Yesterday Yahoo announced they were improving their photo sharing site Flickr, giving every Flickr user one Terabyte of free cloud storage for photographs. “Wow” I thought. “What a deal”. I’ve had a Flickr account for a least a couple of years but I’ve never used it. So off I went to figure out how to get reengaged with Flickr.

The information above this caption and below this image is what is known as Metadata or what I refer to as Contact Information. This is embedded in each image when I put this through my digital photography software, Apple’s Aperture. This information is hidden and is only viewable if you have a program like Apple’s Preview which is what I used to open this information.

To start off I uploaded about a dozen images I shot of my sister teaching an art workshop while I was home in Duluth this past week. When I uploaded these images to my computer, from my camera’s SD card, my photo program Aperture automatically embeds all my Metadata/Contact Information into each image.  That info includes my copyright info, physical address, email, web address, phone number, year the image was first published and all the other items commonly added on Import into Aperture. Some programs show all Contact Information, however, Apple’s Preview shows just the basics which are visible above. The photo above was an image I exported from Aperture onto my desktop

Here is the same image after I drug the photo to my desktop from my Flickr page. Notice all Metadata/Contact Info has been removed compared to the one above. If you review the first image above, look for the tab that says IPTC. That is where Contact Information resides and it’s gone form this photo.

and then opened in Preview. The image below is the same image after it was uploaded to Flickr. I then drug this image from the Flickr website to my desktop, opened it in Preview and found all Metadata/Contact Information had been removed. What’s even more unsettling is Flickr is allowing the highest quality files to be uploaded. You can actually upload a full resolution image to Flickr now. This will give people the ability to pull these images down and use them in magazines, posters, web pages, books, calendars, ANYTHING they want. And nobody will have any idea who owns YOUR image. Flickr does have some options for restricting downloads but even their FAQ warns against posting any photos you don’t want to lose control over. Here is the info from their FAQ:

“We’ve made changes to the page to discourage casual downloading and make people more aware of image ownership …. by ‘discourage’ we do mean simply ‘discourage’. Please understand that if a photo can be viewed in a web browser, it can be downloaded by people who actively disregard our roadblocks.”

As beautiful as the new Flickr is, I’ll be sticking with my PhotoShelter account for all my photos other than the people pictures I shoot of our guests in the field. If you do plan to upload images to Flickr I would certainly not upload any image larger than 600 pixels on the long side, I would also make certain it had a watermark on the image itself and I would register all images with the U.S. Copyright Office. You can find out about adding watermarks and registering your photos by following this link, How to Protect Your Photo Rights.

I’ve been reading so many disparaging remarks lately about photographers being disappointed in not seeing a major update to Apple’s Aperture software. Admittedly, I’ve been hoping to see the next version myself but I’ve also tempered my disappointment with the understanding that I would much rather wait and see Apple really get it right than to release it too early.

I’m confident Apple’s Aperture will be a huge step forward. Be patient – we want them to get it right. Photo courtesy of Apple, Inc.

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I’m currently working with ASMP on a program to highlight the issues of Contact Information, known as Metadata, being stripped from our photographs when uploaded across the web.  We’re planning to have a roundtable-like discussion this fall at PhotoPlus Expo 2013 in New York City. I’m interested in contacts representing any of the major players within the industry such as Apple, Adobe, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or others. Help me think of additional players.

Like wildfire spreading across the web, photographers contact information, known as Metadata, is being destroyed as you upload your photos to some of the world’s most popular social media sites as well as the world’s largest news organizations including Thompson/Reuters. Help retain YOUR rights to YOUR photos. You own them and should be able to keep your contact information in place.

This all was a result of the issue I had with Thompson/ Reuters news agency last summer. You can read about that here. If any of you know the appropriate people, have suggestions, or are the folks we need input from, please send me that information. I’m hopeful through social networking we can make this happen. Our goal is not to litigate but to educate. We all need to work on this together to get it done. Please help.

