Weekly commented photo #22 - A little waterfall in Provence hills

A little waterfall in Provence hills

This is probably one of my very first images about the little streams running through the hills and mountains of the Massif des Maures in Provence.

These streams and rivers keep the life in this wild natural area but many of them (like this one) are dry most of the time. Water only runs after big rains like the ones we had in the first days of september 2005.
I was driving back from my office when i noticed this little waterfall in the forest (i could say bush) along the road. I stopped the car, walked a little through some sharps brambles and arrived at the "river" where i could make this image and a few other ones.

When processing the files, i realized that images of these streams should be rare and could interest many people working around environment, climate and global warming.
So i started to work more seriously on that subject and it was a good idea :

• I licensed about 10 images of this serie for different uses.
• It made me discover more deeply this wonderful area.

These images must be really rare because someone had the bad idea to stole one of my fav on my french website to promote a commercial event.
I don't know how they upsized the original 640 pixels wide photo but they used it in A3 and A4 prints, flyers, PDFs and websites.

They were unlucky because i found a flyer at the post office. When i contacted the event oragnisation they started to say it was not my image, when i showed the original they say they bought it on a microstock site but then, they were of course not able to give any proof.
Finally they had no other choice than paying the full rights for all their uses plus a 100% increase for the theft ...