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Stu | all galleries >> Daily Bowl of Stu >> Your photo of the month > 679. Stolen images
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Dundee Stu

679. Stolen images

23 May 2006

Just found out that someone has been stealing my images, adding his own copyright notice to them, then uploading them to several different websites - some of which are actively selling images - and passing them off as his own. I don't know if he has sold any of them - anything is possible, I suppose. Whatever, he is a thief, and he knows what he is doing, and he knows that what he is doing is wrong. I just don't know what kind of kick he gets out of it. His name is Stevan Hogg, and he has a site here on Pbase, three on Flickr, at least one on Fotopic, and several others on places such as Photobucket, Tnight, Zorpia, Buzz, Monkeyview, etc., etc. He has also stolen whole galleries of Gavin's images, which he also passes off as his own. The stolen images are not on the Flickr or Pbase galleries (I suppose he thought that that would be too obvious - although we suspect that it was he who posted a whole series of Gavin's pictures on Flickr, under the name Dundee4Life, in an attempt to get one of the backstage passes to the recent Big Weekend festival that Radio 1 were giving away to photographers). If you are from Scotland, you should probably do a Google search of this person's name and check out his galleries to see if he's trying to profit from your images as well.

Nikon D70 ,Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG ASP DF
1/160s f/11.0 at 24.0mm iso200 full exif

other sizes: small medium original auto
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Jim Ross13-Jun-2006 20:06
What a scumbag, had a quick look on his sites, couldnt see any of mine... I guess they weren't good enough... ;-) But then looking at his photos anythings better...!!!

Great shot...!!!
Guest 31-May-2006 21:35
And his own photos:http://www.flickr.com/photos/scotland/page9/ WTF?
David Clunas30-May-2006 21:25
Shocking! A quick google and he is all over the place, the quality of his work is very questionable and looks like you and Gavin are not the only ones to suffer. To post other peoples work must be breaking the sites rules, should be able to get him thrown off?

Oh btw like the pic :)
Linda Alstead30-May-2006 18:54
what a complete Bastard - hope he rots in hell.....
Guest 30-May-2006 17:29
Hi Stu so you have been STEVAN HOGGED. It has been happening to me since February 2005 and I have been watermarking my images since I first discovered his many sites on the internet. I recently info'd Gavin about one of his images I came across. He is well known on many forums as there is a huge list of photographers that have had their images posted as his.
Rene Hales29-May-2006 13:46
Fantastic image! Great color, light and composition. So sorry to hear about the stolen images. Hopefully the thief will get his just desserts.--Rene
J. Scott Coile27-May-2006 15:11
Now I read the note and I'M PISSED :(
J. Scott Coile27-May-2006 15:09
Phone Pink Floyd... new album cover and concept found in a super image!!! Vote.
markvm26-May-2006 23:56
Lovely tones and contrasts. Very nice.
Chris Sofopoulos26-May-2006 18:42
I am impressed Stu! So terrible..
Bill Miller26-May-2006 18:33
Stu, it is one of the reasons that I have stopped posting to PBase for a while. I have got registered with the Alamy photography agency and plan to replace all my PBase images with low res versions and upload the better ones to Alamy. Hope all is well with you. Bill...
Gilles Navet26-May-2006 12:48
Same problem than you Stu, I Found the "pirate" and the web site.
They kill the account. This bad personne used more than 30 of my pics !!!!!
For this one, great composition, and the use of light is a miracle
Gilles
Joseph Brennskag26-May-2006 12:28
Stu -- I am glad that you found him out. What a slime. Why doesn't he go and take his own? -- he doesn't have your talent.
Coleen Perilloux Landry26-May-2006 00:40
This is a great photo. I love all the tones of brown and the lines and the curves. Shame on thievery. I found one of mine in a magazine.
Ray :)26-May-2006 00:15
What a loser.
Take comfort in the fact that the your own creations - that's something he can't take away from you.
Take care, mate.
Dave Beedon25-May-2006 23:24
I hope the thieving jerk suffers.
Stu25-May-2006 23:20
Hi Joseph. When I started putting images up on the internet, I accepted that this was something that would probably happen. When I started, though, my images were awful - little more than snaps with very little thought for composition or drama. Who would have wanted them? However, I like to think that I am getting better - thanks mainly to the many, many good people on sites like Pbase, who are willing to share their expertise and opinions - and it is beginning to annoy me seeing other people who are not prepared to put the effort in to improve their photographic skills just 'lift' images. The pictures of mine that he has stolen are not particularly good ones - but they are mine nonetheless - and he even went to the trouble of cloning out my copyright statement and replacing it with one of his own! That's what really annoys me - the sheer premeditation of it. He planned it, and now there are photographs of mine, bearing his name, spread across several sites throughout the internet. I don't imagine that he has managed to sell any, but that is hardly the point - he is trying to sell them. I just don't understand what he thinks he will profit from it, though, because he only has the low-res jpeg, which is not really any good for anything but the web. In the end, Scotland is a very small country, and it was only a matter of time before he was found out, and now he has been found out. He lives less than 25 miles from me, and has access to all of the places that I go to take photographs... why doesn't he just go and take his own, and try to sell them?
Joseph Brennskag25-May-2006 22:47
Stewart it is unfortunate that you can't share your work for others to enjoy without someone using it for their own purposes. I have thought about this many times posting photos to pBase but have decided to live with it. Theivery has been around a long time and the Internet makes it easier. Makes you made as hell though.