My Take on the Recent Photography Plagiarism

Over the last year a couple of well known photographers have faced stern criticism and public condemnation for plagiarizing blog posts from other websites. Posing guru Doug Gordon was the first outed in June 2013 when it was discovered that several of his posts had been lifted in no small part from outside sources. Then it was revealed in September of last year that wedding photographer Jasmine Star had similarly been utilizing sources verbatim for blog posts. When PhotoStealers got a hold of this information pressure was placed upon the WPPI to replace these two with new presenters at the international event in 2014. This campaign was successful and both Doug Gordon and Jasmine Star chose to stand down from their speaking commitments at WPPI 2014.

Now there’s no excuse to plagiarize other people’s work. Either in word or image. But I wanted to offer one idea about how I think these events transpired. I have recently been researching search engine optimization options. There are many companies that you can pay a lot of money per month and they will guarantee you will land on the first page of a search engine like Google. Now as a photographer/videographer in the relatively small city of Bendigo I don’t have that much competition. So I’m not inclined to continually spend the big bucks to compete with about a dozen photographers and next to no other videographers. But I was struck by something. As part of these packages offered by companies they often promise to write a certain number of articles/blogs per month for you. The idea, I suppose, is to continue make your site news relevant and content heavy. I can’t help wondering whether these blunders were not actually the mistakes of the specific photographers mentioned above but the mistakes of the SEO companies that they may have employed to get their businesses higher up the search engine rankings.

Now I don’t profess to be an expert, or even fluent, on what makes Google tick, however, I just don’t buy that smart people like Doug and Jasmine are silly enough to post articles that aren’t their own, without restructuring or anything, knowing full well what the outcome of their indiscretions may be. The fallout for a photographer who steals content or images is very significant. Both Doug and Jasmine face being shunned by the photographic community and when you Google Jasmine Star three articles about her folly appear on the first page, when you Google Doug Gordon two articles appear about his lapse in judgment. To me this seems like a very logical ending to plagiarizing posts. Somebody will invariably find out and all of a sudden all the marvelous work you’ve achieved in the past has been tarnished by a blog post that is predominantly about advertising yourself as a photographer. To me, it is counter-intuitive to act in this way as a photographer. It’s like a solicitor lying about past indiscretions to the Supreme Court. It is almost inevitable that your misdemeanors will come to light and you can bet that your future earnings will plummet. Thus, as a blog itself doesn’t generate any cash flow, what is the incentive? And so I keep coming back to the contemplation that these mistakes may have been caused by an over-zealous but lazy website company employee whose job required him/her to continue to produce content for these sites but had no real photographic experience. Now, if this was the case, it may actually be the greater sin. Any content that ends up on my site is created by me or my employees. But Doug and Jasmine seem like they are in the kind of situation where they might have the finances to utilize an SEO company to further promote their business.

Another aspect of this whole affair that has me wondering is the content of the posts that Jasmine copied. They are really very basic photography how-to blogs. Now I haven’t seen her five-day Creative Live video but I assume the details in her workshops are far beyond the content that she plagiarized. I don’t know about you, but I tend to want to write about where I am in my stage of development as a photographer. I remember years ago I wrote a post on shooting in manual mode. This was back when I had just got a proper understanding of the concepts. Yet Jasmine’s articles, from last year, are written about similarly basic elements and she is supposed to be a photography worldbeater. Now I know you can re-discover techniques and write about them later but the quality of Jasmine’s work is at a level that is beyond the article that she supposedly plagiarized. So this leaves me with three conclusions. Either she is (1) a fraud; (2) lazy or (3) not the author. (1) is a possibility, though, I would be surprised if she could convince all her photography colleagues that she was the real deal, if she really wasn’t. Plus it is harder to pretend to be someone when you are giving five-day straight workshops. Will one of you view her Creative Live workshop and let me know? (2) is also a possibility. Undoubtedly Jasmine is a busy lady and having time to photograph, present workshops and then blog about your experiences would take a fair chunk of your day. However, Jasmine was employed as a writer before she became proficient as a photographer. As a writer I can tell you that it doesn’t take long to write a few words about something that you are passionate about. Also there is the question as to why she would take the risk? As I’ve stated previously the con of being caught and outed far outweighs the pro of generating traffic on your website. So, I believe that option (3) is the most likely explanation. And who else outside of Jasmine would write on her website? That’s right, her hard working SEO company.

The blog posts that Doug reposted under his own name just reek of laziness. Now I’m not sure whether this was Doug or somebody with instructions to produce content for his blog site. Either way much of the content misappropriated ended up on his Facebook page which is much more likely to be the man himself. Yet, why would he copy content so obviously leaving bread crumbs to the original author? If Doug did post the content himself then he is trying to self-sabotage because no reasonable human being would expect to get away with such blatant replication. Who knows, maybe he’s watched American Psycho one too many times.

Anyway, I think there is something that we fellow photographers can take away from this whole incident. Much of what we learn as photographers has been fed to us by more sophisticated photographers of days gone by. There’s nothing new under the sun. Therefore, when you are considering posting about a particular technique you ought to first dwell upon where your inspiration came from. Likely you learnt it from a more learned friend. Thus the method or technique does not belong to you to claim as your own. If you did indeed stumble upon a particular way of creating your photos then you are able to elaborate upon it. However, don’t expect us to believe you when you use the same words and paragraph structures as someone who has come before. Like a solicitor who has been caught in a lie there is no future for a photographer who does not value the photographic requirement for authentic originality.