Thank you

Thank you for expressing your opinions so freely about our family’s stolen picture.

I am grateful you have been comfortable enough to tell me you are furious, you are outraged, you are amazed by the ’small world’ aspect of the story, you think it is crazy/funny/cool - or even that it has reinforced your desire to keep pictures of you and your family offline.

Many of you have contacted lawyers and ‘friends in the know’ on my behalf and offered suggestions on how I might handle this. I am grateful for your thoughts.

This has been an interesting week to say the VERY least. 

I will tell you this - I had no idea something like this could happen, I am floored by the ‘what-are-the-chances’ scenario - I mean, really - a picture is stolen, ends up half way around the world on a store window - and I JUST SO HAPPEN to have a college friend who lives there (and it is someone I’m just recently back in touch with - thanks to Facebook).

I will, of course, keep you updated as this plays itself out. 

This isn’t going away - I know that.

Stolen Picture

So, this is the price we pay for indulging in social media, I guess.

I am thrilled to have reconnected with so many friends on Facebook.  One of them sent me this message yesterday:

Alright, so how’s this for random: I’m in the car, taking my wife for a check up, pass by a new grocery store and notice that they have a picture of you, your husband and two kids on the store front window. Life size. I kid you not. Will take a photo of it later today and send….

What you don’t know from this message: this college friend lives in the CZECH REPUBLIC.

Clearly, my family did NOT take a picture for any advertisements - either here or abroad. And, clearly, whoever hijacked the picture assumed no one would recognize us so far away. Hmmmm…wrong.

I’ll admit, there is an element of flattery (I think) to the whole thing.  But still, there is something creepy about knowing our family picture was stolen from one of my sites. This picture has been on my blog, used as a Christmas card and put on a few Ning Networking sites. It is also on my Facebook page (which is one of the reasons Justin recognized us) but my FB page is open only to friends.

Perplexing.

Here is the real picture:

And here is our modeling debut in Prague.

According to my friend, Justin, the translation reads:  “We will prepare and deliver your requests in two business days.”

Thanks, Justin for letting me know!

Interesting.  Bizarre. Flattering, I suppose.  But quite creepy.

This picture was taken by a friend of mine, Gina Kelly.  She does give me the rights to the pictures she has taken - and has authorized me to use them on my site, etc.

Your thoughts?

Updated, Saturday, June 6th.  Based on the comments I’m seeing, I feel compelled to clarify a few things. 1) I am the author of this site - Danielle.  Not my husband.  Quite a few comments have been directed to him. 2) I take FULL responsibillity for posting this picture with the incorrect resolution (read: too high).  Clearly, I am not a professional photographer and should have made the resolution smaller and/or watermarked the picture. 3) I used the incorrect term in one of my comments - the photographer did sign a release for me to use the pictures, and certainly, this does not mean I ‘own’ them. 4) While the photographer certainly may sell some of her pictures as stock, she ALWAYS has the subjects sign a model release.  I didn’t sign one for this picture, but would have if she had asked. 5) I posted this story because I think it is INTERESTING - what are the chances a friend who see this ad thousands of miles away? AND because I was SURPRISED it happend. Like many of you commenting, I wasn’t aware pictures could be taken.  If this makes me naive, so be it.  Now I know. And, for the record, I will not stop using pictures of my family on my site - I will however, change the format. 6) I am grateful to the greatest percentage of people who have commented with very interesting thoughts.  However, if you are part of the smaller percentage who are commenting only to say that a member of my family (or all of us) are ugly, I won’t be approving the comment.  I won’t allow it on my site.  I imagine you understand.  Thanks for stopping by!