hquer

Hey everyone, I have started to create a Google+ page for my photography. If you are on Google+ and want to follow me there take a look at plus.google.com/10172694328636… . I have only uploaded a hand full of photographys for now but I will be posting more of my work soon. I have decided to go with Google+ instead of Facebook or Flicker since Google+ has a in my opinion the better user interface (not only for viewing photographs but also in general). It's just very nice to look at and integrates so well with all of the other Google products. So if you are interested, check out my gallery there plus.google.com/photos/1017269…

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I really like taking pictures and sharing them  online for other people to see and enjoy. In my opinion looking not at one single picture but at a set of pictures grouped together around one theme is one of the best ways to present photographs. Since this sadly can't be easily done on Deviant-Art I have created a section on my website featuring several photography articles. On the article page you can find one page dedicated to each location which shows a set of images with a short comment below explaining each image.

Some time ago I had already posted an article about our hiking trip through the Swedish National Park Sarek. Now three more articles are online for you to read and enjoy. The first one is from a road trip through the Western National Parks of the USA. The second article is from our very recent hiking adventure through the Arctic Circle Trail in Greenland. Last but not least another article from our Greenland trip shows the famous Kangia Icefjord near Ilulissat.

If you like the images I have posted on Deviant-Art then make sure to check out the articles too. Many more photographs can be seen there. Enjoy!

CSS Journal Coded by FleX177

Lately it has become more and more disturbing how the majority of people doesn't seem to care at all about copyright, especially when it comes down to photographs, wallpapers or any kind of picture. This has been an issue for some time now but lately the situation seems to be become worse with every day.

As a photographer who not only invests a lot of time in taking pictures but also in processing them and posting them online I always love to see when my work is appreciated and shared. It is great when people like my work so much that they are sharing it with friends or that they are posting it on their own websites and blogs. What I find, however, very bewildering is that only a fraction of all people who are sharing photographs online seem to care about giving proper credit. Only very rarely the author of an image or at least the authors website is given. Nearly every time just the image is copied but not it's origin. What makes the issue even worse is that most people don't even know or feel that they should credit the author when copying images, for many people I have spoken to it's absolutely normal to just use what they find online, if it's online - it's free!

Why is this bad? Shouldn't I be just happy that people like and share my work?
Of course I'm grateful that some of my photographs are so popular. However, what's the use of creating popular pictures if in the end no one knows who created the picture? No one can check out more of my pictures or my website because no where the authors name or website is given. I see my work online on websites receiving thousands of views and downloads, even receiving comments of people who appreciate my work. But all this goes on behind my back without me noticing.

For those who might think that I'm maybe exaggerating, let me give an example:

I have uploaded this image to my gallery at Deviant-Art in 2009. Since then it has received about 7200 views and 26 comments. However, alone from the Deviant-Art page it was downloaded more than 195000 times. Why the difference between views and downloads? Because lots of external web sites link directly to the image and not the gallery page of the image. If I do an image search for that image on google it turns out over 81000 hits of websites where the image is posted or used. Only a fraction of those website give credit or even link back to my website or gallery. Among those websites are countless private and commercial website which are using the image as background or header. No one cares where the image is from, no one gives credit, everyone just happily shares and reuses the image - and nothing of it falls back to me, the original author. This situation has happened for over a dozen of my pictures. Recently I found (by accident) a YouTube video where one of my images is used as a background image. The video to date has over 1.4 million views and only after a lengthy and heated debate with the author credit was given to my image (I actually had to threaten with a take down of the video).

Outside of Deviant-Art my work is used and viewed countless times with figures in the millions, yet, no one knows that it's my work.
And that, to be honest, really isn't a big motivation to keep on going because I have no idea what to do about it...

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Realizing that my work has been viewed over 350000 times I did spend the day uploading 20 high resolution print versions of some of my most liked pictures. If you are interested in hanging prints at your walls or in sending nice to look at post- or greeting cards you can check out my prints section here on Deviantart hquer.deviantart.com/prints/ . For those of you who can't or don't want to order prints from Deviantart I have also uploaded many pictures to an off-site high quality art print supplier, you c an check out my prints at Artflakes www.artflakes.com/en/shop/mart… . The advantage of ordering from Artflakes is that the site also handles wide angle prints with unusual crops which sadly aren't supported here on Deviantart.

Below a few of my deviations which are now available as print,
compared to the deviations all prints are available without any water mark or signature.


If you have any requests for other prints from my gallery let me know and I will see if I can find and upload a high resolution version of the requested picture.

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