I used to wonder just how photographers could recognise their own images amongst the many millions that are published on the internet on a daily basis.
I wonder no more as after many years of taking photographs I seem to have developed a style that I, at least, recognise almost instantly.
Disturbing to me is that large media houses have increasingly been using my images without even bothering to ask or accredit MyPE or myself as the originator.
In the recent past The Daily Despatch and The New Age newspapers have seen fit to use my images and infer that they are their own. The Daily Despatch at least fixed their error, whereas The New Age thinks that by ignoring my polite request I will eventually go away – fair warning New Age; “An elephant never forgets!”
And the latest transgressor – the FARGING Weekend Post. In a 16 July 2011 article titled; “Car guards taking us for a ride” by Tanya Jonker-Bryce – writing for the ‘Border Beat’ on page 8 – an image of a car guard appears which was lifted from this page on MyPE: Car Guard at Mount Rd Police Station (See image below – taken in the early formative years of MyPE) and captioned as such; “To ensure the continued safety of all vehicles parking in their parking lot, the Mount Rd Police Station has decided to turn to effective policing methods …”
A little bit more research before you ‘borrowed’ the image from www.MyPE.co.za, Tanya Jonker-Bryce, would have revealed an even more entertaining post for you to write as the car guard depicted stands outside the Mount Road Police Station in Port Elizabeth ‘protecting’ cars. Not only that but this particular car guard was, at the time the image was taken, unregistered as a security guard as well as not registered to act as such within the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan area – two violations of the rule of the law and the sheer cheek of standing ‘guard’ outside a police station make for a good story.
I can understand why MyPE is singled out as a prime hunting ground for images as a search in Google Images for the term; ‘car guard‘ (amongst thousands of other image searches) pops up images from MyPE as the most relevant. But, it is considered good form to provide a link back to the page or web site that you ‘borrow’ images from and, in the case of print media a simple ‘Credit: MyPE.co.za‘ would have sufficed.
What irks me no end is that I had to BUY the Weekend Post to see their latest transgression. In addition MyPE directs a considerable amount of traffic to people searching for Weekend Post contact details and then landing on MyPE to get them – in the last two months alone, 1529 related page views and searches for ‘Weekend Post’ have occurred on MyPE – this is NOT counting the many many mentions of Weekend Post in articles such as this one you are reading. And what does MyPE get for this great free support of the Weekend Post? Farg all except more fodder for a rant and rave against the giant media houses trying to suck the lifeblood and creativity out of little old MyPE!
We let you get away with calling yourself My Weekend, ‘stealing’ our images is going a little too far, though.
To ensure the continued safety of all vehicles parking in their parking lot, the Mount Rd Police Station has decided to turn to effective policing methods …
Related Forum Topic: Shoddy Police Service.
