I might be the most stolen from photographer in the history of the world. This might seem like a strange claim, but it’s potentially true. It might not be true, but it certainly could be, so let’s dig into it. To clarify, I’m not claiming to be the victim of the most egregious thefts. I’m not claiming that the monetary value is anywhere near the most. Specifically, what I’m wondering is if I’ve had more photographs stolen than anyone else. In other words, am I the most stolen from photographer by total number of photographs stolen? I think it’s also important to clarify what “stolen” means: unauthorized use or reproduction of my pictures that violate my copyright. As the photographer, I own the rights to my pictures, and if someone uses them without permission outside of “fair use” circumstances, that’s theft. Maybe they’re attempting to earn money, or maybe they’re attempting to gain notoriety, but they’re doing it with my photos and not their own.

I think there are a couple of unique circumstances that make this claim possibly plausible. First, I publish more pictures than most photographers. Because I make hundreds of Film Simulation Recipes, and those Recipes require a lot of sample images (at least 15, and up to 50, per Recipe), I share far more than most. That might be to my disadvantage, because, while the majority of photographers only post their best work, I show you a lot of mediocre pictures along with the good ones; if I only showed my portfolio-quality images, you might think that I’m more talented than my so-so pictures seem to indicate. Second, one theft can be many photos—not just tens of photos, not just hundreds of photos, but thousands of them.

The most egregious example is when someone hacked the Fuji X Weekly App and made a clone of it, which they uploaded to the app store, and made money on until it was (thankfully) removed for copyright violations. I sure hope none of you fell victim to that, and I’m really sorry if you did. The Fuji X Weekly App had about 350 Recipes on it at that time (now there are over 400), and with five pictures per Recipe, that’s about 1,750 copyright violations just in that one circumstance alone. But that’s not the only circumstance, not even close.

Above left: My photo, entitled Morning Mist, captured using my Fujicolor 100 Gold Recipe; Above right: that same photo and Recipe in an app that isn’t mine used without permission.

Aside from some other apps that have my photos in them without permission, there are tons and tons of websites. Today, I did a reverse Google search on 30 of my photos, and 16 of them had at least one circumstance of theft. I don’t know how many pictures are on fujixweekly.com—I estimate that it’s over 10,000—if half of those have been stolen somewhere and are being used illegally across the internet, that’s a massive amount. Some photos have multiple examples of theft just from one image (I counted eight on one of those 16 pictures).

This isn’t anything new. I remember about 12 years ago reading my small town local newspaper, and being shocked to find one of my pictures being used in an advertisement. Over the years I’ve seen several of my photos on the front banner of corporate websites. I’ve tracked down hundreds of thefts and requested they take down my photos, but it’s only a tiny dent in the overall problem. This could be a full-time job, except that it doesn’t earn any money—in fact, it can be quite expensive, especially if attorneys have to get involved. I would quickly go broke if I pursued all the theft.

I think some of it is innocent enough. For example, someone is excited to share their favorite Film Simulation Recipe, so they do—only, instead of using their own photos captured with the Recipe, they use mine, and perhaps “forget” to even give me credit (which wouldn’t make it any less illegal, but perhaps more understandable). Some circumstances are fair use, especially if it’s only one or two picture and I’m given credit and linked back to. There’s definitely instances where the unauthorized use of my picture isn’t theft, and there are examples of it being grey areas, where it could be argued either way. But I’m not talking about that, I’m specifically talking about indisputable examples of blatant theft. Like right now, a large number of my pictures can be printed on t-shirts; I didn’t give permission for that, and I won’t receive a penny of profit should someone order one of those shirts.

Above left: My photo captured about 25 years ago on Kodachrome 64 film; Above right: that same photo can be printed on a t-shirt, without permission or compensation.

Unfortunately, some people think that if they can download a picture from the internet, it’s theirs to freely use. If it’s on the internet, it’s finder’s keeper. Legally that’s not true, but it is true in a practical sense. Who’s going to stop them? I would like to, but that’s a really tough hill to climb. It’s rare that they’re caught, and even if they are, it can very difficult to do anything about it, especially depending on the country where the theft happens in. It’s very easy for them to get away with it.

