Link With Love

This is a huge issue that many people have been weighing in on over the last few months. LINK WITH LOVE is a huge movement started by Kal Barteski, who is an extremely talented artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba.

As a photographer I am constantly worried about putting my images out there in internet land. Not only do I want to protect my images from being “stolen” and used without my permission, but I also want to protect my beautiful clients who are in those pictures. The flip side of that is the internet is a huge asset for networking and promoting. Like most things, you can’t have it both ways.

Now enter Pinterest. I have loved Pinterest from the day I stumbled across it. The pretty pictures, awesome ideas, and inspiration overload totally sucked me in. I just couldn’t get enough. I have even pinned images of my own from this here blog.

As great and wonderful as it is there has a very big BAD side. There are far too many (read THOUSANDS) of pins that are unlinked or uncredited. This is a PROBLEM which is getting worse by the day. Change is needed. I am hoping by posting this here I am able to teach at least one person.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not an innocent by-stander in this. I am just as guilty as the next person. I was stocked and embarrassed at how many pins I had that were not linked to the original source. Even more shocked at how many were linked to Tumblr, Google Image Search, We Heart It, etc. These sites are HORRIBLE. They are a dead end and give no credit to the owner of the images.

I am currently in the process of going through EVERY.SINGLE.ONE of my pin boards and removing ANYTHING that is not crediting the original source, no matter how much I love the image. Doing the RIGHT thing is more important!

For more information on the do’s and do not’s check out THIS post from Kal.

This is definitely a fight worth fighting.