Yesterday, a well-known photographer, Trey Ratcliff, posted his thoughts on watermarking online images. In short, he doesn’t believe in watermarks and he explains why. And it works for him, which I respect. Others responded by explaining why they do watermark their images. There are multiple reasons for that – commercial, social, ego-driven, etc. I watermark mine too. Generally, watermarks don’t bother me, unless they are overwhelming, badly applied or extremely distracting.

I remember doing an image search a few months ago and seeing a copy of a picture I own. The image was posted on a site I didn’t recognise, so my first reaction was anger – somebody stole my picture! On closer inspection it turned out it was my friend who posted it on his Posterous blog with an appropriate credit. So I was lucky. But how many of you have had your images stolen? I take thousands of pictures, but I don’t publish thousands online. Neither am I a professional pho