{"id":170642,"date":"2026-01-19T06:16:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T13:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=170642"},"modified":"2026-01-19T10:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T17:42:08","slug":"a-theft-and-transformation-of-one-of-my-photos-that-makes-my-skin-crawl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/19\/a-theft-and-transformation-of-one-of-my-photos-that-makes-my-skin-crawl\/","title":{"rendered":"A Theft And Transformation Of One Of My Photos That Makes My Skin Crawl"},"content":{"rendered":"

Readers know that I’ve had a major problem with image theft for years. I used to go after the thieves aggressively, including registering my images with the US Copyright Office and hiring an IP (intellectual property) attorney to go after them. But doing the research to find the images that have been stolen ended up taking up so much time it took away from my time in the field photographing birds. Now I spend far less time doing it, so I never find out about many of the thefts.<\/p>\n

But occasionally one of my blog followers, or just some fair-minded person doing research on the internet, spots one of my stolen images and alerts me. Even then, sometimes I don’t pursue the thief – it’s often more trouble than it’s worth.<\/p>\n

But other times the theft itself is so blatant, or what they do to the photo once they’ve stolen it is so awful, it really pisses me off. In those cases I sometimes decide to make a stink about it and then see how I feel down the road about pursuing it even further.<\/p>\n

This is one of those times.<\/p>\n

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I posted this photo of a Black-billed Magpie to my blog way back in 2012. Back then I used to post my photos at 720 pixels on the long side instead of the 900 pixels I use now, so this image is smaller than you’re used to seeing on Feathered Photography.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning from out of the blue I received an email from American science communicator and YouTube educator Emily Graslie, alerting me that a paint by numbers website had stolen this image and was selling it online. Emily called the version of my image they were selling “a lousy one at that”.<\/p>\n

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Boy, she wasn’t kidding. This monstrosity is what they did to my photo. This is what I mean about “making my skin crawl”.<\/p>\n

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This is a screen shot of the top of the page where they’re selling their version of my photo. And here’s a link to the page<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

The link may not remain active for long. In my experience, image thieves usually take down pages that include stolen photos of mine as soon as they get wind of me knowing about it. Doesn’t matter, because I now have the screen shots as evidence. Thanks, Emily.<\/p>\n

My initial inclination was to just let it slide. But on second thought, I decided that if a well-known TV and internet personality like Emily Graslie cared enough to go to the trouble to alert me, the least I could do was make a public stink about it.<\/p>\n

I’ll send a takedown request to numeralpaint.com and demand that they take my photo down. If they don’t, and quickly, I’ll have to make a decision about what to do next.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n