People stealing my favorite chimpanzee photo makes me furious – here’s how I deal with copyright theft

One of my favorite images – one I love so much that I framed it and hung it on my wall – is of a chimpanzee.

I took it in Uganda’s Kibale Forest, after an hour of hiking through tangled jungle, following our guide as he chased the chimp’s echoing calls. When we found him, Ssebo the chimpanzee was posing on a log, framed perfectly by foliage, the light falling just right on his face, bright eyes full of intelligence. A gift of a wildlife encounter. 

Later, the image was published by Lonely Planet alongside an article I wrote about chimp trekking. It was one of my first travel writing commissions and, as a newbie photographer, seeing my photo on the Lonely Planet website was a major career moment.

But as soon as it went online, every African safari company and its dog nicked it to use on their own site. It’s all over the internet: every tiny Ugandan tour company and even large websites like TripAdvisor and GetYourGuide are using my photo with zero credit, let alone payment. 

How do I know? I’m signed up to Pixsy, a copyright platform that scans the web for your images. Every month I get emails full of matches: page after page of my chimp photo being used left, right and center. The alerts make me so furious that I might need to ask my GP for blood pressure medication.

The worst part is that most of these companies are small operators in Africa, where Pixsy has no legal reach. Many of the sites don’t even have contact details. What can I do? Rage silently? Fire off takedown notices that go nowhere? It’s exhausting.

I’ve thought about removing the image from Pixsy altogether just so I can live in blissful ignorance. But two things stop me. First, every now and then it is used by someone we can pursue – and a few hundred dollars here and there is still worth having.

And second, I’ve accepted that Ssebo the chimpanzee is now living his best life on the internet. If some tour operator uses him to sell trips, and visitors end up supporting conservation in Uganda, maybe that’s a win. Even if I didn’t get the credit.

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