Jake Stangel dabbles in myriad photographic realms—ranging from architecture to sports, documentary to commercial—but he’s increasingly gaining attention for travel work that has deep roots in his own personal journeys. His passion for shooting grand landscapes and back-road vignettes in the American West started with a cross-country bike ride that he took while on summer break from college at New York University. He subsequently made that trek twice more, with images from all three rides contributing to his photo series Transamerica. “I love throwing myself into environments I have no prior relationship with, feeding off the energy of the place,” Stangel says. “I just go with the flow and shoot whatever I’m getting vibes from at the time.”

Stangel shoots almost entirely with medium- or large-format film cameras; a Mamiya 7 is his nearly constant companion. “Film makes the assignments feel personal,” he says. “It lets me slow down, focus, and develop a rapport with my subjects. And the 
images have a light quality that you just can’t get with digital.”

When Travel + Leisure’s deputy photo editor assigned Stangel 
to shoot the Chico Resort, in a secluded corner of Montana known as Paradise Valley, he knew the job fit his particular 
approach. “I’m not an accommodations photographer,” Stangel explains. “I prefer travel stories with narrative, and the magazine really let me follow my nose on this one.”

He describes the destination as an ethereal escape, where Yellowstone’s boiling river meets cooler waters to create steaming-hot baths surrounded by rugged, snow-covered mountains. “It’s very much a blue-collar spot, and I tried to just be a fly on the wall,” he recalls. “I took a three-hour soak alongside a trucker and his wife before finally floating over to my cameras to take photographs of them enveloped by steam.”

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For Christopher Testani, the road to success in travel photography has included many discursive byways and years of paying dues. “I worked as an assistant in nearly every genre of photography out there,” says Testani, who is based in San Francisco.

“Eventually I realized each carries with it a particular lifestyle that you end up living as the photographer. And I found that what I most enjoyed was seeing things I’d never seen before—living slices of life I’d never lived and meeting people I’d never have a chance to meet otherwise.”

Testani’s career breakthrough came in 2011, when Bon Appétit commissioned him for an assignment in Cartagena, Colombia, that combined his dual affections for food and travel. “I have a real passion for cooking, and I’ve always felt that one of the best ways to experience a place and culture is through its food,” he says. “The focus of the Colombia project was definitely culinary, but I also had a lot of freedom to explore the city and shoot whatever I was drawn to.”

Today Testani continues this double-track visual journey, shooting at the intersection of food and travel for magazines like Afar, Travel + Leisure, Bon Appétit, and Departures. “My travel assignments are generally focused on the culinary world—particular dishes or local specialties, restaurants, chefs, and markets. It just feels like a natural fit.”

On the last night of his appointed journey in Cartagena, Testani’s assistant, a local, took him out for food and drinks with friends, a simple yet serendipitous experience that brought the whole project together. “To get a glimpse into those areas—some of which you really wouldn’t dare go unless you were with locals, especially carrying a camera around—was the best part of the job,” he says. “It made me feel like, for a moment, I had a genuine understanding of the place.”

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Emily Mott spends a fair share of her time shooting chic hotels and exclusive cultural tours, but her favorite travel assignments reflect her penchant for adventures on the fringe, where the ring of mobile phones and the buzz of traffic give way to star-filled skies and wide-open wilderness.

“I love a quest for a certain tree or beach or spice—the adventure is in the seeking,” says Mott, whose primary residence is in the English countryside of West Sussex. “It is on these journeys that I usually find the most striking images.”

Mott got her first taste of the wild while studying at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She recalls an assisting job that took her to Arnhem Land, in Australia’s Northern Territory.

“We lived on the beach for a month with the [aboriginal] Burarrwanga family, documenting all aspects of their lives—from hunting, fishing, and gathering to ceremonies and storytelling,” Mott says. “It was a huge eye-opener for me. I learned a lot about observation, documentation, and survival.”

These lessons now inform her transcontinental work. During one choice journey in Borneo, on assignment for Condé Nast Traveler and Telegraph magazines, Mott and writer Jonny Beardsall set out to highlight environmental issues and promote ecotourism as a sustainable practice.

