note to nonprofits and researchers asking for free use of our images

We receive many requests for the use of our photographs from nonprofits and researchers. I've explained, in exhaustive detail on the FAQ page of our website, the time and expense that it takes to supply images to any cause.

If we’ve been kind enough to donate photos in the past, please realize that it takes significant staff time and expense to track usage of any photos. If we’ve donated photos in the past, please do not assume that we will automatically donate the use of photos going forward.

One researcher asked us for photos of schooling fish. We donated the image, and we never heard back from her again. We even had to contact her office to get a copy of the use – the image was published in Science. When she asked to use the photo again, we refused. She asked “what have I done wrong to deserve such treatment?” Her question should have been, instead, “what can I do in the future to make you WANT to donate photos.” A note of thanks, a copy of the usage, etc. will go a long way to making us want to take the time and effort to allow continued use of our images.

spammed by Photo District News and IPNStock - Shame on You!

IPNStock is a service that I used to subscribe to, whereby I leased their software to run my web-based image search engine. They morphed into a stock agency, then they were purchased by the publishers of Photo District News.

I got a spam about a photo contest from nielsencontests that told me to unsubscribe, send UNSUBSCRIBE to support@nielsencontests.com. I did so, and got the below failure notice. Seems that the people behind nielsencontests are IPNStock! Seems that the person at IPNStock is gone or has an invalid address.

I am upset that IPNStock is running a contest and disguising this fact. Along the same vein, I once purchased a subscription from Photo District News and stupidly gave them a valid email address a few years ago. They sold that email list EVERYWHERE. I am still getting blasted by photo-related spams from this one error. I've complained bitterly to PDN about this several times.




------ Forwarded Message
From:
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:10:08 -0600
To:
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

KCotlier@IPNstock.com



Reporting-MTA: dns;vnu001schmsx02.enterprisenet.org
Received-From-MTA: dns;nawinmsx013.enterprisenet.org
Arrival-Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:10:08 -0600

Final-Recipient: rfc822;KCotlier@IPNstock.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.2.2
X-Display-Name: Cotlier, Keith




From: Norbert Wu
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:09:52 -0800
To:
Conversation: UNSUBSCRIBE
Subject: UNSUBSCRIBE

UNSUBSCRIBE




------ End of Forwarded Message