This is the lovely Mika and her "good side" as she puts it. She was a fun shoot and while she was very critical of herself I hope she'll share her photos with the ones who matter to her. I know the watermark is a little distracting which leads me to another story altogether and nothing to do with Mika.
It became apparent recently that my photos were being hijacked, pirated, outright stolen for lack of another word by someone whom I had photographed recently. How do I know this you might ask? Besides stat tracker and such on the web I had a reliable eye witness to the fact whom was asked to produce copies of the copies they had stolen off the web! Funny thing of it is they were refused because of copyright protection laws plus they had just been complaining to me about the very person they asked to help them out which I thought was really odd of them. This plus a couple of other things have lead me to watermark in a way to keep this from happening. It's a shame you have to do this anywhere as I'm not begging you to come here to have the photos taken. I provide a service as do many other photographers of which we all do the best we are capable of or at least should be and if my photographs are good enough to steal they should be good enough to purchase. I was also hit up recently for a "donation" to a "church softball team" which from what I've gathered so far was a scam. I am slowly learning what not to do in regard to the business side of things. The old adage of "In God we trust all other must sign" will apply to all future transactions. And while I'm on my soapbox I realize there are good people as well as the bad but the good folks need to stand together to discourage this type of activity in our community. I might be a new business and needing all the clients I can get but I'd rather go under than provide services for those who only want to take advantage of people. Feel free to negotiate prices, feel free to go somewhere else, feel free to tell me how you feel or think of my product or prices but don't steal from me as I've worked for everything I've ever received in life and don't take it lightly when you do.