There’s nothing quite as shocking for a nobody like myself than to visit a site looking for information and unexpectedly find one of my photos used as a product shot.

I’ve been trying to find a AAA battery clip for my Magellan eXplorist 500. Why? Because I was reading about portable solar power and thought, “If I could take portable panels with me to charge my GPS, I’d be able to track a multi-day tour.” Not that I have the time to do a multi-day tour. Trust me when I say that such details are often lost on me.

My search took me to a page hosted by HighSpeedSat which has the 500 listed among its product reviews. Scroll, scroll, scroll… looking to see if they sell the battery clip… and then WHAM!

Holy hell, my pale legs are on a GPS website! Kinda cool, as long as they link back to my Flickr site, since that’s where they got it. But no, clicking on the image brings up a photo of the eXplorist box contents. And there’s no photo attribute, meaning I don’t even get credit for the shot.

My first instinct was the grab a shot of the page, record the date/time, and jot down the URL so I could write them to have my image removed.

And then I remembered I have this blog. This blog that has, as early as yesterday, relied upon using the images of others to supplement the writing. It’s hard to get my moral superiority in order when I am guilty of the same actions. “Fair use”, you might cry. “You’re not making any money from the images.” This is true, I’m not making a dime, but it still feels weird to feel as though my copyright has been violated when I do the same thing to others so easily.

It’s easy for me to ignore this infringement of my “work” since this isn’t really my source of income. I don’t make money from my photos. I never plan to do so. The long term impact to my livelihood is null. So why should I care?

I’ll tell you why… Because while I’m no photographer, I am egotistical. I’m actually okay with somebody using my stuff as long as I’m credited. However, I do maintain full rights so that there’s no misinterpreting who can use what and to what level.

Having said that, I’m probably not going to do anything about HighSpeedSat. If showing off my legs helps them sell a GPS, so be it.