How My Stolen Photograph Went Viral

Back in February, my photograph went viral, but I didn’t want it to.

But let me explain.

Where It All Began

To fully understand, let’s go back to Labor Day Weekend, 2015. My family was spending these last dog days of summer at my paternal grandparents’ house in Wellfleet, MA where my parents first met and where I’d been summering since childhood.

On the morning of September 6th, 2015, my parents woke up early, as they normally did, to walk our dog, Teddy, at his (and our) favorite beach in town–White Crest–one of the most popular in all of Cape Cod. They’d returned to the house around 7am, rushed into my room, where I was still sleeping, and rustled me out of bed: “Grab your camera!” they urgently whispered, careful not to wake my sister in the other bed. “You need to come see this!”

I grabbed my Nikon camera, a few lenses, tossed on a still-damp-from-yesterday’s swim bathing suit and a wrinkly t-shirt, hopped in the car, and we were off.

We rushed back to the beach, parked in the normally-packed lot, and ran down the steep dunes that White Crest’s famous for. We headed towards a crowd that was starting to gather near the shoreline.

As we approached, I finally saw what was causing all the commotion. There, lying helplessly on flat sand bar, far from the deep blue waters it called home, was a beached 14-foot Great White shark.

The emotions at the scene of the beaching were all over the place–sadness, shock, excitement, urgency just to name a few.

The story picked up some serious news coverage, and because I had been the only person on the scene with a nice DSLR camera, my photos were used widely across the media that day and night. I even had been interviewed briefly by one of the media outlets.

Stranded Great White Shark Dies On Wellfleet Beach*WELLFLEET (CBS) - A great white shark that stranded itself on a Wellfleet beach Sunday died despite the rescue efforts…*boston.cbslocal.com

After hours of rescue attempts, including the creation of a makeshift trough by hundreds of good samaritans in an attempt to pull the shark back to safety, the shark sadly died.

It was later towed out to sea by the local conservation society.

My Photograph’s Been Stolen–And Now It’s Gone Viral

Cut to February of this year. Here’s where the story gets good–or rather bad.

One day, out of the blue, I received a message from someone on Facebook advising me that he thought my photograph of the shark from 2015 had been stolen, photoshopped, and now had gone viral.

I didn’t believe it, but thought why not check it out. Sure enough, he was right.

An account by the name ALEX LEX OBX Photographer had photoshopped the shark from my photograph into a scene in North Carolina and claimed that the now 20-foot shark had washed up in Kitty Hawk, NC.

I was immediately pretty furious. I understand that people can photoshop whatever they want, but in this case it was blatantly violating my copyright of that photograph and, on top of that, he not only hadn’t credited me, but also he was misleading the public.

The post went so viral that it caught the attention of the news, once again.

After countless attempts to contact Alex Lex and Facebook to right this situation, I turned to my incredible audience of Jack Cohen Photography followers. They immediately came to the rescue.

With their support, we were able to get the photograph removed from Facebook and so ended the weirdest viral photo moment of my life.

I thanked all of the people who had commented on my behalf and it was pretty incredible to see how my small, but very tight-knit community of followers banded together with me to take action.

At some point in the future, I’ll write about my thoughts on creative adaptation of other’s works, digital ownership, and yaddah yaddah yaddah. But for now, I hope you found this story interesting! Let me know your thoughts, comments, and questions below.

See you tomorrow.