People often ask me why my Fun With Duck images are only approximately 4 inches in height.
First of all, it's not because of massive cropping to "digitally zoom in" on the duck.
Most (but not all) of my duck images, are captured at a fairly close "in-your-face" distance with cropping done for composition purposes.
My example, entitled Defying Gravity, shows my cropped formatted image imbedded in a heavily cropped image of the same duck's head and beak. The majority of my images are taken close up and personal.
The reason I only post a small version of my images is simply to protect my property from unscrupulous people who may wish to steal (download) images for their own use without regard to copyright.
My wife is a nature artist, and uses my images for her oil paintings.
As an artist, copyright is an important consideration for her. There is nothing more frustrating for an artist than to learn that their creation and artistic property has been copied by someone else, without attribution, as if it were their own - very unethical.
The same goes with my images. It is incredible that so-called artists still don't understand that it is theft to use someones else's image, intellectual property, etc., to "create" their works of art, when permission is not asked or attribution not given.
When my wife uses one of my images for her paintings, she has exclusive rights to my image - the
images are not for others to use as if they took the image themselves - believe me, we have had experiences locally.
I also frame and exhibit my work and I don't appreciate people can potentially profit from my labour.
The best way of protecting my property is simply not to post them on so public a medium. But, as a photographer, I nonetheless have an ego to feed, and I enjoy sharing my passion of duck photography with the public.
The sizing of my images at low res at this size is a good compromise.