Has it really been over three months since I posted something to my photography blog? ugh... I'll let you guess whether that's because my life is boring or because it's exciting.

Speaking of exciting, I finally had a chance to use a service called TinEye, about which I'd read rave reviews from other photographers. TinEye lets you search the Web for your digital photos. Now, why would you want to look for photos that you already have on your computer? Because, innocent reader, the sad, dark truth is that if you have ever put a photo on the Web anywhere (Flickr, Facebook, etc.), there's a chance that somebody grabbed a copy and used it somewhere, without your knowledge. (Probably without your permission, too, unless you specifically licensed it for that sort of thing.)

I share a lot of my photos under generous no-cost licenses, and I also sell photos through microstock sites. So, it's not too uncommon for me to find out that one of my photos is appearing somewhere on the Web even though I didn't put it there. As long as the person doing it obeys the license I granted them (often for free, just 'cause I'm nice like that), I don't have a problem. When they step on my toes by violating the license, though, it's Not Cool. The same goes for stealing photos that I have not released under license.

So for me, TinEye is both fun and useful. It's fun to see how people are legitimately using the photos I've released under a license for that purpose, and it's useful for finding people who have violated the license or stolen an unlicensed image. I only started using TinEye today, but it didn't take me long to find yet another copyright violation on Photobucket (so I'll be sending them a DMCA take-down notice -- certainly not the first, and probably not the last).

TinEye is in beta right now, so you can't just go and use it right away. However, if you want to search for where your photos may have ended up on the Web, you can submit a request on their site to ask for an invitation. It's quite a slick tool, and you might be surprised by the results.