Reply To: A Pinterest-ing Discussion…

[iliketag]

I am totally, 100% OK if this thread morphs into a Pinterest Fail showcase!

IHF: So, thankfully Pinterest does have some pretty right things going in terms of how it links. Items pinned directly through Pinterest itself retain the origin link when you click on the image. Things pinned from tumblr, for instance, link to the tumblr and not necessarily the origin. So repins from tumblr, reddit, blogs, etc may not link you back until you follow the link-trail. So there is a mixture.
When I first started using Pinterest I was very tactical in my pinning. Meticulously organized with personal notes on everything and making sure articles were worth putting on my boards before actually pinning them… but I found lately, that when I would log in before bed or something and just peruse, I would just pin. No custom messages or little notes to myself, no “fact checking” to make sure the links were not something stupid… I had gotten really lazy and I think that’s what made me have to take a look at it and essentially encouraged my “spring cleaning” of all the clutter I had built up.

The “inspiration” side of it is a little weird for me, too. Mostly it’s details or little reminders. Things here and there like a collection of different photos of the same pose; examples like that are more of a reminder that I don’t need to shift a client a bunch of times to get different shots. I suppose that could be mimicking the concept though. I have mixed feelings about someone creating a photo board and that being my checklist. Every photographer does things differently. There may be one shot I can get that’s better than the example and another that’s just not quite right. I suppose the conflict I see most often there is that Pinterest provides a great visual idea to a client but then they expect something spot on and there may be things that play in that make a carbon copy hard… not to mention completely compromising your value as a professional (and an artist).

The legal part of it is something I find really interested. I always thought it was kind of common sense that if you put your work out onto the big, bad internetz, you were at risk of it being stolen or copied. I have a facebook page for my “business” as a placeholder for the name that is completely blank. Until I am ready to launch it with the correct licensing and financial securities (liability insurance, legal paperwork ready to go, etc), I intend to leave it that way or possibly re-categorize it for hobby if I feel like watermarking anything. Sites like pinterest and facebook (and even flickr) that can compromise metadata worry me, so I simply don’t post there until I can embed watermarking in what I need to… this can be a real pain because I do lose some social media outlets to display and talk about the work I have done, but I’m not sure I would be prepared to fight someone selling my work as theirs if that ever came up… so preventative measures are what I’m using in the meantime.