Discouraged - kids "stealing" photos

[skydiver6]

I took sports photos of my kids for quite a few years and now that they have graduated I am trying to turn it into a business. I take photos of our local high school sports and have set up an account at Zenfolio. Last night I was talking with another photographer and she told me how she had a big problem with kids taking her photos off the internet. She uses Shutterbug. I didn't think it was possible with my photos. You can't right click and I had also tried saving the webpage but couldn't get the photo that way. I was telling my daughter this and she told me that all they have to do is take a screen shot and save it that way. I tried it and sure enough! It works! If you take the screen shot when the photo is displayed at it's largest setting you can get a really decent photo from it! I find this really discouraging! The only way around it that I can think of is to put a big watermark over the faces of the players (otherwise they just crop the watermark out or they don't worry about it because you can still see the photo well enough). Copyright means nothing to these kids today. Anyone have any other ideas or suggestions or thoughts?

Thank you,
Donna

[megan]

I have an account over at SmugMug, and with the pro account, you can upload a watermark and it will place it over the images.

[Skyman]

Better minds than mine will probably answer this, but I believe there is a way to have a transparent layer over an image displayed on the web such that when print screen is hit, it becomes solid and therefore you capture a blank box. This also prevents people from right clicking the image, as they are actually right clicking the empty layer above the image rather than the image.

Watermarking is still a good idea however as it is another form of advertising for you.