Today, a friend posted on Facebook a link to a little program called “Src Img”.  It is a search program that is added to your browser’s bookmark toolbar and will perform a reverse image search on any image you click on.

For fun, I went back through my blog and clicked on a few images that I knew were stolen in the past.  A lot of my Mizzou sports photos were stolen and posted on various fan websites such as BleacherReport.com and even on some guy’s website who sells college athletes’ jerseys, football gloves, shoes, jockstraps, etc.

When I plugged in this boxing photo that I took while working at the Reno Gazette-Journal in 2009, I got the weirdest results.  I got so many weird results that I just had to share some of them here:

The original image I took in 2009 at a boxing match in Reno, Nevada.  Apparently this is a fun image to steal…

And now some screen shots of this picture after it was stolen:

My boxing photo turned into a boxing lizard photo…

I am so honored to have my image used on a poster to sell boys clothing somewhere in Europe…

Perhaps one of my Korean friends can tell me what this says… That is Korean, right?

Not sure what is going on in this one…

So yes, I could send DMCA copyright take down notices to every single little blog and message board that steals my images, but that takes lots and lots of time.  I did send DMCA notices to any website that was using my images to make money (i.e. the guy selling sports memorabilia), but it just isn’t worth it to send it so some personal blogger who gets maybe 5 hits a month on his blog… At some point you have to ask what your time is really worth.

I am sure most of the time, it is innocent enough.  People just think that if it is on the internet, it is free to take.  Some try to use the justification of “I gave you credit,” but guess what?  Credits don’t pay the bills…

For those that do have their images stolen, here are some good links on how to write a DMCA take down notice:

http://en.support.wordpress.com/content-theft-what-to-do/

http://rising.blackstar.com/how-to-send-a-dmca-takedown-notice.html

Now, stop stealing my photos and turning them into lizards…

While the town of Avalon on Catalina is well visited, the island’s interior is much less accessible.  Either you have to hike through fairly rugged terrain, pay a nice little sum for a tour, or you have to know somebody that owns a car on the island (and it takes about 15 years to get a permit to even own a car on Catalina).  I got to ride along with the Catalina Island Conservancy, a private land trust that owns and protects about 90% of the island.

As I was told, this is what California looked like before it was developed.  It was a beautiful ride through the island and we even came across one of the island’s many buffalo that are left over from the days when Hollywood shot western movies on Catalina.

Despite the cold though, Death Valley was a beautiful and other-worldly place.  After driving 28 miles on a four wheel drive road, we camped next to an area known as “The Racetrack” which gets its name from the large rocks that move across a dry lake bed all by themselves.  These rocks leave trails behind them as they move which I supposed looks like they are racing.

There are a lot of theories as to how these rocks move, but the popular theory is that the dry lake bed has to fill with just a little bit of water and then freeze.  Then, strong winds have to come along to scoot the rocks across the slippery surface leaving a trail behind.

My theory? Aliens.

]]> http://blog.johnschreiber.com/2012/01/scenes-from-death-valley/feed/ 1 http://blog.johnschreiber.com/2011/12/big-sur/ http://blog.johnschreiber.com/2011/12/big-sur/#comments Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:06:02 +0000 John Schreiber http://blog.johnschreiber.com/?p=1505 A couple of photos I have been meaning to post from our trip up to Big Sur at the end of October… Oh, did I mention I got engaged to Chelsea that weekend?  Yeah, it was a pretty good weekend…

]]> http://blog.johnschreiber.com/2011/12/snow-in-los-angeles/feed/ 0 http://blog.johnschreiber.com/2011/12/sailing-on-the-lady-washington/ http://blog.johnschreiber.com/2011/12/sailing-on-the-lady-washington/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 04:49:37 +0000 John Schreiber http://blog.johnschreiber.com/?p=1480 I had a cool assignment to photograph the historic Lady Washington tall ship last week as she transited from Redondo Beach down to Long Beach.

Standing at 67 feet long, the wooden vessel is a replica of the original Lady Washington, which was built as a merchant ship in the late 1700′s and was the first American ship to round Cape Horn in Africa and the first American vessel to reach Japan.

Today’s replica, built in 1989, is Washington State’s official tall ship ambassador and serves as a living history exhibit while docking in ports up and down the western coast of the United States.

The ship has also appeared in major Hollywood movies including ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl’ when the vessel, renamed the Interceptor for the film, was commandeered by Johnny Depp’s character, Captain Jack Sparrow.  It was pretty prominently featured in the movie as Depp and Orlando Bloom sailed it around for most of the movie.

It was a pretty rough ride due to the fact that we sailed the morning after one of the windiest days in the past 30 years in southern California.  I didn’t puke, but I certainly thought about it a few times.

The crew of the boat were all a really great group of people and many of them were volunteers.  It was a great day of “work” being out on the ship.

Find the deckhand… ^

People on this street in Manhattan beach buy over 1,000 pieces of candy per house and they expect an equal amount of kids to pass through on Halloween.  There are crazy decorations, lights, costumes, and even a haunted house.  Wish my street was like this when I was a kid.

It was a bit tough photographing the actual race since we were on a boat that was always out of shooting distance.  The start of the race happened pre-dawn so there were some cool opportunities there and the end of the race had some good emotion: