Giving Credit Where Credit is Due


 

Click on the photograph to visit photographer David Henry's website.

Click here to watch a video featuring the photographer.

 

 


Email sent Tuesday 8/10/2010

 

Bonjour, Monsieur Henry,

I'm an elementary school librarian in North Carolina.  I happened upon your striking photo of a man with rats on his shoulder while doing a google images search.  May I have permission to publish your photo on my wiki, using it to segue into a copyright lesson for students?  I haven't worked it all out, yet, but I see you have taken measures to protect your images from being copied.  I'm not sure about the technology behind that....perhaps you could fill me in a bit?  I'm thinking you could be the "real face" to illustrate the importance of copyright. I could show the video of you in Paris from your website...  Perhaps you could tell my students why copyright is important to you... Would you be willing to collaborate with me on this?  Thanks for considering my proposal.  Your photographs are wonderful.

Regards, Jennifer Hinton

 


 

Email received Tuesday, 8/10/2010 

 

Hello Jennifer,

Thanks so much for your kind words about my pictures, and thanks for  
visiting my web site!

I grant you full permission to use the photo I'm sending on Wiki...  
The thing is I've done Wiki pages for client of mine, and I found it  
So Difficult to express permission in a way that is satisfactory to  
them, such that they will accept it, and not delete the image weeks  
later. Good luck.

I actually don't care much if my pictures, at the size they are  
displayed on my web site, are used anywhere, because the web page  
sized-versions aren't particularly useful aside from web sites/pages  
or other electronic presentations. Which is to say, they don't look  
good printed at sizes larger than 2x3 inches. I just want to be  
credited with a link back to my web site.

I've protected my pictures using a JavaScript that prevents Right-
Clicking to save an image to disk, and by inserting the pictures as a  
background image in a table cell using CSS, instead of putting  
pictures in the usual HTML way.

I happily send pictures by e-mail to people when they ask, it's just  
an opportunity for me to ask that they credit the image. Credit is  
important to me because the more my web site is mentioned on other web  
site, the better my site will be ranked in search engines, Google,  
notably.

I hope this helps,
All the best,
David