files from being used illegally?
One of the biggest hurdles photographers face in distributing their work in
digital form today is how they can protect their images from unauthorized
use. Unlike traditional film-based images, original digital files are no different
from their copies, so any duplication is as high in quality as the original
it was made from (Mitchell, 1992). Since most copyright infringement stems
from a misunderstanding of copyright law (Pickerell and Child, 1994), the
Picture Agency Council of America has produced a set of Copyright Commandments
in an attempt to prevent misconceptions of what constitutes legal use. To
make unauthorized use more difficult, several digital copyright protection
techniques have been introduced:
Encryption: Two different companies, Digimarc Corporation and FBI®, have
recently developed separate "fingerprinting" technologies that embed
virtually unremovable identification information into the pixels of graphic
image files. Although invisible to the naked eye, this information can be
decoded and viewed through the use of free Adobe Photoshop® plug-in for
both Windows and Macintosh platforms.
Low Resolution Distribution: So far, some distributors of digital imagery have attempted to protect their copyrighted images by restricting the viewing resolution of each image to a 'thumbnail' size, or a size that is just large enough to be reviewed on a computer screen. In many cases, photo-buyers may not feel thumbnail images offer them enough information to determine whether the image is suitable for their needs.
Watermarks: A fairly recently developed method of protecting digital copyrights has surfaced with the use of semitransparent watermarks superimposed on top of digital images. Unlike other forms of copyright protection, watermarks prevent the theft of images by hampering the copying or stealing of the image right off a computer screen. Although this method is not considered completely foolproof, the time and expense required in removing the watermark would theoretically cost more than the licensing fees associated with legally using the photograph (Stone, 1993). Stock photography libraries have welcomed the idea of using semitransparent versions of their company logos over their digital images as a way of allowing both copyright protection and the immediate recognition of their name (Senft, 1993). Some art buyers, on the other hand, have complained about not being able to get a clear view of the obstructed images (Pickerell and Child, 1994).
