Instagram has created a revolution for photographers to share their images online, a number of updates to the social media network have made it so much better for showing off your images that are more substantial than a snapshot of your lunch or a fancy latte from your local coffee house!
Getting discovered on Instagram and growing your account, however, is challenging. There are so many photographers now trying to make their way on Instagram, but this is where hashtags come in.
So, below there are a whole host of hashtags that you can use for nature photography, to get your work in front of the people who don’t currently follow you.
Hashtags for Wildlife Photography
- #animalphotos.
- #animalphotography
- #animalsofinstagram
- #animalsultans
- #birdsofinstagram
- #birdphotography
- #discovertheworld
- #exclusive_animals
- #explore_wildlife
- #featured_wildlife
- #ignature
- #igscwildlife
- #live_love_wildlife
- #marvelshots
- #marvelouz_animals
- #naturephotography
- #naturfotografie
- #natureisbeautiful
- #natureshooters
- #nature_hub
- #nature_perfection
- #naturepic
- #ourplanet
- #wildlife_inspired
- #wildlife_seekers
- #wildlife_shots
- #wildlifeperfection
- #wildlifephotos
- #wildlifephotography
Photo Hubs:
Hashtags for Landscape Photography
- #discover_earthpix
- #landscapetreastures
- #landscapeoftheday
- #landscape_capture
- #landscapephotos
- #landscapes
- #next_landscape
- #splendidreflections
Photo Hubs:
Hashtags for Long Exposure Photography
- #longexpo
- #longexposureoftheday
- #longexposurephotographer
- #longexposurephotography
- #longexposures
- #longexposureshots
- #ndfilter
- #lazyshutters
- #longexposure_photos
- #slowshutter
Photo Hubs:
Hashtags for Astro Photography
- #astrophoto
- #astrophotography
- #milkywaygalaxy
- #milkywayphotography
- #nightsky
- #spacephotography
- #starphotography
- #starrynight
- #starscape
- #night_captures
- #nightshooters
- #nightscape
- #nightscaper
Photo Hubs:
Hashtags for Underwater Photography
- #uwphoto
- #underwaterimages
- #underwaterpics
- #underwaterphotography
- #scubadiving
- #underthesea
- #underwater_world
- #underwaterlicious
- #wetpixel
- #underwatermacro
Hashtags for Macro Photography
Photo Hubs:.
General Outdoor Photography Hashtags
Photo Hubs:
Other Relevant Photography Hashtags
Photo Hubs:
Seeing as my last post was about image theft, I thought it would be fitting to share with you how best to protect your photos online. There is always a risk that someone is going to take them without permission and we all think it won’t happen to us, believe me I thought that too and look what happened! Copyright infringement is illegal, and when someone takes your photo then you can, of course, pursue it through the legal system. However, this is incredibly time-consuming to do, and you can never guarantee success.
Prevention is much better than cure, so by sharing these little tips I hope to give you some of the best ways to prevent your images from being ‘stolen’.
1) Adding a Watermark:
This is the most obvious way to deter casual image theft. Adding a small section of text, or a logo, to the corner of a photo is a great way to show ownership of your photos. I do this with all of my photos that appear on social media, you may have noticed that I add my initials to the corner of each image, and it does work to prevent a lot of opportunistic copyright infringement. For example, someone looking to include a photo in a presentation or webpage is likely to ignore those with watermarks. They probably don’t want a specific image, and will keep searching online until they find an appropriate choice with no watermark.
I add my logo to images using Photoshop, it’s important to make sure the watermark isn’t too intrusive or distracting. It is best not to stamp your name all over your photo, instead, do something subtle and neat. Reducing the opacity also helps to improve the negative effect it can have on the appearance of your photo.
2) Do Not Share a High Resolution File:
Uploading high resolution files online to display is a really bad idea, should someone get hold of this file, they can pretty much do what they want with it. It also makes it harder to prove you’re the original photographer, as they have the same file that you have be using to prove you took the photo.
I won’t upload a photo at more than 1600px online. This is enough to provide your audience with a good viewing experience of the image, but isn’t good enough for printing reproductions. The best way to adjust your image size is in a program like Photoshop, and this can be done in batches to save yourself some time.
3) Compress Your Photos Before Uploading Them:
As well as uploading low resolution files, you will also need to compress them, this reduces the quality rather than the actual dimensions of the image. Again Photoshop is great for this: Head to the “File > Export” menu. Here you can “Save for Web…” I usually export a photo at 60% JPEG quality and this still looks really good for viewing online. Before exporting you can see in the preview that there’s not much difference between that and 90%. It’s a clever way of creating smaller, more compressed files that further reduce what someone could do with your image should they get hold of it.
