I shot this image a couple of weeks ago while out and about in Nidderdale, Wharfedale, Littondale, Wensleydale and Swaledale. This image is of the meadows in Swaledale that were in full bloom and looking great. They change the colour of the landscape quite dramatically especially when looking from a high viewpoint. Field barns are a feature of the Yorkshire Dales generally but I think the ones in Swaledale are probably the most striking and in good condition too.
I have deliberately placed a watermark in the image to pose the question, “Are watermarks really necessary?” I wonder what your opinion or thoughts are regarding the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act which received Royal Assent on 25th April this year.
I haven’t read through it, I have just seen lots of comment in the media. These range from a more sober view such as you will find at Francis Davey’s blog to the slightly more sensational view such as you may find at stop43.org Are you concerned that your images could be taken and used commercially? Maybe the link on Francis Davey’s blog to a PDF produced by the UK intellectual property office would help. What do you think about watermarking, does it help?
To watermark or not to watermark, that is the question.
athyfotographic 
I use a discrete watermark with the url of my blog on it. At least that way if the photo turns up somewhere there is a chance I will get some visits. It could usually be cropped out. I don’t like the alternative of watermarking right across the center as that ruins the image, but that might be necessary when dealing with things like amateur sports shots.
Nice shot of the ‘dale.
Thanks Ron,
I don’t much like using watermarks myself. As you say they can be cropped out. If you really were determined enough you could, with the tools now available, remove almost any physical watermark from an image. It’s a real conundrum!
I’ve never used watermarking, so far. A few months ago I googled a well known mountain hut in the alps adding ‘image’ to the search criteria and immediately spotted one of my images in the fourth row of the image gallery shown. I clicked on the image only to find a title appended to it in a European language I had no knowledge of. A further click took me to a website where my image had been Incorporated into a gallery of Alpine images, again in the same foreign language. There was not a word in English anywhere. There was no point in pursuing it. I have a copyright message on my home page – fat lot of good that will do, but it’s there. It’s impossible to stop people using images. In one sense I suppose we ought to be a little pleased that someone likes our image enough to use it – they won’t bother with a rubbish one. I don’t personally like the idea of embellishing my image with a copyright notice. And unless it is in large prominent letters it won’t stop someone cropping the image to remove it and still using it. All my images are 1500pixels or less on their longest edge – that I think stops anyone from enlarging the image for making money out of it and it is that possibility that really would annoy me if it was in my market area. Some day when I have time I hope to launch a SmugMug site for a few of my images that might be saleable. In that case the images on the site will have a copyright message on them prominently to stop folk getting their hands on images that would be worth having. They’ll just have to pay for them!
Thanks for commenting Andy. Sorry for the delay in replying but I just found your comment in the Spam! No idea how that happened.
If what happened to you happened to me I would have been really annoyed. Not sure what I would have done but theft is theft.
What also bugs me is the way that our great and glorious government(?) just decided that a commercial outfit can swipe images from the web and use them for gain. As long as they can prove they have tried to find the owner in a diligent search. Well, metadata can be made to disappear in an instant and suddenly you have an orphan image. There are a lot of honest people out there who would play the game as intended, but as you found out there are also those who will just take your property and play the odds that they won’t be pursued.