PS – The uploading of the image above to MY WordPress Blog stripped all contact info/metadata from this image. I’m now trying to figure out why. All photos I’ve been uploading to my blog for the past several years apparently were being stripped of all the information I’ve been screaming about. This is how pervasive this problem is. Even in my frustrated state of bouncing off the ceiling the web is giving me the shaft. I had never checked my images uploaded to the blog. They are all missing the contact info/metadata that I always embedded in them. This is crazy!

Apple’s been steadily updating their full fledged photo application, Aperture. Some have been disappointed that we haven’t seen a major update to version 4.0 yet I’m quite happy and enthusiastic about Aperture’s trajectory. While it’s true we haven’t seen the BIG update yet, I’m confident that it’s not far off. The rumor I’ve heard is that Aperture was rewritten from the ground up and has released as what seems like a minor upgrade, even though under the hood there were huge changes. This seems reasonable since the first iteration of Aperture wasn’t really ready for primetime. I actually switched to Apple computers due to Aperture, found it had issues and moved over to Lightroom. Around Aperture 3.0 I switched back over to Aperture for many reasons but mainly due to it’s superior speed and better ability to handle video. That’s where I’m at today and very happy with 90% of what Aperture offers.

Screen shot of my current Aperture library

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Many people often ask what program I use to edit my movies. Most of the time it’s Apple’s iMovie, and soon I plan to move to Apple’s Final Cut Pro X. Not sure if that will replace iMovie but we shall see. iMovie is so powerful and easy. Its main drawback compared to Final Cut Pro X is the inability to adequately keyword specific scenes, etc., so it’s not easy to go back and find detailed footage like you can in FCPX. Aperture also has movie editing capabilities and so does Adobe’s Lightroom. The two latter programs are bare bones and actually very similar to Apple’s Quicktime. You can click on the photo below to be taken to an online article by Mac Life that details how you can edit with Quicktime. For you Windows users you can do something similar by taking a look at this article on how to edit Quicktime movies with Windows 7, Vista and XP. I can’t claim to have ever used this Windows software but wanted those who use Windows to have an option as well.

Screenshot of Apple’s Quicktime video editing program that comes with all Macs. Click on the photo to see an article by Mac Life that highlights how it’s done – free and easy.

Creating watermarks for your photographs is something every photographer should be doing. It tells people you are proud of your hard work and at the same time offers a warning to those who wish to pirate your images and use them for their own purposes. All photographs are technically and legally yours once you push the shutter, but keeping a solid hold on your legal rights requires doing a bit more and you can start by adding a watermark to your images.  What is a watermark you ask? Take a look at the image below and notice the Registered © 2012 Daniel J. Cox/NaturalExposures.com text in the lower left corer. That’s my copyright watermark, and it tells the world who owns this image AND that it has been registered with the US Copyright Ofiice in Washington DC.  How do you create and produce these watermarks for your photos? Continue reading to find out how.  Read the rest of this entry »

Aperture itself is an amazingly powerful workflow tool. But improving it’s capabilities is something you can do by adding third party plugins. What plugins do can vary. Some reduce noise, others allow you to combine images for HDR composites, there are lens correction tools and artistic filters, interpolation software as well as mapping and sharpening plugins. The list is growing fast and there is a great location for you to go to check out all the possibilities. Read the rest of this entry »

Workflow, the process of managing and working with your digital photos, is one of the most daunting, yet important aspects of being a competent photographer in todays digital world. Even if you don’t sell your images, the ability to put a finger on a particular picture, at a moments notice, is extremely satisfying. Add to that the ability to make subtle to major changes, the power to produce a book, make a slide show with music, find all your images based on where you shot them, print your favorites, grab them easily for emails, post them to your social media sites, as well as dozens of other possibilities are all amazingly positive aspects of digital photography. Just last week I was asked if I missed film (I get that question at least several times a year), and my reply is always, “Absolutely not. I wouldn’t go back to film for just about anything”.  I  didn’t use the word “Never” since that old dog has come back to bite me more than once in my 52 years. But, until Kodak reinvents its original product to do all of the above, I can safely say, “No, I don’t miss film”.

Joseph Linaschke teaches a course on Aperture at the Apple Distinguhed Educators Summer Summit in Ottawa, Canada.

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