“We spent an amazing day trekking through the spectacular virgin rainforest. The trees were massive—monkeys chased each other in the high canopies, wild scarlet rhododendrons blazed amongst the greenery. It was a magical place,” Mott recalls. “But I will never forget the shock of emerging from the forest, on the second day, into a [man-made] clearing that stretched out for miles. It was the most depressing, silent landscape of felled trees and mud as far as the eye could see, where the only wildlife was a dead snake in the road and a few butterflies.”

Mott prefers to focus her lens on the unspoiled beauty. “I’m compelled by the wild places of the world because I fear they are disappearing fast,” she says. “I enjoy shooting positive stories about conservation to increase awareness of what is happening to our wildlife and landscape.”

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Myanmar Stock Photography by Justin Mott

Myanmar Stock Photography by Justin Mott

Authenticity in Myanmar

American photographer Justin Mott first visited Southeast Asia to attend a photography workshop in Cambodia. He spent the following year splitting his time between shooting a personal project about Agent Orange victims there and studying at San Francisco State University. Then a travel assignment for the French magazine L’Express sent him to explore the emerging middle class of Ho Chi Minh City. Soon after, Mott (no relation to Emily Mott) decided to settle in Hanoi, where he could nurture a burgeoning relationship with The New York Times as a documentary and assignment photographer for its foreign and business desks. “I started my career working for the Times instead of finishing school,” he explains. “I was afraid of losing my in with the newspaper, so I stayed here and never looked back.”

Mott’s nine-plus years of experience living and working in the region gives him a singular insight into the characters and cultures that surround him—as well as access to areas seldom visited by Westerners, as evidenced by his 2011 Times project behind the walls of military-ruled Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). “The story was about Myanmar opening its doors to tourism after recent political unrest,” Mott recalls. “This was at a time when it was difficult to enter the country as a journalist, so I had to go in pretending I was part of a tour group. I was a little paranoid about looking like a photographer, so I only brought one scarf.”

Mott says that during this foray Myanmar truly felt like a place unknown to the outside world. “People were so welcoming, and beautiful light and colors were everywhere,” he says. “It’s rare you get to capture a place before the tourists arrive! It was my favorite travel assignment ever. By the end of the trip I had shed my paranoia—I bought two gorgeous Burmese lotus-weave scarves and wore them proudly through immigration.”

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As a daughter of owners of a stock footage company, Jessica Sample grew up traveling the world with a camera. “My parents would take me and my sister to far-flung places like Africa, Indonesia, Tibet, and Bhutan,” she recalls. “I would shoot roll after roll of 35-millimeter film and I loved the process of going to a new place and capturing the experience through my photos.”

Still, Sample says she felt a bit nervous on her first professional travel assignment—to Parma, Italy, during her tenure as deputy photo editor of Travel + Leisure. “Arriving and scouting the town, I started to think about things like where I wanted to shoot based on light, and which places would be my night shots and my establishing shot,” she recalls. “It taught me to always be ready to catch those unexpected moments that really give you an authentic feel of a place.”

Today Sample’s diverse work has appeared in dozens of publications, including GQ, National Geographic Traveler, Sunset, and Coastal Living. Sample eschews committing to any particular niche. “I think it’s hard to have a single specialty within travel photography,” she says. “One of the things I love most about shooting travel stories is they force you to work in many different kinds of photography—portraits, landscapes, food, lifestyle, interiors—which always keeps things interesting.”

On a recent assignment in the Andalusia region of Spain, Sample felt sure that the small town of Zahara de la Sierra would make an inspiring location. “Driving up to it was like coming across a town out of a fairy tale, with a castle-like fortress rising over everything. I knew I wanted to maximize my time there with late afternoon and early morning light,” she says. “I felt as if I had come across a secret town, and it’s exciting to capture and experience these undiscovered places, knowing they’ll soon become discovered because of the photographs I take.”

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For the 100th anniversary of America’s national parks, we decided to find out which ones you—the Pop Photo readers—love most. From your responses to our annual reader survey, we highlighted the 25 top parks for getting the widest range of great pictures, along with the top choices from six individual nature specialties: wildlife, forests, meadows and wildflowers, deserts, mountains, and bodies of water.

