Finding an unauthorized use of your photograph on the web is upsetting. But what can you do about it? You can contact an attorney for assistance. But if you haven’t registered your photo in advance of the infringement, then you won’t be eligible for statutory damages. Attorneys will take such cases on contingency only under certain circumstances. It then will cost a lot to pursue the infringement when paying the attorney an hourly fee. In the alternative, you can send a cease and desist and/or a demand for payment yourself to the infringer. But such letters are often ignored.

Fortunately, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) gives you another option.

Editor's note: This article appeared originally in Mark Graf's blog. Our thanks to Mark for agreeing to republish it here. Mark opens: "Quite a few folks talk about failure as part of the process of learning, especially when it comes to expanding creativity. [It is] part of the process - an actual requirement. You are going to produce some crap - so get over it."

I can't speak for other photo contests, but the Images for Conservation Fund (ICF) Photo Contest is a grueling one-month endurance test. It's really two months if you consider the one-week preparation, one-month shoot, and three weeks of sorting through and processing the images. After participating in the first two ICF contests, I will pass along my further experiences. (I also wrote a previous article after the first ICF contest in 2006.)

I consider myself lucky to be a morning person because as a nature photographer I have to get up early to photograph the birds, mammals and landscapes that I love and catch that early morning light to create a beautiful image. I remember working on my second book, "Birds of Prey in the American West," where I had to shoot raptors in the morning and owls at night. I put in long days and nights to capture some of the most difficult to photograph bird species and I had only one nesting season to finish the book. It took me about four days to get used to shooting at night because normally my body shuts down like a bird that goes to roost when the sun goes down; that adjustment was not an easy one. It's too bad I didn't have a Photo Trap back then to work on owls at night flying into their nest sites. It was always a surprise to see what kind of food they would bring in to feed their young.