Mudflower Media, exploreoldcity.com, and Why You Should Avoid Them (a review)...

This concerns a local St. Augustine business, but they claim to have clients nationwide. It's my hope that this serves as important information for anyone, local or not, considering doing business with these companies.

An intern for exploreoldcity and Mudflower Media, Haley Ellison, wrote an online article about Culinary Outfitters on South Dixie Highway. The main photo in that piece was, she claimed, found in a Google search. This is the image as it appeared on exploreoldcity.com and their Facebook page on September 22, 2017. It remained there until December 1, 2017:

 

I was originally going to let this slide with my suggestion that they take the image down, but the CEO of the company decided to jump into the fray, so I edited my original post on their Facebook page, removing the option of taking the photo down as a way to correct this. Payment for use of the photo became the only avenue I would agree to.

This image was from an article I wrote for St. Augustine Social last year. I created it and my expertise and experience resulted in the image. This is the image as it appeared on the website for St. Augustine Social: 

The source of the image is easily identifiable, yet no effort whatsoever was ever made to contact either me or St. Augustine Social for permission to use the image. They never even attempted to source the image, which is ridiculously simple on Google. When I posted about it on Facebook (under Miss Ellison's review), Mr. Geoffrey Grider, who owns exploreoldcity's parent company Mudflower Media, told me the image would be removed and to stop harassing his intern.

He never once apologized or acknowledged any wrongdoing.

I delivered an invoice to Mr. Grider's office while he was not there. He took to social media to take issue with the amount ($350). He told me to "keep dreaming". I stopped back by his office to discuss this with him, and he was immediately confrontational. He offered me $40, which is the amount Mr. Grider claims is charged by Getty Images to license a photograph. In actuality, Getty are expensive to license; usually around the $175 range but, in some cases, as high as $700.

Regardless, what I explained to Mr. Grider is that I'm not Getty Images. I'm not a stock photography agency, I'm a single photographer. I don't have an archive of 80 million photographs to license for $40 each. I don't know how many images they license every day, but I'm sure it amounts to an astronomical sum. Furthermore, if Mr. Grider wanted to pay $40, he should've gone through Getty Images to license the photo. Of course, that wouldn't be possible, since Getty doesn't have this image. But, for whatever reason, Mr. Grider believes I should be bound by a pricing structure that he incorrectly believes Getty Images has in place, for using a photo that Getty will never have.

Mr. Grider's brand of logic is fascinating.

Is the amount of $350 high? Well, if your name if Geoff Grider, yeah, I suppose it probably is. But it's not if you consider that this is how I earn my living, and I cannot allow copyright infringement, especially by a business owner who, by nature of his business should absolutely know better, to flourish.

I eventually countered his offer with an offer of $100 and he flatly refused.

His offer of $40 was an insult, but it also speaks loudly to the fact that he knows he was in the wrong. If he didn't believe he was in the wrong, he would've offered me nothing. When I told him his offer was an insult he said "Take me to court."

So, that's exactly what I intend to do.

I just think it's important that people understand that those who seem like stand-up businessmen (Mudflower was featured on First Coast News) are not, in some cases, stand up businessmen. Geoffrey Grider never once apologized for this, instead opting to insult me with a paltry licensing fee offer. Furthermore, he apparently sees nothing wrong with the conduct of his company, its subsidiary exploreoldcity, or his intern Haley Ellison.

I would also caution my photographer friends to regularly scan websites owned by Mr. Grider for instances of copyright infringement. He will allow your images to be used without attribution, compensation or permission. There are plenty of reputable, good businesses to work with in St. Augustine. Mudflower Media would not be one of those businesses.

And, yes, I have screen shots to support my allegations, and I will be presenting those, and other supporting documentation, in court.

It's disgusting that a supposed legitimate businessman would stoop to such lows. His sense of entitlement is through the roof and his inability to simply admit he and his company were in the wrong would've gone a long way in rectifying this situation.

Geoffrey Grider, however, has determined that this will go an entirely different route...