We learned that our readers have explored a wide range of the 59 parks, from the icy fjords of Alaska to the steamy swamps of the Everglades (though none made it to the National Park of American Samoa). We also spoke with a number of well-traveled pro photographers for their perspectives—and, of course, their tips.

While specific interests vary, it’s clear that you have a deep appreciation for the iconic landscapes, pristine wildernesses, and incredible wildlife encounters to be found in America’s national parks.

“Genesis”

1. Yellowstone Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming

The world’s first national park won our highest honor because of its wide array of ready opportunities to make great pictures. It was the park our readers have visited most, too: Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of those surveyed traveled to Yellowstone National Park in the past five years. None of this is surprising—the park is an unrivaled natural treasure where an underground super-volcano creates otherworldly geothermal features such as the Old Faithful geyser and the Grand Prismatic Spring.

“I came upon Mustard Spring, a small geyser in Yellowstone’s Biscuit Basin, as sunset was approaching and wanted to capture the mysterious and surreal feel of the place,” says landscape and wildlife photographer Richard Bernabe of the picture at left. “I particularly liked how the overflow water reflected the sky. I used that bright circle of reflection as my foreground while choosing a long shutter speed to capture the rising steam as a haunting apparition.”

Yellowstone offers incredible encounters with wildlife like bison and bears, which roam these 2.2 million acres of wilderness stretching across Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. It’s also one of the most visited parks in the country, especially during the summer, when popular sights become congested with crowds.

2. Yosemite California

Yosemite National Park is where the legendary Ansel Adams honed his craft. Our readers found this park equally inspiring, voting it number two overall. More than 4 million people visited Yosemite last year, and most head for famous viewpoints such as Tunnel View, which overlooks Half Dome and Bridalveil Fall.

Yosemite is not a one- or two-day shoot unless you’re happy with the same pictures taken from the road turnouts and trails on the valley floor,” says pro photographer Carol Barrington. “Consider hiking Yosemite’s high country where soul-stirring images abound amid glacial lakes and granite peaks.”

Best Park for Photographing Mountains: Grand Teton Wyoming

The Grand Tetons are some of the steepest and most dramatic mountains in the United States, a jagged spine like a porcupine’s back arching across the plains of Wyoming. It’s not surprising, then, that our readers picked Grand Tetons National Park as their top spot for mountain photography.

Consider a climb for an unusual perspective, suggests photographer and mountaineer Ethan Welty. “Teewinot Mountain is offset from the main crest of the range and sits directly across from the North Face of Grand Teton, offering sensational mountain views from a varied foreground, with lots of huge drops and cliff ledges for hero shots. Its summit is achievable in a day—or better yet, on a scenic overnight trip.”

Runners-Up:

Glacier National Park, Montana

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Mount Rainier National Park, Washington

Yosemite National Park, California

3. Glacier Montana

Montana’s Glacier National Park came in at number three. Going to the Sun Road crosses the park’s wild interior, but for photographers willing to work for their shots, more than 700 miles of hiking trails provide routes to pristine lakes backed by formidable saw-toothed mountains.

“My favorite time to photograph Glacier is June when the wildflowers are blooming at Logan’s Pass and the animals are out enjoying the sun’s warmth,” says Jonathan Irish, a photographer currently undertaking a project to photograph national parks. “Glacier has some of the best backcountry hiking and camping available in any national park, and I highly suggest getting out in the wilderness and off the Sun Road.”

4. Grand Teton Wyoming

Grand Teton National Park is the sister park to Yellowstone, encompassing the Teton Mountains that rise from Yellowstone’s southern reach. Photographing Grand Teton offers some of the most dramatic landscapes anywhere in the U.S. The jagged range stretches like a row of shark’s teeth with herds of wild bison grazing at their feet. “The Tetons are compact—you can walk the entire length of the range in a few days,” says photographer Ethan Welty. “But they make up for their small span with spectacular relief, rising 7,000 feet above Jackson Hole.”

