It All Started While I Was Wasting Time on Pinterest ...

Last week, I was surfing around on Pinterest, looking at some boards with interesting garden ideas.  As I scrolled through one board, I saw one of the photos from my online rose rooting tutorial.  It's neat to know that folks I have never met like my stuff well enough to save it for later and share it with their friends.

 

 

My amusement quickly faded as I realized that the link in the pin DIDN'T come from my Hartwood Roses web site ... and that it had hundreds of repins ... who knows how far this has spread?

 

 

 

The link on the Pin led to a reputable web site that publishes independent articles ... in this case, an article on rooting roses that contained the stolen content.  I submitted a report to the site, telling them that the article used my photos without permission or attribution.  Yesterday, I received a response ... the article has been taken down. 

 

The damage is done, though.  I wrote that rose rooting tutorial a long time ago, when I was a more trusting soul and before I knew the importance of watermarking all of my online photos.  The hundreds of people who pinned and repinned this now have a dead link ... it never led them to my tutorial anyway, which is a shame.  (I have rooted a LOT of roses using this method, and so have many other people.)

 

For now, I have asked The Husband (my genius computer guy) to temporarily remove the tutorial from my web site.  It's not done as well as I would like, so this gives me the incentive to rework it a bit, to add some steps and photos (watermarked this time) to the process, and put up a better product.  Until I get this done, anyone who wants to learn to root roses using my method will be disappointed.  It's a shame ... but I don't think I have a choice.

 

Do you watermark the photos you publish online?  I use Photoshop 6.0 to edit and format photos and add my watermark.  I will be happy to work up a quick tutorial, if we have enough interest.  If you watermark your photos with a different program, I'd love for you to tell us about it.  It's WAY too easy for photos to lose their connection to their original creator, and I have a feeling that there's a need give bloggers the knowledge and tools to protect their intellectual property.

 

Let me finish by saying this ... I welcome ANYONE to pin my images and ideas ... just make sure that your pins are linked to original source.  Let this apply to ANYTHING you pin, and this corner of the Internet of ours will be a much more honest place to hang out.

 

One Thing Leads to Another

Do you know that you can see what Pinterest folks are pinning from your web site or blog?  (or any web site, for that matter)  The URL to use is:

http://pinterest.com/source/"insert-web-site-URL-minus-the-www-stuff" 

To see what has been pinned from my blog, the link would be:  http://pinterest.com/source/hartwoodroses.blogspot.com.

What you get when you go there is a page that shows everything that's been pinned from the site, by whom, and who has repinned or commented or liked the pins. 

Like this:

 

 

Most of the time, people pin photos of my furniture or building projects.  Sometimes I see that they have pinned photos of my roses.  My most popular photo, as you can see, is the post where I detailed how to use Annie Sloan's clear and dark waxes on my big blue dresser. 

 

What I noticed yesterday is that someone pinned photos of Lu-Ray Pastels dinnerware that I took at the DC Big Flea.  She titled her Board "Lu-Ray Love", so knew that I had a fellow Lu-Ray fanatic on my hands, and I clicked through to see what else she had on that Board.  (I find the best stuff for my own pin boards this way!!)

 

This person appears to be a recent Lu-Ray collector, and she has been quite busy, pinning dozens of images from sources all over the 'Net.  As I scrolled down, I found another one of my photos ... this one was our cherry china cabinet, filled with a portion of my own Lu-Ray collection.

 

 

 

She didn't pin it from my blog, though.  It came from a Google search, and the link-back was to google.ca.  It's definitely mine ... I'd know my own china cabinet anywhere.  The provenance of the photo won't get lost, thought, no matter where it came from, because I insure the safety every photo that I publish online by applying a watermark.

 

 

 

There have been one or two comments recently from Anonymous folks complaining about my watermark, saying that it's distracting and takes away from my photos.  Perhaps it does, a little bit.  When I edit my photos, I always adjust the opacity so the watermark is almost transparent to try to help with this ... like on my hummingbird photo from last week.

 

 

 

Because my watermark is always on my photos, I don't worry that folks are pinning and re-pinning my images.  In fact, I am extremely flattered that anyone would take the time to search out things that I have published and that they like what they find enough to pin it to use later.

 

So, Folks, feel free to pin whatever you find here that you like.

 

Speaking of pinning ... Do you have favorite people that you follow on Pinterest?  I always love seeing what my rose friend, Carolyn Parker, is pinning.  (warning:  don't click that link unless you have LOTS of time to spend.  Carolyn's boards are gorgeous!)

 

Want to see what I have on my Pin Boards?  Click HERE.  (In response to a suggestion by a kind reader, I have added a Pinterest button to the top of my sidebar.)