Photo Stealers Weekly No. 73

This has been an oddly busy winter for me with a dash of (seasonal?) depression so I apologize that there hasn’t been as many weekly newsletters as usual.

I’m so looking forward to sunshine, blue skies and lighter days ahead.

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Photo Stealer Updates

Tori of White Oak Images has rebranded to White Oak Photo Co. and is hosting a retreat in May in Scottsdale for $1200. She has thanked a photographer for use of her images but I haven’t heard back if the permission was actually granted.

Regarding her current and past clients, I have been told she made refund agreements for many but I don’t know if she’s started or is keeping up with those.

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Larry Updates

There are none thankfully(?). He’s still locked up in San Diego with 9 charges currently pending against him. The next hearing is 3/12, here’s hoping that he is to stay in for a long time.

Our lawsuit has gone silent again since Jeffrey submitted his affidavit requested.

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The Buzz

This one is a doozy, I have gone back and forth on even discussing it but I feel there’s something to possibly learn from this. I’m not going to name names due to the situation at hand.

At the end of February I was sent a few messages asking if I’d heard about a situation with a boudoir photographer. It had been discovered they had an Only Fans page and allegedly had posted content of clients on this page, making money off the images they had taken of them. It was allegedly inadvertently discovered somehow and while I am not a subscriber there are over 1800+ media items on their account so it’s possible that it is true there are years worth of images on this account like it has been alleged. I didn’t make a post about it because I didn’t have screencaptures and I didn’t want to pay to subscribe to figure it out.

Crap hit the fan over this and the clients were outraged. The photographer allegedly stated that it was covered in the contract where they agreed to social media use of images and they asserted that Only Fans was part of social media (allegedly recently they had updated to include Only Fans as part of this clause). Sadly pointing out the loopholes in the contract did not do anything to smooth things over with the clients or make the feeling of betrayal any less painful.

Unfortunately as a result of this, the photographer allegedly took their own life and now their friends and family are trying to hold those that came forward in the wake of this accountable for their death.

I am very sorry for the friends and family of the deceased photographer.

I went back and forth on mentioning this but this is something that Larry has done as well without permission from the models he’s posted/attempted to make money on and some have come to me with advice. In my opinion, if this is one of the ways you want to generate income with your work, you must be very upfront with your clients about what their images will be used for and where they will be posted to avoid any kind of scandal like what took place here.

Also - if you aren’t involved in a situation, keep the conversation to the place where it started. Don’t be a jerk and start messaging people hateful things if you’re not directly involved. That goes for incdents like this or for fauxtographers I post about on Photo Stealers.

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More Buzz

Have you been following along with The Vendor Table’s deep dive into the allegation that The Knot/Zola have fake inquiries? Their recent podcast was fascinating along with the discussions in their Facebook Group about the topic. While I do not pay for placements with The Knot or Zola I myself have had quite a few inquiries via them that seemed to not pass the sniff test so to speak.

Have you had fake or suspicious inquiries with either one?