Best Park for Photographing Deserts: Death Valley California

The bottom of Death Valley’s Badwater Basin is the lowest, driest, and hottest spot in North America, the epicenter of a desert so cracked and barren it exudes a unique beauty. Readers found Death Valley’s dunes and salt flats so captivating they chose it as the number one park for desert photography.

“The salt flats are amazing at sunrise when clouds above the Panamint Range light up,” says photographer Jon Cornforth. “If the park had a wet winter, the spring wildflowers should not be missed. And the dramatic sand dunes throughout the park are incredible to photograph, especially after a storm blows away visitors’ footprints.”

Runners-Up

Saguaro National Park, Arizona

Big Bend National Park, Texas

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, Colorado

Joshua Tree National Park, California

5. Great Smoky Mountains North Carolina, Tennessee

The Smokies are legendary for their mist-shrouded hills and deep pockets of Appalachian culture. Voted number five, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is also the most visited. To avoid crowds, pro Paul Marcellini recommends the areas around Townsend and Tremont instead of Gatlinburg (all in Tennessee). “Getting into the park as early in the morning as possible helps,” he says.

“There are almost always things to shoot throughout the day. Find the shaded side of the mountains where backlighting on autumn and fresh spring leaves will score you beautiful exposures.”

6. Olympic
Washington

Our survey participants loved the lighting within the lush, impossibly green temperate rainforest in Washington’s Olympic National Park. Dense, moss-covered evergreens and towering ferns lend an almost primordial feel to images taken here.

7. Rocky Mountain Colorado

Wildlife close-ups and landscapes with glittering mountain lakes are among the reasons readers adore this high-altitude park just outside Boulder, Colorado. Look for herds of elk and bighorn sheep roaming the slopes.

Best Park for Photographing Wildflowers: Mount Ranier Washington

Wildflowers are a celebrated seasonal occurrence at many national parks, and our readers picked Mount Rainier as the number-one park for photographing meadows blanketed in blooms such as lupine, tiger lilies, and many others.

Wildflower season in Mount Rainier National Park usually comes around mid-July, but getting there at just the right time takes a little knowledge and a little luck. “How do you time it just right for flowers?” asks wilderness photographer Rodney Lough Jr. “Look at the snow pack. If it’s a light year the flowers come a couple weeks early. If it’s a heavy year with greater snow pack, they can come two to three weeks later. Of course this isn’t foolproof—nothing is when it comes to Mother Nature.”

Runners-Up:

North Cascades National Park, Washington

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina and Tennessee

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Yosemite National Park, California

8. Acadia
Maine

Maine’s Acadia National Park was the first the feds established east of the Mississippi, mostly on glacier-carved Mt. Desert Island. Our readers recommend Cadillac Mountain for epic sunrise panoramas over the scenic coast.

9. Mount Rainier Washington

Mt. Rainier itself is the centerpiece to this national park southeast of Seattle, but it’s hardly the only draw. You will also enjoy photographing the surrounding wonderland of lush forests, snowmelt waterfalls, and wildflower-filled meadows.

10. North Cascades Washington

More than 300 glaciers slash the jagged landscape of North Cascades National Park, east of Bellingham, Washington. Readers who have photographed this landscape say that making the effort to hike here pays off with cerulean Alpine lakes and pristine wilderness where mountain goats scale sheer cliffs.

11. Big Bend Texas

One of the most remote parks in the continental U.S. sits along the Rio Grande at the Texas-Mexico border. Deep river canyons such as Boquillas Canyon offer dramatic scenery, and our readers prize Big Bend National Park’s isolated location for night-sky photography.

Best Park for Photographing Wildlife: Yellowstone Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming

Yellowstone not only scored the top spot overall, but readers also voted it number one for wildlife photography. The park is legendary for the everyday encounters visitors have with charismatic megafauna such as bison, moose, elk, and bears.

The best wildlife photos show the animals in their environments rather than simply snapped along the road. “In order to avoid the crowds and to have better light, I got up before sunrise and headed towards the Hayden Valley,” says travel and wildlife photographer Wolfgang Kaehler of a favorite moment shooting in Yellowstone.

