Social Media today is an essential way for artists and small business owners to get exposure. I’m particularly fond of Pinterest. I consider Pinterest to be Twitter for visual people. The downside to social media like Pinterest and Tumblr, however, is that a lot of people will pin/post an image and not give any credit to the creator. They will also sometimes pin from Google image searches or Tumblr blogs so the originating source is not always clear. While I now always put my logo on my images, I didn’t used to. I regularly see some of my images as well as images from other photographers I know pinned with no attribution. Worst, today I saw one of my Weimaraner images on Pinterest with an ad for a pharmacy in the caption! (I marked it as SPAM on Pinterest.)

I know that some photographers dislike Pinterest, and that’s a topic for another post. The bottom line though is that most image sharing sites these days include share buttons. Be sure you get the credit you deserve and place your logo whenever you can. Unfortunately, it isn’t always possible to add your logo on sites where you sell images such as RedBubble and ImageKind, but at least protect your images on sharing sites such as Flickr, Photo.net and your blog. Also, Remember when you pin an image to take the time to write a caption giving credit.

Below is one of my images of a garden in France that I frequently see making the rounds on Pinterest. It’s a pleasure that people like it, but it is usually an old version before I added my logo. I am slowly starting to replace my images with watermarked versions.

Embrace the power of the internet, but don’t forget to consider your online strategy and branding which should include your logo.

Jardin du Rivau

(I’ll do a Before / After for this image in the next post.)

Leslie Nicole
Leslie Nicole

American Photographer and Designer living in France with my French husband, 2 Weimaraners and Cat Rescues. Camera, Mac, studio, garden.