Have you ever wondered about who may be using your photography? I do. Most of my published images are on the Internet. And they are purchased by a wide range of publications, from blogs, to newspapers, private business’s and major publications. I have little to go on when it comes to a stock photo sale when it comes to who bought it and how they intend to use it. I have to find out who the publishers are on my own. When it comes to print publications, it’s not as difficult. I sell an image license directly to the publisher and often times I get a copy of the publication with my image in it. But, the Internet is a different beast. So, I resort to Reverse Image Search to find where my photographs are being published.
Reverse image searching on the Internet is a hit and miss proposition. Having sold over 40,000 images, I know a lot of them will be used on the Internet, but reverse image searching does not provide a comprehensive nor a complete list of where they are published. To add to the tediousness, the main reverse image search engines out there don’t always return the same results. One works with the tools they have available.
Why should you consider reverse image searching of your photos? If you have a stock photography portfolio, it’s a good idea to find out who your customers are. That helps you make decisions about how to market and to some extent, what is most popular regarding sales. Certain photos sell better than others, certain subjects are more popular than others. Reverse image searching removes some of the guess work when I’m planning my next project. Secondly, from time to time, a reverse image search will turn up people who are using my images illegally or perhaps in violation of the stock agency’s license agreement. I personally have found several of my images that have been stolen and then published using another photographers name. While tracking down photo theft and plagiarism is a difficult thing to enforce, it gives you an idea of what is happening and can help you police your copyright. Tactics and results vary though. I normally don’t bother with small fish.
My year end photography project has been to do a reverse image search on the Internet to identify where my photographs are appearing on the web. I have made the claim that I’m the most published photographer in Colorado, and I have been trying to back that statement up with facts. Right now, my image search has found over 700 Internet and print publications that have purchased and published my photos. That’s no small number. In truth, I’ve sold over 40,000 stock photos since 2017 and a lot of those photographs are in print publications, which are hard to find, but they do turn up from time to time.
The big question I had when I started this project is “who is buying and using my photos on the Internet?” What I’ve found has astonished me.
My photographs are published world wide. I’m very popular with outdoor, hunting, wildlife and nature publications. I’m also very popular with travel and informational publications. I have found many medical and legal publications using my images to promote their services. They like to show nice scenery on their websites and a lot of my work appears as banner images. Radio stations and Television stations use my images all the time. I frequently see my images on television, as background scenes for the broadcasters or even in stories about current events. Newspapers buy a lot of stock images. Someone is writing about a Bison attack or something like that, they get one of my photos from stock to support their article. Many publications are repeat customers and have used my photos dozens of times in their publications. The list goes on and on. I’d never know about them if I didn’t do reverse image searches.
I know of a number of photographers who are heavy into stock photo sales. I don’t know how they are policing their work, but I can say that I haven’t found anyone who is published anywhere near as much as I am. Therefore, I’m claiming to be the most published photographer in Colorado with well over 700 different publications confirmed.
There are a number of tools available to do image searches. I’ll give you a rundown on which web search engines I use and how well they have worked for me.
Copyseeker Reverse Image Search
I would say that Copyseeker is probably the best all around free reverse image search tool I’ve used. The search may be a little slower but the results are expansive. It shows me much more than the other search engines.
Microsoft Bing Visual Image Search is pretty good. It finds a lot of websites that host my images, including the stock agencies I use. It also seems a little dated with the results. I’m not sure how often they index images but I find that my more recent photos don’t show up as often, even though I know they are being used. Again, it doesn’t find everything, but the results are often different from Copyseeker and it is a good addition to my search efforts.
A usable reverse image search engine. Doesn’t always give accurate results. Seems to find similar images but not good with exact matches. Great for finding photos on non-US websites that the other search engines miss. I use it some of the time.
TinEye used to give me much more thorough search results but sometime during the last half of 2024, their search results generally finds websites where my images are already marketed, mostly stock agencies and some resellers. It does return usable results from time to time, just not as thorough or useful as Copyseeker or Bing. I don’t use it very often these days.
Google Lens Reverse Image Search
At one time, Google Lens Reverse Image Search was the best search engine out there. Like TinEye, sometime in the latter half of 2014, they’ve changed it and now it primarily only shows images on my stock agencies. Fairly useless for my purposes, I already know my photos are in the online stock agencies. I never never use Google Lens these days.
There are other reverse image search engines on the Internet, most of which seem to piggy-back off of Google or TinEye, so they are fairly useless when it comes to helping me discover who is using my images. There are also “pay” search engines, but I’m not about to pay to find out what I already know, so I don’t go near them.
Here’s my basic methodology for finding my images on the Internet. Since I’m primarily interested in my stock photos, I’ve created a stock photo catalog in Adobe Lightroom that includes all of my stock images. In my case, I have over 5,200 stock photos, so it’s quite extensive. I then export all of those photos to a directory on my computer hard drive, scaled down to 700 pixels on the long edge and with no watermarks.
When I want to search for an image, I’ll open the directory in my file manager and I can then select an particular image and drag it over to the search engine input on my web browser. The search engine will return a bunch of photos, some of which are mine, some of which are similar type images. I select my image in the return box and it shows me where they have found that image published on the Internet. I click on the entry in the list to visit that website and I confirm that my image is actually on that website. The lists can be long, and sometimes there aren’t any results at all. Usually, a better selling image will turn up several listings and links to where they are.
What do I consider to be a published image?
Any website that uses one or more of my images to promote their service, be it large or small. It can be anything from a travel site, to a newspaper or television station, and anything in between. Most of my images are licensed for commercial use through the stock agencies. Most publishing is one on the Internet these days. My images show up around the world and are used in many different types of publications. Once I confirm my image is published, I add that publisher to my list of confirmed publishers. Currently, I’ve confirmed the number of publishers using my images to be well over 600. I try to do this comprehensive search of my photos at least once a year, just so I can keep my list up to date. I don’t count the number of images used by any single publication. News organizations such as The Denver Gazette/OutThere Colorado has published more of my images than I can keep track of. There are many others too. I just count the different publishers. I don’t count resellers as publishers. I find that my images have been licensed to resale in the way of prints, puzzles, downloads and such, almost always via my stock agency under licensing parameters. I do have images published in Japan, but I can’t read Japanese, so when I get a Japanese website, I normally don’t add it to my list of publishers. I only count what I can see and read.
So, that’s the deal. Try searching for your images on the internet, particularly if you are selling them online. You may be surprised by the results.
If you would like to see my list of Publishing Credits and who is publishing my photos, click here.
Your mileage may vary.