I posted a video to YouTube once, and it recognized a song in the background that was playing on the radio. I was flagged with a copyright violation, and I had to either silence that section of the video, or else I couldn’t monetize it (this is back when I was monetized on YouTube). Why can’t something like that exist for other art mediums? The technology obviously exists… I was able to reverse-search my photos, but that’s a slow and tedious manual process. Why can’t it be continuously running in the background, with copyright violation notices sent to the offending website owners automatically? I understand that such a service does exist for a fee, but it requires you to manually identify which photos are yours so that it can search for them, and it isn’t always accurate. It would take a long time for me show them all of my pictures, because there are so many. Again, this would be a full time job that doesn’t pay anything.

So far we’re just talking about my pictures. I’ve had entire articles ripped off many times. I’ve seen people post a Recipe that they “created” (sometimes claiming to have spent hours making it), and gladly accepting the praise for how good it is, except that all they did was copy-and-paste it from my website. The argument will be: “Well, sometimes great minds think alike, and it’s only by happenstance that they’re identical.” This ignores that there are 1,418,895,421,643,700 possible JPEG setting combinations (Recipes) on the latest Fujifilm models. That means every person in the world who owns a Fujifilm camera can have their own unique Recipes in each of their C1-C7 Custom Settings presets, and it would still not come anywhere close to exhausting all of the potential Recipes for Fujifilm cameras. ChatGPT says that the odds of two people independently creating the same exact Recipe are about 1-in-4-billion (that’s accounting for how common and uncommon certain settings are). If I were to make four billion Recipes and someone else were to make four billion, one would likely be identical (I’ve only made a little more than 400, not 4 billion). That’s not to say it’s impossible; however, it is extraordinarily unlikely (to put it mildly)—yet I’ve seen it probably close to a hundred times now, which is mathematically impossible. This is plagiarism, which is a type of theft: intellectual theft. We can go back to the guy who hacked my app and created a clone app with over 300 of my Recipes. Or we can look at other apps that use my Recipes without permission or even give credit. That’s a lot of theft, although plagiarism and not pictures.

Above left: My photo, entitled Evening at a Pond, captured using my Kodachrome 64 Recipe; Above right: that same photo and many more of my pictures posted by someone without permission or credit.

For this article, though, I mostly want to focus on the theft of my photos. If only 2,000 of my pictures have ever been stolen (which is the base minimum, it’s probably a lot more), AI says, “That is a huge number, far beyond what most photographers ever experience. For most photographers, the number of confirmed stolen photos is usually single digits to low dozens over a career. Photographers with big online presences sometimes report dozens, maybe a few hundred images, being misused. But that’s typically the ceiling—and even those numbers are considered very high. From a copyright-lawyer perspective, for 2,000+ confirmed infringements, that volume of theft would be considered: ‘Severe, widespread infringement.’ Most photographers will go their entire lives without reaching even 20 verified infringements, let alone 200… let alone 2,000.”

It could certainly be a lot more than 2,000—it could be as high as 10,000! I would have to dig deeply and spend probably months and months tracking it all down, while ignoring everything else in life. When I asked ChatGPT about that amount of image theft, it replied, “It’s extreme, near-unprecedented, and would put that photographer in the top fraction of a fraction of a percent of most-stolen photographers on Earth. Most photographers with decades of work will never have 10,000 confirmed distinct images stolen—even if they are famous.” I don’t know if it has reached that “extreme, near-unprecedented” level yet, but it’s got to be somewhat close, especially if the “grey area” instances are included, where it may or may not be a copyright infringement, just depending on who you ask.

Potentially being the most stolen from photographer in the world means something. If my photos weren’t worth stealing, they wouldn’t be stolen. Same for the Recipes. I never expected this website to grow as large as it has. I never thought I’d be asked to lead photowalks across the country, or give presentations on photography, or be a speaker at camera events. Just recently a Japanese camera company (who wishes to remain anonymous) asked what my most ideal compact camera would be like, and even paid me for my opinions. If having the “most stolen from” trophy is the price to pay for that, it was worth that price. Obviously, most ideally, I would like the thefts to stop. It does real harm. Some people are making money off of my photos right now, which I’ll never see. We are all people, and we need to act kindly to each other. The “golden rule” that I tell my children constantly is to treat others as you want to be treated. If you don’t want people to steal your work, don’t steal theirs. The truth is that most of the theft happens because some people can’t or won’t create their own stuff, so instead they take it from those who can and do. Sadly, this is just a reality of our current world, and there’s not much anyone can do about it.