“I was alone. The fog was hanging in the valley and started to clear slowly. Suddenly, I saw a bison appear out of the fog. I set up my tripod as the valley opened to reveal a huge herd of bison with calves.”

Runners-Up

Saguaro National Park, Arizona

Big Bend National Park, Texas

Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve, Colorado

Joshua Tree National Park, California

12. Crater Lake Oregon

The haunting blue of the eponymous Crater Lake, in the caldera of a volcano that blew its top, is the primary draw for photographers. Pop Photo readers suggest visiting during the winter to capture the scene blanketed by snow.

13. Shenandoah Virginia

Our survey responders love cruising Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park’s Blue Ridge Mountains, especially during fall, to photograph the changing colors. Twilight casts beautiful orange and purple light over the landscape.

14. Denali Preserve Alaska

A trip to Denali, home to America’s highest mountain, is like taking an American safari, with exceptional opportunities to spot wolves, moose, and other wildlife. But the weather can change at a moment’s notice, so come prepared for anything.

15. Zion
Utah

Utah’s Zion National Park boasts some of the finest red-rock scenery in the country. Our readers suggest exploring the slot canyons or shooting under moonlight for unique nighttime pictures.

16. Everglades Florida

Birds, orchids, and alligators are some of Pop Photo readers’ favorite subjects to photograph in the expansive wetlands of Everglades National Park. Those who have done so recommend exploring these South Florida swamps and canals by boat.

17. Cuyahoga Valley
Ohio

Readers call Cuyahoga Valley National Park a hidden gem for its riverside scenery that changes with the seasons and its great opportunities to photograph nesting bald eagles and great blue herons.

Best Park for Photographing Bodies of Water:

Crater Lake Oregon

Oregon’s Crater Lake is one of the most recognizable bodies of water in the National Park System. The volcano Mt. Mazama erupted with an explosion nearly 8,000 years ago, creating a 2,000-foot-deep caldera that filled with rain and snow to become one of the deepest and purest lakes on the planet—a lake that readers voted number one for photographing bodies of water.

“Much of the view from the 33-mile Rim Drive suffers from obstructing evergreen forests or featureless overlooks,” says landscape photographer Tim Fitzharris. “Your best bet is the easy trail to the Watchman Lookout Station, which offers good views of the lake and Wizard Island. And time your shoots to take advantage of the magic light of dawn, dusk, and even darkness.”

Runners-Up

Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska

Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska

Acadia National Park, Maine

Glacier National Park, Montana

18. Biscayne Florida

One of only a few U.S. national parks to include coral reefs, Biscayne National Park is ideal for underwater photography, including historic shipwreck sites such as that of the Arratoon Apcar, a Scottish steamship that sank in 1878.

19. Grand Canyon Arizona

One of America’s most iconic national parks is still worth visiting despite the crowds. Road-accessible overlooks offer myriad perspectives, and our readers recommend photographing at various times of day to explore how changing light plays across the canyon.

20. Lassen Volcanic California

This relatively little-known Northern California park boasts otherworldly scenes of geothermal activity bubbling to the surface. One reader told us, “Fumaroles spewing sulfuric gas, along with ponds that are hot and acidic, make Lassen an experience as well as a photo destination.”

21. Kenai Fjords Alaska

Majestic whales and dramatic, glacier-carved fjords are the highlights of cruising Kenai Fjords National Park, along the Alaskan coast south of Anchorage. If you’re lucky, you may capture icebergs calving from glaciers or a humpback breaching out of the water.

Best Park for Photographing Forests: Redwood California

Forest photography can prove uniquely challenging, with deep shadows and shafts of bright light streaming through the canopy. For their number-one spot to capture these scenes, readers chose the mist-shrouded ancient forests of Redwood National Park, where old-growth forests of the world’s tallest trees stand watch over the Northern California coast.

“A thick fog clings to the giant trees along the ridges, but it soon blows away or gets burned off by the sun,” outdoor photographer Richard Bernabe says of shooting there. “So pull off the road and hike until you find an open section of large trees, knowing that when the sun will penetrate what remains of the fog, the beams of light will shine through the branches of the backlit trees.”

