Having been part of the photographic community for many years and having participated extensively in many online forums both international and local to South Africa I have come to see so much passing-off of other people’s work with absolutely no credit given to the original author of the work concerned. In the South African Photographic Community this problem seems to be growing at an ever-alarming rate and seems somewhere along the line to have become considered acceptable behaviour when clearly it is not, a case of “oh well, everybody’s doing it therefore so can I”.

I cannot understand why photographers struggle so much with the concept of giving credit to someone else’s hard work or unique ideas. It seems they would much rather take someone else’s work, reword, rework or rehash it slightly and then hop onto photography forums and communities and pass the work off as their own. Why is it so difficult to point people in the direction of where the original information came from??

It seems in their inevitable attempts at gaining recognition in the photography community, a fair and growing percentage of photographers will apparently stop at nothing to make themselves look good.

I’ve seen photographers take other people’s tutorials, rewrite them just enough so they are not easily linked to the original creator and then either give this information away freely as their “own” or even worse sell it or use it in training courses again passed-off as their “own” work.

I’ve similarly seen people take photoshop actions from the creator’s web site, tamper with them inside photoshop to remove any reference to the original author, replace all that information with their own and then rename the actions slightly and then pass this around freely or for money in the hopes of gaining recognition as the “brilliant” author of the work. It’s utterly hideous behaviour and quite honestly it leaves a really bitter taste in one’s mouth and does not bode well for the photographic world. Most people are totally unaware that they have been duped into believing that X created the work and X just happily continues doing this without any feeling of regret to stealing someone else’s hard work. In fact it seems those lifting information actually start believing it’s their own work, as they say “tell a lie long enough and even you believe it”.

But …. lo and behold … should someone copy something that X created, X will be jumping up and down, screaming and making a big fuss about someone stealing their work ? huh ? Are these people frikken serious ? It’s okay for them to steal and rework someone else’s work but if someone else does the same to them suddenly it’s not okay? I think it’s a classic case of “what goes around, comes around”, the injustices that you may inflict on someone else today will come back to you tenfold but suddenly then it’s not so nice is it?

In South Africa, copyright laws are very sketchy when it comes to photography and there are so many violations of other people’s copyrights that I don’t think the law would know where to start, so it’s up to each photographer to protect his own work. With the onset of the digital age, people have access to information worldwide and it’s become even easier to sit in another country and pass off some international person’s work as your own and never be caught out about it either. Sadly I see very little action being taken by the local community amd the problem is just growing.

If you write a tutorial that has been created from several other people’s work or lifted from several web sites then the onus is upon you to list all those references at the end of your article and NOT try and make people believe the work belongs to you. When last did you pick up a book that did not clearly give references to the sources of information? Authors of books for the most part seem to know and respect copyright laws but the same (sadly) cannot be said for the photographic world. It really is NOT difficult to give credit where credit is due, try it, you might just get a warm fuzzy feeling inside when you do this and it’s the right thing to do.

JS