4) Metadata - Add your Copyright:
By modifying the metadata you can embed your copyright information straight into the image before upload. I tend to use Lightroom for this as it easy to view and change the information all in one panel (as shown above). You can also do this in Photoshop if you prefer, by navigating to “File > File Info…” and adjusting it there.
Unfortunately this isn’t the most effective way, because after all it’s not noticeable unless you dig into a file’s metadata. Most websites like Facebook also strip the metadata from the file to compress it, and saving a photo for web, as outlined in 4, will also strip this metadata unless you have specified otherwise in the options.
5) Read the Terms and Conditions of Websites Before You Choose to Upload:
I know this is the part that most people gloss over because they don’t want to sit reading through pages and pages of conditions. But when it comes to sharing your photos online, it’s really important!
Image sharing websites like Flickr, allow you to submit your photos under a ‘Creative Commons License’, which grants a certain number of rights, but you can’t revoke the license if you change your mind. Before signing up, make sure this option isn’t already enabled, and choose ‘All Rights Reserved’.
The casual term for this is ‘Image Theft’ or ‘Stealing’ but what is really happening is that your copyright is being infringed upon. The development of the digital age has made it incredibly easy to upload your photos to the internet and in front of a wider audience. Something that not so long ago was a lot more difficult to do. It’s thanks to social media and large photo-sharing websites such as Flickr and 500px, that make this possible for us do now, but with a positive comes a negative: copyright infringement.
This was something that happened to me quite recently, and it was only thanks to a friend spotting my image (pictured above), that I could do something about this. In the depths of the internet, it was being used by a government agency of all people! APHA (The Animal Plant & Health Agency), had used and credited my image in one of their blogs about red squirrel, but had not asked permission to do this, so where did I go from here?
It is very tempting to go in ‘all guns blazing’, but trust me it’s important to resolve the issue in a professional and calm manner. I researched my options on the best way to handle this and there are a couple of outcomes to aim for. Firstly, a request to remove the photo from their website. Or, payment for the photo’s use and an allowance for them to continue using it under a proper license. Another option is payment and removal, but this is sometimes harder to achieve. Some cases do go as far as taking the company/person to court, but this is an expensive headache and can be a long drawn out process. However, sometimes it is unavoidable so it should be your last port of call.
I chose to go with option 2) Payment for the photo’s use and an allowance for them to continue using it under a proper license.
Because APHA are such a big organisation it was easy to find their contact details, however if you’re dealing with a website that’s a bit tricky, have a look in the menu or in the page’s footer (the bottom of the page) for a ‘Contact Us’ link. If this gets you nowhere, then try Googling “Website Address” Contact Email – make sure to use the quotation marks too. If this still doesn’t help you then a final check on who owns the domain name is another option to try. Head over to whois.com and type in the website address. It’ll give you all of the details of who registered that website – unless they’ve paid to protect their information. If you’re lucky, you’ll now have their telephone number, email address and even registered address.
So after finding APHA’s contact information, I put together a letter to send to them with all the relevant information and evidence about their copyright infringement. It’s really important to obtain evidence of the photos unauthorised use - I did this by taking screenshots of the blog and made sure the date, time, etc. were all included.
To have an idea on what to write I did a quick Google search to find examples, it’s a balance of keeping things professional and showing you mean business, but not appearing aggressive in your delivery. It’s also important to across like you know what you are talking about, if you don’t then you’re more likely to have no success and have your bluff called.
Nobody will actively welcome an invoice for your photo, but at the same time they don’t want to get into legal difficulties. Introduce yourself as the photographer of the work, and include your screenshot/photo. Explain that they have infringed your copyright, which is illegal, and that you have attached an invoice which will allow them to continue using the photo and settle the matter.
The invoice should amount to your usual fees for such usage, plus a margin for ‘damages’. The latter is optional though, and remember that the more you charge, the less likely it is you’ll get the matter settled quickly. Because I was unsure on what usage fees I should be charging them, I went to Alamy.com and searched for a similar image under Rights Managed usage.
Fortunately I was lucky and APHA handled the situation really well and paid the fee that I asked for, but chose not to continue using the image. However, not all companies will be like this so don’t be afraid to follow them up with further emails, phone calls, and even social media if they are being particularly stubborn. The important thing is to not give up!
