is it safe to post your photos on Facebook as advertisement ?

is it safe to post your photos on Facebook as advertisement ?

what are pros & cons of setting up your gallery on FB ?

If your going to use it for the sole purpose of advertising yourself I would get written permission from the subject.

Now I do post alot of my portraits on FB to share, but in a sense it's also advertising who I am and what I do.

what wouldnt be safe? having images stolen? mine are all watermarked

watermarked or not, people are going to take images if they want them...watermarks can be cropped off or taken out with photoshop...I have had images taken and used off of FaceBook, reported them and they were taken down.

If you don't want your watermark removed you better have a very intrusive logo of some sort, which can be a big turn off to anyone you want viewing your images. It only takes 10 seconds to remove watermarks in photoshop using the content aware filling.

I think the best defense is either not posting images online (not very practical) or posting low quality images so if people take them, they won't get any nice prints from them.

"Stolen" images don't hurt me; they help.

cdifoto wrote in post #11459424
"Stolen" images don't hurt me; they help.

If you have them watermarked, it's good advertisement if people take them and spread them around. More exposure for the photographer.

rjx wrote in post #11459998
If you have them watermarked, it's good advertisement if people take them and spread them around. More exposure for the photographer.

Half the time my "watermark" gets cropped out, and nobody pays attention to it otherwise. What gets me work is people talking about the photo.

cdifoto wrote in post #11459424
"Stolen" images don't hurt me; they help.

Agreed. The paranoia that seems to exist here about people seeing our photos without paying for them is ridiculous. If you're not using Facebook to promote your business that you are missing out on the most powerful form of free marketing that's ever existed, it's basically word of mouth on crack. If the cost of that is a handful of people using your images as profile pics (when they probably wouldn't have bought them anyway) then only an idiot would consider than an unreasonable trade off.

Billo78 wrote in post #11460583
Agreed. The paranoia that seems to exist here about people seeing our photos without paying for them is ridiculous. If you're not using Facebook to promote your business that you are missing out on the most powerful form of free marketing that's ever existed, it's basically word of mouth on crack. If the cost of that is a handful of people using your images as profile pics (when they probably wouldn't have bought them anyway) then only an idiot would consider than an unreasonable trade off.

+1

cdifoto wrote in post #11459424
"Stolen" images don't hurt me; they help.

oh come on man. how does stolen image help you ?

Everyone fusses to much over stealing images, it's only an issue if they would have otherwise paid for them. facebook image quality sucks anyway, what are they going to do with them? could they even make a half decent 6x4? and that's a legitimate question, i'm guessing half the time they couldnt.

A local musician said to me "i would rather be heard than paid" when we were talking about people downloading cds and all that, great words i think. But obviously you've gotta make a living so really I'm just saying I'd rather be paid but if there was never any money to be made there I'd rather my photos spread.

to be honest i'm kinda flattered when i see my images "stolen", just on a facebook sort of level.

cdifoto wrote in post #11459424
"Stolen" images don't hurt me; they help.

cdifoto wrote in post #11460419
Half the time my "watermark" gets cropped out, and nobody pays attention to it otherwise. What gets me work is people talking about the photo.

picard wrote in post #11472737
oh come on man. how does stolen image help you ?

CDI, I don't get it either.

• with the watermark removed
  
• with the IPTC data manually removed or automatically removed simply by cutting / pasting from the web

The photos I post are selections from portrait sessions that have been paid for in full. I've already been compensated directly (that's why I put stolen in quotes). When the person in the photo "steals" it, their friends oo and ahh over it, asking who shot it. The person in the photo tells the friend I shot it and then the friend contacts me.

Referrals 101 really.

cdifoto wrote in post #11473779
The photos I post are selections from portrait sessions that have been paid for in full. I've already been compensated directly (that's why I put stolen in quotes). When the person in the photo "steals" it, their friends oo and ahh over it, asking who shot it. The person in the photo tells the friend I shot it and then the friend contacts me.

Referrals 101 really.

I see. That makes sense, and yes - that's more of a word-of-mouth referral because there has been previous (legitimate business) contact between those involved.

I just assumed the context of "stolen" here was referring to the normal situation where a stranger rips a picture and uses it for whatever purpose, without credit or connection to the originating photographer.

As for the OP, no it's not safe. But the reference to Facebook is pointless. The subject line could have been easily written as:

"is it safe to post your photos on the internet as advertisement ?"

The only difference between Facebook, Flickr, and your personal website, gallery or blog is traffic.

Your photos can be stolen anytime from anywhere, even right here on POTN.