i don't mean to be a dick but..

i don’t mean to be a dick but..

inthefade: I hate, hate, hate when photographs are reblogged without attribution. I don’t mean those funny, photoshopped images that have been passed around the internet 700 times. I mean photographs. Someone’s art. Even if you just give a link to the tumblr/site you got it from, I could trace back to where it originated but when you just put a photograph up without any kind of link, it irritates me a bit. That’s like quoting someone but not giving credit for the quote. It’s lazy. And if your tumblr stream is full of beautiful photographs not taken by you and not credited to the person who took them or where you got them from, I’m going to unfollow you.

I’m not saying there are right and wrong ways to do tumblr. I’m just telling what’s right and wrong as far as being polite about what you blog.

Sorry to be a dick about it. But I thought you should know.

and

ronbailey: What she said. All of my pics are Creative Commons, which means you can pretty much do whatever you like with them provided you acknowledge me as the original photographer.

Apparently that’s too much to ask for some people. Grrrr…

Agreed. I try to replicate all links in photo posts I reblog, showing a chain of attribution going back in time. Result looks like this: (via x : y : z). If this post where a photo, it’d be (via ronbailey : inthefade) for example. If the original source were off-Tumblr (a Flickr account, say), the last link would be to the off-Tumblr source. The only photos I don’t do a via-stream for are those I’ve taken/posted myself.

I assume this is the best possible attribution. But if from a photographer’s point of view you think I need to be doing something more/different, y’all have the number to my red phone. Please let me know. That and post here what you think the right attribution style & standards would be.