Ryan McGinnis Interview - Copyright Trolling 101

A big congratulations to Ryan McGinnis, he was recently interviewed by PetaPixel.

Here is my favorite part of the interview.

PP: How does a storm-chasing photographer like yourself earn a living?

RM: It’s primarily from licensing. Storm photography only makes up part of my licensing, though; while it’s a big chunk, the rest is filled in with travel imagery, a bit of lifestyle, etc. 

Ryan, no mention of copyright trolling?  Are you embarrassed about how you make money?

Ryan goes by the name chakalakasp on the Internet forums.  Here is how he really makes his money.

Bing Image search and Google Image search. Search for keywords that might contain your images. (This tends to work best with images of very specific things, of course.)  

Google / Bing (non image) search: Search for your name. Search for any aliases you post under, such as your Flickr alias (many times, people will credit your photo, thinking that that's good enough.)

Look through your Flickr stats (if you are a Flickr Pro member). See where people are coming from. Go to those sites and look to see if your picture is there. Look at what keywords people are using to find your images in Google; then go to Google Image search and plug those keywords in. 

Try Tineye. I haven't had much success with it, but Tineye does occasionally find infringements for me"