copyrighting photos

[Welshgirlyx]

Hi I am an ametur photographer and have just ordered my very first DSLR...a Canon eos 550D and cant wait to get started! I want to copyright my photos but dont know where to start. Is anyone able to give me any advice please as I havent got a clue how to go about it!

Many thanks

[jno]

strictly speaking you don't need to - if they're your photos you hold copyright automatically. But if you plan on putting them somewhere (online or on postcards or soemthing) where you fear someone else might copy them and pass them off as their own work, try here

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/

[Welshgirlyx]

Thankyou

[woofgang]

what you can do is add a watermark by using a photo editing program
http://cameras.about....ting/ss/watermark.htm

[Greedyfly]

which is advisable as with the internet these days anyone can copy and paste anything virtually

[woofgang]

wow 39 pounds a pop and its not an "official" site.
here's the government site and what it says
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy/

[jno]

good grief, I should have looked more closely at that - it is indeed a commercial site. Go for woofgang's link, not mine.

[woofgang]

:-) jno. My sis nearly got caught out with the new US visa waiver thing....there are LOADS of commercial sites that masquerade as "official".ditto probate sites

[saxy_jag]

Apart from the fact that you're using an inferior camera (only joking - I'm a Nikon user), welcome to the DSLR gang. You'll never go back.

Assuming you're talking about sharing your images on the net, one of the easiest ways of restricting what happens to them is via Creative Commons. As jno says, copyright is yours the moment you've clicked the shutter. CC just makes it a little easier to manage.

[saxy_jag]

Sorry - meant to give you a couple of links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/