Dark-Raptor

Our images are being stolen every day. Mostly on blogs and websites, this time situation is much different.

US company, called THE MERRICK MINT made special collectible coins with frogs, and on one of them, we found our picture.
Guess what? They didn't ask us for permission to use it! They didn't pay us for our hard work, our equipment, our time. They treat us like garbage, maybe because we don't live in US?

We asked them via e-mail and on their official Facebook profile about this situation. We have no reply and our comments were removed from their FB. What can we do?

They are selling our work, earning money, leaving nothing for the authors of the original picture. This is madness...

You can find their product here (it is not working now):
www.merrickmint.com/amazon-blu…

They removed the product, here is the image that was on their page:
i1034.photobucket.com/albums/a…

Our original work, uploaded on DA is here:


We don't know how to act. We are far from US, and we have no time and money to get the lawyer. We are thinking about removing our works from the web...

This is what we get for what we do...

Yup... we are like bees... only working and working. This is the reason why we visit DA not so often...

...maybe in October or November some things will be solved and we will have more free time...

...until this moment, we will try to upload something from time to time...

Cheers!

And BIG thanks for all the birthday wishes!

Damn... something that really piss me off is that I find our pictures, in many places in the Internet without our watermarks and information about the original source of the image. Just few hours ago I found that company from Australia: www.ilandscape.com.au used our picture, with watermark removed, on their website.

When I wrote them on FB, that they have to pay for other people work, they removed my posts from their wall and added me to "ignored" list. Luckily they also removed article with stolen image from their FB account and website.

Did we hear magic word "sorry"? Guess... of course not.

This is the reason why I started thinking about large watermarks in the middle of every picture. It will look ugly, but the thefts will have to work harder to use them on their sites...

Traditionally, we are really busy these months and will be back online in September... or even later. If you really need to contact with us, please write an e-mail (you will find it on our website or send it via DA). It also means than only few submissions will be added in the next months...

Luckily, we will be able to take the pictures of amazing animals on Borneo... so keep yours fingers crossed in July and August

Whoa! Nikon corporation didn't want D700 to make movies... but somebody (exacly Olivier Giroux) wrote short computer program, NkVid, that downloads Live View from the camera and creates short movie clips. They are not so good as full HD movies captured by Canon's 5DmkII, but it is better than nothing.

Here is the link to our Youtube channel where we will be uploading short movies, mostly with invertebrates.
www.youtube.com/user/DarkRapto…

We also made some layout changes on our www page. Sorry still only in polish... but you can always look at the pictures
www.kucharscy-foto.comli.com


---------------------------Update----------------------------


One of deviantart users, otas32 , has made fantastic solution for thouse who need cheap macro flashlights. If you don't want to spend a lot of $$$ on original Nikon's, Canon's or other company stuff, check this:

otas32.deviantart.com/art/TUTO…

I think you might be interested!