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Beau Picasso, Guardian, etc.
Nikolai
Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
The other day I was approached by a young model who was collecting "votes" to get her into a modeling seminar/class/gig of a sorts. Mostly out of curiosity, if of anything else, I decided to check out that site. It is called www.beaupicasso.com and kinda offers lush artistic nude photography experience on French Riviera and in Dubai (both known as some rather expensive places).
As some of you may know, artistic nude photography is my thing, so I went ahead and started the "French Riviera" short vimeo to estimate the level of work that it is done over there. On a counter 00:20 I noticed something familiar (warning: 18+ content):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2505148/Shared%20photos/french%20rivera%20anya%207-13-2011%205-12-23%20PM.jpg
I was pretty sure I knew the model, Anya. After all, I worked with her twice. I decided to double check, and surely, there was the same image in her portfolio, credited to an Oregon photographer.
I had notified them both, and, of course, they had no idea their image was used over there.
Another friendly model notified me last year that our (mine and hers) image was used by the UK "Guardian" newspaper, but it was too late to find any tracks of that, otherwise PPA legal team would surely be sending them some letters.
The point of my post? You never know where your image may end up at once it hits the interwebz. :dunno
As some of you may know, artistic nude photography is my thing, so I went ahead and started the "French Riviera" short vimeo to estimate the level of work that it is done over there. On a counter 00:20 I noticed something familiar (warning: 18+ content):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2505148/Shared%20photos/french%20rivera%20anya%207-13-2011%205-12-23%20PM.jpg
I was pretty sure I knew the model, Anya. After all, I worked with her twice. I decided to double check, and surely, there was the same image in her portfolio, credited to an Oregon photographer.
I had notified them both, and, of course, they had no idea their image was used over there.
Another friendly model notified me last year that our (mine and hers) image was used by the UK "Guardian" newspaper, but it was too late to find any tracks of that, otherwise PPA legal team would surely be sending them some letters.
The point of my post? You never know where your image may end up at once it hits the interwebz. :dunno
"May the f/stop be with you!"
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I have been aware of your post for some time now, and I have likely lost some business because of this. The models who work with me often complain the I should "do something about it", but what is to do without your cooperation? A mistake was made!
Now that I have been patient enough to "let it lie" out there for a while, might you remove your comment? After all, you never contacted me to find out the context of the mistake, but just took it upon yourself to make your concerns public, which shows very little discretion and a bit less valor.
I have thousands of images of my own and was simply loading up photos that I liked when I was creating my web site, a sort of "homage" to the type of photography work that I aspired to do. I had no idea that my site would be so popular, and I thought this part of the site was private, not to be public.
Having said that, I'm willing to ask the mods to remove this thread, but under one condition: you apologize to the model and to the photographer whose work you have used advertising your business without any right to do so. Once they give you a "full pardon" I'll have no further problem with this case.
You may ask how you find them? Well, you found the picture once, you can do it again and find all the parties involved...
Until then - my post stays.
(I admit I left out a few extra comments of a less-than-flattering nature.)
It's because of the incidents like this we have to deal with SOPA/PIPA stuff here in US ... :cry
In case you choose to come back and read.....
What you did is called stealing here in the U.S. If and only if you took those works, credited them AND stirred a discussion about the merits of such a piece could it then potentially fall under "Fair-Use" guidelines as a transformative work. Our media does this every day.
As for your accusations of little "discretion and bit less valor", we have a saying here in the U.S.: "The Pot calling the Kettle Black!" Meaning it was you who acted with little discretion and a bit less valor.
No. What Nikolai did was alert us to potential fraud.
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/29/146053943/on-amazon-an-uneasy-mix-of-plagiarism-and-erotica?sc=fb&cc=fp
The quote from the article that kinda nails it for me:
Jussayin'
Hello, this is the story, and I tried to explain it to the photographer when I apologized. As someone who is very busy, I delegated some web design duties to an assistant, and she chose a free service called Jimdo to do a trial page. She saw a file on the desktop entitled "photos I like" and added them to a video scroll and .... viola. Now, being a person who does honest work, I never google my name. Then I saw your post and it had ripple effects. I guess I could have contacted you earlier. Now the consequences are lost business and reputation for more me, and you come across as more or less the expert. But you might have contacted me and done the delicate but professional thing of asking what was going on. I hope you remove this post and find that the punishment does not fit the crime, and that some models lost out on a great opportunity.
All he had to do is ask. Instead, the accusation of fraud was raised and is raised again by yourself. The internet is supposed to be a place to communicate, and, if you read my posting below, I did not do it personally, but my name is now associated. I know that blog posts don´t have to follow journalistic integrity, but perhaps valor would have been to simply contact me!
This Beau person is a thief and some suspect quite worse. While I will leave it up to you to do your own research, I would say that removing this thread isn't necessary as this person has some degree of consistency with *borrowing* work of others.
This is simply not possible, as I have been more attentive to my site due to these postings. Very dramatic, "and some suspect quite worse". I have heard just about everything about me on the internet, as it is the "Wild West" for anonymous postings. Anything goes! For instance, I have found the "root" cause of this echo chamber, an ex-girlfriend who stole images from my computer after I kicked her out. The host of the site says that they can do nothing, contact the police (which I did) but the information is still up there. And each time I post my comments they are promptly deleted.
So let me get this straight. You get chicks to fly out to you and pay you 4,000 euros to pose nude in exchange for some pretty mediocre prints? Has anybody actually paid you for this?
If so, I gotta rethink my career :X