07/06/2026
Reminder that screenshotting a photographer's work with all of the watermarks on it claiming "that's giving them credit" without paying for the photo will eventually cause photographers to stop offering this service for dog sport trials. It is a long endeavour to photograph a dog sport without knowing if you will even break even. Photo sales are typically our only payment. Please support your local photographers, and if you can't financially support for whatever reason, please don't just screenshot and call it support!
I just wanted to speak on how much I appreciate the local dog sport community around me and how grateful I am that you all continue to support me and my work in this digital age of screenshots and AI removal tools. After reading some really disheartening comments in a group on a post about official dog sport photography and image theft, from people who feel that they are entitled to the work of professional photographers and have no respect for the service we offer, I’m very glad that my personal experiences with people like that have been in the minority.
The service of professional photography in this niche is a privilege, not a guarantee. Abuse it and we lose it. The same honor-system culture of trust and respect that allows us to leave our things unattended at events while we trial and volunteer out in the ring should be extended to our vendors and official photographers if we want to keep having these nice things available to us.
If we as a community decide that our photographers aren’t worth respecting and that it’s okay to take screenshots of images and strip the preview watermarks off of them with some AI tool - then the privilege of having the service of high quality, awesome photography of us doing these cool things with our dogs may eventually cease to exist. And when it does, competitors can then expect to spend a couple hundred or thousands of dollars buying their own professional equipment and hand it off to a friend - that may or may not know how to use it - if they want to have photos from a trial.
You don’t have to understand or agree, but don’t ruin things for the rest of us. I am a competitor as well as a photographer, and I know I would be devastated if I lost the opportunity to buy professional photos of my dogs at events because those photographers could no longer afford to come out and shoot the events we attend.
