I spoke with Tim*my Mal*let on the phone today and he was extremely apologetic about the whole situation. The gallery owner currently exhibiting the photos had passed my image onto him, and Timmy had then painted using my image as a reference. He said he felt terrible and could quite understand how I felt and that he would never let it happen again.

I did however make it quite clear to him that I thought he had been negligent, and I made the same point to the gallery (who by the way did the framing for my first exhibition and might have known better). I made it clear to both parties that any photo is automatically copyrighted upon its creation. I also made it clear that if the work was to be sold (in fact it had already sold) then I must be compensated for the artistic input I had in the finished peice. This issue is not completely resolved, but fortunately not because Timmy has been uncooperative, quite the opposite is true. I will not be sharing further details of how the issue is resolved, but two options have been discussed, financial compensation and having a joint exhibit of Timmy's paintings, with my photos alongside.

I am confident that both the gallery and Timmy have learnt from this mistake, and I would like to add that both were very professional in dealing with the matter.

I have deleted my previous journal because I felt some of the comments were unnecessarily aggressive and it is clear to me that it was an honest mistake. I did read all of the comments however, so thank you all for your support and advice.

Alex