Yesterday at Premier Tourism Marketing, I was still working on my story about amusement parks in the Mid-Atlantic area. Having to only edit the story, I still needed pictures. I called a few places and also found some open-source images on the amusement parks’ media pages. There were pages sprawled with beautiful images with high definition. The only question was, did I have the right to those images? So I called some PR offices of Busch Gardens, Morey’s Piers and Beachfront Waterparks, and Hersheypark. Some had certain directions for how to credit the companies’ photos so we would have the o.k.
Although this seems like an obvious step, a lot of people do not follow this procedure to use photos. There are websites like Tumblr, Pinterest and IHeartIt where you can collect images from the internet in a snap! Except the rights to those images are not always secure. Many people take images they find as their own and don’t look back. This is a problem for those people who worked hard to edit the photo, let alone take it.
It’s easier for me because I’m a journalist and know that every image needs a source. It’s harder for other people to know that distinction Even though photo sharing websites like Tumblr are great ways to share images, websites like Flickr have more restrictions and give more credit to the photographer than the image. So I learned it’s important to credit your photos even if it seems petty otherwise.
KC Digital Marketing | Becky Neems 