One of my favorite things about traveling professionally is that I get to share my experiences with others. It’s a real passion of mine, particularly because I used to be afraid to not only fly but even leave the house at one point. By sharing my travels, I can show others that it is easy to do and hopefully motivate them. If I can do it, anyone can. As corny as it sounds, I truly believe that the more people travel, the less prejudice there will be, making the world a better place. However, one of the problems with sharing photos online, especially personal ones, is that they can be easily taken off the internet or social media and then repurposed—sometimes for nefarious reasons.
Believe it or not, I’ve received a ton of emails from people with links to dating sites or Facebook profiles that are using my photos with made-up names! These low-life criminals are using them to “catfish” women, pretending to have a lavish lifestyle to convince women to send them money “for a plane ticket to come visit them.” They obviously never come to visit, and that’s when the victims or their family members start investigating. More than once, a reverse photo search on Google has revealed that photos that scumbags like these are using really belong to me. It’s crazy! That’s why I’m slowly starting to watermark my photos. If I were just starting out now, I would watermark them all to make it that much more difficult for thieves to impersonate me. Of course, there are other benefits to watermarking photos, as well…
The best free watermark app for iOS I’ve found so far is called Watermark Photo made by Joel Chue. It has a 4.5 rating (out of five) in the Apple Store and has been rated by over 6,000 people. It’s impressive and easy to use. Just download the app, pick the photo you want to watermark, choose the font/size/location, name the watermark, and voila. Here’s an example of mine in an action shot that I took of my son throwing up on my wife (!) on a recent flight.
There’s a pro version for $29.99 a year or $4.99 a month, but I just use the free version.
January 2020 update – Can only get a free 3-day trial then it is $3.99/week or $39.99/year. Both pricings are ludicrous in my mind. I didn’t even bother to test the App – I just deleted it right away.