I need to email a photo of an ancient artifact that I own from the US
to someone in Britain, without surrendering any rights to the image
for reproduction or publication.  How may safeguard my rights to the
image, is it necessary to put a letter banner across the image itself,
or may I indicate that I'm reserving all rights at the bottom of the
page?  And what is the prescribed language to use for safeguarding my
rights to the image?

Hello starshower~

It?s best to place your copyright notice on the image itself. It
should read like this:

(copyright symbol) copyright 2005 by John Doe. All Rights Reserved.

The year indicated should be the year the photograph was taken.

However, you should know that in the (unlikely?) event that someone
violates your copyright, you will have little to no defense in court
unless you file for copyright protection with the U.S. Copyright
Office.

To do this, follow the guidelines provided by the Office at
http://www.copyright.gov/register/visual.html  Essentially all you
need to do is file the correct paperwork (form VA), a copy of your
photo, and pay a $30 fee.

In this way you can protect not only your photograph, but anything
based upon your photograph. For example, if someone wanted to base a
drawing on your image, they would need permission from you.

Kind regards,
Kriswrite

RESEARCH STRATEGY:
Search of U.S. Copyright Office website

Excellent answer!  Detailed, yet concise and covering all points!

I also suggest that you add a watermark to the image before sending it
- emboss it with your name etc, this would not stop the image from
being viewed or interpreted, but would stop the easy option of just
cropping the copyright message off the photo.

You could also send a 'poor quality' resolution image and / or change
a few significant pixels on the image you send to make it a unique
image for the guy that you are sending it to.

In the event that it does show up elsewhere you should then be able to
track where it came from.

regards,

Yes, I was going to suggest embedding an invisible watermark as well -
you'll find directions here using Photoshop:

New York Institute of Photography:
http://www.nyip.com/tips/digital_dialog1102.php

Regards,
hummer

Thank you for the excellent rating and the tip :)  I appreciate both.

Kriswrite

If you are interested in Alchemedia, the DRM company mentioned in the
NYIP article, they are no longer around.  They were purchased by
Finjan Software in January 2003.

<a href="http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/37644/37644.html">http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/37644/37644.html</a>

You can also try <a href="http://www.digimarc.com">Digimarc</a>.  They
have a product that crawls the web to see if your image is being used
anywhere.