Gary Crabbe / Enlightened Images

Photos: Storm over Half Dome from Sentinel Rock, Yosemite National Park, California

Yesterday, I made a post critical of the mediocre quality of photos used by Travel & Leisure in their online feature, Best US National Park Views. I said a couple were decent at best, a couple were “OK”, and the rest were, well… just plain blah.

Well surprise, surprise, surprise:It turns out that one of those mediocre “OK” images was actually mine.

Thanks to a phone call from former SAA President David Sanger, he had seen the metadata containing my name for the above image that Travel & Leisure had used, but had credited to a photographer named Matthew High. Now I admit when I first saw that image, I had a sneaking feeling that it might have been mine. I certainly recognized the location. But the scan was so light, the highlights so blown out, and I pretty much assumed that I wasn’t the only photographer to take a photo from this vantage point. I gave it no further thought after seeing the photo credited to another photographers name.

Here’s the original:

Besides, when T&L had contacted me originally about using one of my photos, the image they wanted was of Glacier Point at Sunset. FWIW, I found out in retrospect that I did get a follow-up note after I’d asked about payment. It was a short one line reply via email that said, “Unfortunately we have decided to use another image.” (read: Irony.)

Worse; the image was apparently sold by one of my agents. Yet there is no sale listed for this image in the last 12 months. (read: Opps!)

So now, in addition to using a bunch of blah images, they’ve so horribly slaughtered the scan of my own image that I didn’t even think it was mine. I’ve pointed the finger, and called my own photo “mediocre”. (Yes, I admit, I’ve taken lots of mediocre photos over the years. I just don’t shout about them publicly from the rooftop.)

Well this will not stand. Someone is gonna have to pay for this self-humiliation I’ve just put myself through. Oh, wait, Travel & Leisure will pay. Maybe I’ll charge them enough that they’ll think twice before scrounging for “Free” photos.

And as a Post Script: Let this be a lesson on the Value of Having Accurate MetaData!!! I’ll be paying forward a home brew to David when I see him at the upcoming SF PhotoMetaData.org meeting.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 8:45 pm and is filed under California, Mountains, National Parks, Photo Business, Photos, Rants and Raves, Stock Photography, Travel. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.