A snowboarding photographer battled a company for months trying to get them to acknowledge that they had used his photo without permission or payment. The photographer, Chris Messervey, has now published his months of correspondence with the company on his blog in hopes of getting satisfaction.

Standard practice for snowboarding photographers is to accompany riders on their trips into the mountains, make images documenting the action, and then license those photographs to magazines and companies who sponsor the riders and whose gear appears in the photos.

Messervey did just that when he traveled this past February to Revelstoke, British Columbia with some snowboarders who were working on a film for the 2010–2011 winter season.

One of the riders mentioned to Messervey that one of his sponsors, the snowboarding apparel company Grenade, were looking for photographs of the rider in the next season’s gear. “It’s pretty standard practice that after shooting riders, you preview shots with them, they show their sponsors, if their sponsors are feeling the shots, they buy them for a price based on how they intend to use them,” Messervey wrote in a blog post recounting his experiences with Grenade.

The rider showed one of Messervey’s images to Grenade, who published it on their blog. Messervey didn’t receive a request for permission to publish the image, nor was he credited.

When he approached Grenade about payment for use of the image, a representative of the company was initially cordial, Meservey says, but put him off. Months later, he had still not received payment. The correspondence between Messervey and the company, which Messervey published on his blog, escalated into acrimony on both sides and threats of legal action, and ended with the company’s CEO accusing Messervey of being unstable simply because he was trying to protect his work.

Grenade has since taken Messervey’s photograph down off its site. He has still not been paid for the usage.

A photographer recently tipped us off about a Chinese Web site that is publishing the work of photographers without their knowledge or permission. The site is branded as if it were produced by Leica, but according to a Leica representative they have nothing to do with it. “Leica Camera always respects the rights of artists and does not support the unapproved publication of artwork,” a Leica spokesperson told PDN via email.

Leica did not, however, comment on whether they would pursue legal action to have the site taken down.

An Austrian store that apparently sells Leica cameras and photographic prints is the site’s only sponsor.

A few of the photographers whose work is used on the site are: Phillip Toledano, Steve McCurry, Marcus Bleasdale, Annie Marie Musselman, Robbie Cooper, Kosuke Okahara, Dominic Nahr and Michal Chelbin.

The site is also marketing an app, downloadable for free through the Apple iTunes App Store. When you open the app a grid of famous photographs, including Annie Leibovitz’s image of Yoko Ono and a naked John Lennon, appear on the screen.

Work by Stephen Shore, Lynn Goldsmith, Jonas Bendiksen, Erika Larsen, Sebastião Salgado and others appear in the “A Pic a Day” section of the app. In the app’s “Magazine” section, entire photo essays appear, many of them current. For instance, Sebastian Liste’s 2010 Ian Parry Scholarship-winning essay on homeless families inhabiting an abandoned chocolate factory in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, appears.

Photographers we’ve spoken with had no idea this Web site existed and was using their work, nor were they aware of the app, and we’re assuming that none of the photographers whose work is being used gave permission.

Does your work appear on the site?