On Watermarking Photographs

Good morning! I am having a bout of insomnia so I gave up on sleep and started tinkering on the blog. I hadn't really warmed up to the spring banner that was here, and I love my Etsy banner so here is a version of it for the blog. I have also gone back to a font I fell in love with years ago. I'm sure it's not web-perfect but for now, I'm going with it. I tinkered around with my laptop file folders too, and found these spring roses from Betty's garden in California to share with you.

Yes, I am watermarking my photos again. Let me explain, even though it might be self-explanatory.

Last week, I discovered another uncredited pin of my ranunculus image. This happens a lot on Pinterest, and not just to me. I suppose I consider myself lucky that no one (to my knowledge) has taken one of my photographs and added some text to it and then called it a day. Ugh! I've seen that happen. I'm flattered my ranunculus image is so loved still and it accounts for 25% of my sales over on Etsy. But last week's discovery was pinned by a well-known magazine whose staff member had repinned it from some random blogger, and so with their large audience, it's been repinned from them way too many times and with no link to me at all. It's really too bad that image wasn't watermarked, then there would be no issue. Good old hindsight!

I have wrestled with the watermark issue since I renamed my blog three years ago. I used to watermark and then I took some advice in an e-course to stop watermarking because "the big blogs won't feature work that has watermarks on it." At the time, I was eager for any possible exposure so I dutifully stopped watermarking.

And in a way, it worked just as predicted in that e-course. The ranunculus photograph was featured on a big blog, and they linked it to my Flickr where I had uploaded it. The traffic from that big blog to my Flickr got that image on the Explore page. And then it made its way around Tumblr and then over to Pinterest and well...here we are with a rampantly uncredited image floating all around the internet.

Now I am going back to watermarking my images. I do not believe I am a one-hit wonder with my photography so while I cannot really help the ranunculus image come back to me at this point, I am going to do my best to keep my future images connected to me. I have had many people find me on Etsy and say, "I fell in love with this ranunculus photograph on Pinterest and I had no idea I could buy the print until now!" Gulp. How many more of those people are out there?

Looking back, removing my watermarks was a fear-based decision. Now, if a "big blogger" wants to share my work with their readers badly enough, well they can certainly reach out and contact me. I'm very friendly and responsive.  It's not worth another ranunculus/Pinterest/Tumblr problem, that much I know. I guess all of this is the evolution of Jess the photographer and businesswoman.

Back to the fun stuff, what is blooming in your garden or neighborhood?