Dear So and So

[Eden]

... Imagine my surprise when I looked at your event page to see if I'd missed your event this year and found one of my own photographs from a past year advertising it... Well, no actually, I wasn't particularly surprised at that - too many people don't know how copyright works. I was, under the circumstances pretty nice. I wrote you and explained that I am typically quite generous about allowing non-profits like yourself to use my images free of charge, but it is necessary to contact me and ask first and that I request that I be credited as the photographer. I explained that I was not upset, but that I wanted you to be aware of the rules and that had the image been licensed to someone else, that it could have been a much bigger problem.

Your reply did surprise me.. astonished me in fact... You sweetly informed me that you did have permission to use the photograph in question and that I was indeed correct that you had neglected to give credit where credit was due and that you'd corrected the oversight. You even very nicely sent me a link to my photograph on your Facebook page, now with someone else's name on it. Needless to say I was rather shocked and angered..

This isn't a case in which another photographer may have been there and taken a very similar photograph. It's an image of small candle boats on a pond. I've overlaid the two images (from your page and my Flickr account) sand sent you the results. Not even had this other person been hanging over my shoulder and hit the shutter at the exact same moment, could there be two images that match in every aspect - down to the size in 100th's of an inch, the exact framing and position of everything in the photograph and even the lens flare on the candle flames...

I am now practicing a great deal of patience as I have not heard back from you that you are even looking into this. I am really, really hoping that this is simply a mistake or a miscommunication on your part and I am giving you the benefit of the doubt that it is now the weekend and maybe, just maybe you haven't seen your email from yesterday evening yet, but if Monday comes around and I haven't heard boo from you, you can look forward to my turning a DMCA takedown notice and a complaint in to Facebook and perhaps even sending you an invoice for the use of the image.

disgruntled photographer...