Runners-Up

Sequoia National Park, California

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina and Tennessee

Olympic National Park, Washington

Mount Rainier National Park, Washington

22. Redwood California

Pop Photo readers say that the towering forests of Redwood National Park, home to world’s tallest trees, seem “ethereal” and “magical,” especially when the sun shines through the trees or coastal fog descends under the canopy.

23. Sequoia California

Survey participants loved Sequoia for its ancient trees with massive, gnarled roots, noting that it offers similar scenes to Redwood (seenumber 22), only set among the mountains of the southern Sierra Nevada.

24. Hot Springs Arkansas

Historic bathhouses surrounding geothermal pools are the main feature of this small park outside Little Rock. Our surveyed readers noted that the buildings and the surrounding gardens offer the best photo opportunities.

25. Kings Canyon California Kings Canyon National Park offers scenery similar to Yosemite, but without the crowds. Explore alpine meadows and scenic rivers that cut through deep granite chasms.

About Our Survey To assess the best national parks (not including national seashores, forests, monuments, or other federally protected lands), we contacted Popular Photography readers via email, social media, and our website.

More than 3,000 of you provided over 5,000 park evaluations, answering questions to rate the 59 parks based on their value, accessibility, best types of pictures to take on a visit, and more. We used the data from the rankings, along with our editorial judgment, to produce the lists you see here.

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In February 1994, when he slipped into the ocean off southern Australia to photograph great white sharks, Carl Roessler knew he could get hurt. And he did, but not that day, and not in the form of a shark bite. In fact, it was a decade before he even realized anything was wrong. One of the pictures from that shoot, of a great white attacking Roessler’s cage, teeth bared, became the photographer’s most widely distributed image—because an enormous number of people stole it.

At first, Roessler didn’t think much of the photo. “I usually kept the best ones for myself,” he says. “I knew it was a good shot, but I had others I thought were better, so I sent it off to an agent.” For four years, “Maddened Attack” was just another shark photo in a library of thousands. Then in 1998 Apple contacted Roessler’s agency about a one-year license to use the photo in print ads for their new PowerBook G3. Apple digitized and polished the image, doctoring some of the shark’s broken teeth, and ran with it. Roessler happily cashed the check and forgot all about the photo again.

But Apple’s timing proved fateful. Its license on “Maddened Attack” expired in 1999, just as the Internet was transforming from an obscure playground for computer hobbyists into a pirate’s paradise of friction-free file sharing. Napster, the era’s posterboy, was rising to prominence as the first program to facilitate large-scale free and unfettered music downloading—and with it came a new attitude toward content.

Like all those millions of “shared” MP3s, Apple’s digitized, repaired version of Roessler’s photo escaped into this nascent digital wilderness. There, aided by countless Internet-savvy, image-hungry designers, it traveled far and wide. By 2009, whenever he showed the photo, he heard “we’ve seen it all over the place.” Alarmed, Roessler began working with an agent whose subssequent digging showed that the image had, unbeknownst to him, spread among thousands of blogs and websites, been remixed into cartoons and paintings, shown up on billboards, and become the face of commercial products from off-brand batteries to mouse pads to guitars. Even mainstream clothing companies had picked up the image and used it without requesting permission to use it, paying any licensing fees or providing attribution. “Once I started looking for infringements of my copyright, I found them everywhere,” he says.

Roessler’s story is far from unique. It’s not even particularly unusual. While the Internet has made it easier than ever for artists to promote their work, it also has never been so easy for others to pirate their images. For the past decade, our systems for distributing photos have become incredibly sophisticated, while the technology for selling and tracking them has stayed in the digital dark ages. The harsh reality is that in order to participate in the most vibrant parts of today’s online marketplace, shooters must at least partially cede control of their work.

Illegal appropriation of photos is almost as old as photography itself. In 1862 a French studio firm, Mayer and Pierson, brought the first photo copyright case in France’s highest court against competitors who had copied its portraits of European dignitaries.

The case launched a heated debate in both the courts and the public. Was photography merely mechanical reproduction, independent of the person operating the camera? Or was it an artistic creation of the photographer, making it subject to copyright protections? The court found in favor of Mayer and Pierson, but the decision was so contentious that it took 50 more years for the precedent to take hold.

Echoes of the debate resonate even today. As the digital revolution has liberated content from physical media and mechanical reproduction becomes easier, the perception of a work’s monetary value, it appears, has diminished. Our ability to copy any image seems to have erased our sense of propriety about when and how we can use others’ work.

“There are a lot of myths out there about what constitutes fair use,” says Carolyn E. Wright, a professional photographer and intellectual property attorney who runs the website photoattorney.com. “A lot of people mistakenly think that if there’s no attribution or copyright mark on the image, or if they plan to use the image noncommercially, then it’s fine.”

It’s hard to get accurate estimates about the total amount of unlicensed photo use throughout the U.S. or the world, but the ongoing battle between high-profile photo agencies and those who would misuse their images is instructive. A report on the state of image infringement by the photo-tracking software company PicScout (recently purchased by Getty Images) notes that of the 5 million rights-managed stock images they surveyed in 2009, approximately 80 percent of those appearing on commercial websites were not being used legitimately.

Stock agency Masterfile uses PicScout’s ImageTracker service to locate their images on the Internet. Company president Steve Pigeon says that in 2011 Masterfile found 75 to 100 unlicensed uses per week, almost 5,000 for the year. “Annually for North America, retroactive license fees are about 25% of our total rights-managed sales,” he says.

Interestingly, Masterfile’s 2011 infringement numbers for the second half of 2011 were down about 30 percent from 2010, when the company brought more than 7,000 infringement cases. Pigeon says it’s too soon to say whether this drop is an anomaly but notes that it did coincide with the industry trend of using micro-stock services, making it easier for everyday consumers to license images.

A brighter future may also be on the horizon for the images in other stock libraries. Getty’s PicScout recently launched a new service called ImageExchange, a browser plugin for stock photo buyers that scans all the images on a given website and attempts to identify them. Once a photo is identified, the plugin provides an easy path to purchasing a license where possible.

Unfortunately, what’s viable for large stock agencies isn’t necessarily practical for independent photographers, already suffering price depression, strapped for time and lacking the resources to take strong action against unlicensed use. “Most photographers I know are more interested in creating new images than in litigating copyright infringements,” says Wright. “What we need is an easy way to license images for designers, like iTunes did for the music industry.”

Advertising photographer Jeff Sedlik agrees. “I could go online today and probably find 100 infringements of my images without much effort,” he laments. After exploring his current policing options—diligently registering his images with the copyright office, systematically searching out unlicensed use through Google and threatening unlicensed users with legal action—he found them entirely inadequate. But instead of complaining about it, Sedlik is spearheading a solution. His Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS) is a coalition that has developed global standards and a registry connecting images to the photographers that took them and their associated rights information. It’s currently in beta testing with about 6,000 users (more info is available at plusregistry.org).

“Most big companies, which are the primary market for commercial images, don’t want to infringe on copyrights,” Sedlik says. “As photographers, we have a responsibility to help clients avoid infringements by providing clear, accurate information about the rights attached to them.”

The problem may not ever be completely solved, but this kind of new support technology implies a slightly brighter future. Improved image search abilities and sites like PLUS may increase the perceived value of photography and help photographers get the credit they’re due. Unfortunately, photographers of the current era, like Roessler and Noam Galai may never fully recover control of their images and may have to resign themselves to a lifetime of seeing bootlegs on T-shirts and foreign book covers. Their only (cold) comfort is the perverse validation that people want their photos enough to steal them. To update Oscar Wilde’s famous maxim about the merits of being talked about: “The only thing worse than having your pictures stolen is not having your pictures stolen.” AP

The Shout Heard Round The World

Israel-born, New York-based photographer Noam Galai got a crash course in finding infringements after self-portraits he posted on Flickr started showing up in books and magazines, on T-shirts, at concerts, even as anti-govenment street art in Egypt. Rather than take infringers to court, he started a scream blog to catalog the myriad places his face has popped up. See more at screameverywhere.com.

More assorted unlicensed uses:

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