Thomas Vasas Photography: Is He A Plagiarizing Master?

Photo byspyarm via iStock

A couple of weeks ago, I got a very interesting email from one of my colleagues at B&H Photo Video. He said that content from PhotographyTalk was being plagiarized and sold online.

Naturally, my first reaction was to be upset. After all, the content that’s on this website is original work that is written by a dedicated team of writers who strive to bring you high-quality photography-related articles, tutorials, and guides.

My anger quickly turned to shock, though, when I began scrolling through the email that B&H Photo Video had sent over to me.

Not only was content from our website being plagiarized, but content from nearlythree dozenwebsites (that we know of anyway) is being ripped off. So, this isn’t an isolated incident. This isn’t a case of someone copying and pasting a paragraph and forgetting to cite it as a quote and providing a source.

Instead, this is a widespread plagiarizing operation in which a photographer is ripping off other people’s written work, passing it off as his own, and selling the stolen content as books on Amazon and other websites.

That photographer’s name is Thomas Vasas.

What Has Thomas Vasas Photography Plagiarized from PhotographyTalk?

Regarding PhotographyTalk content, Thomas Vasas ripped off at least one of our articles that we are aware of.

As you can see in the image above, our original article entitled, “What is Photography?” (top) was plagiarized to create “his” book entitled, “Beginner’s Guide to Digital Photography.”

Here’s another example of our article and “his” book:

If you read the text, “his” copy, which he published on April 2, 2020, is verbatim from our copy, which was published on April 30, 2019 (here’s a screenshot of our back office to prove it!).

Not only was the text of our article stolen, but every single image from the article was stolen too.

In fact, if you look at the screenshot above from “his” book, you can see a graphic that a designer from our team created. Notice the PhotographyTalk watermark at the bottom of the graphic!

So, Thomas Vasas’ book contains the words my writers wrote, the images they sourced (some of which we had to pay to license), and the graphics that I paid to have created specifically for publication on my website.

In all, pages 4-22 of “his” book is plagiarized from our article.

What About the Rest of Thomas Vasas’ Plagiarized Book, “Beginner’s Guide to Digital Photography”?

There are well over 200 pages in “Beginner’s Guide to Digital Photography,” so the content he plagiarized from PhotographyTalk is just the tip of the iceberg.

Much of the rest of the book is plagiarized from an article on Photography Life entitled, “Photography Basics: The Complete Beginner’s Guide.”

As you can see in the image above, Thomas Vasas pulled the same trick – he copy and pasted every word, every image, and every image attribution from the Photography Life article and passed it off as his own work.

Here’s another example:

As you can see, Thomas Vasas even copy and pasted the URLs from the original article – URLs, by the way, that link to other original articles on Photography Life.

As it turns out, the problem goes MUCH deeper than just this one book, though.

Dozens of Thomas Vasas Photography Books on Amazon are Plagiarized

This screenshot shows the original article “Basic Tips for Weather Photography” from Adorama and the plagiarized copy of it in the Thomas Vasas book “Basic Tips for Weather Photography.”

The plagiarized content that Thomas Vasas Photography is passing off as his own, my colleague at B&H Photo Video took the liberty of developing a list of such plagiarized content (to make it shareable, we have inserted it into a Google Doc, which you can view here).

The list contains nearly three dozen websites that Thomas Vasas used to plagiarize content. You can see which websites he’s plagiarized along with the titles of “his” books, links to those books on Amazon, and links to the original articles that he plagiarized for those books.

So, if you Google “Thomas Vasas Amazon,” you’ll find that he has a healthy collection of books under his name. Just know that many of those books contain plagiarized content.

In fact, the list that B&H Photo Video compiled contains about 75 books that Thomas Vasas claims are his work that contain plagiarized material.

Does Thomas Vasas Know What He’s Doing?

As I discuss in the video above, in my opinion, Thomas Vasas knows exactly what he’s doing.

I have attempted to contact Mr. Vasas on multiple occasions, but those attempts at contact have gone unanswered.

I have left negative reviews on several platforms for Mr. Vasas, but some of those reviews have been removed.

This screenshot shows the original article “How to do Dreamy Landscape Photography with a Neutral Density Filter” from Digital Photography School and the plagiarized copy of it in the Thomas Vasas book of the same name.

Our colleagues at B&H Photo Video went so far as to send Thomas Vasas Photography a cease and desist order. Mr. Vasas removed the books contained in B&H’s cease and desist, but then put them back on Amazon shortly thereafter.

I have since contacted an attorney regarding this matter and have filed a copyright infringement case with Amazon.

What is Thomas Vasas Photography?

According to the biography in the books Thomas Vasas has plagiarized, he owns and operates Thomas Vasas Photography and Art. A little Googling helped me find that his business is based in Columbus, Georgia.

Mr. Vasas claims to have more than a decade of experience in photography in addition to having an Associate Photographer Certification from Master Photographers International. Additionally, Mr. Vasas says that he is a current member of the Professional Photographers of America and the Photographic Society of America.

At the time of this writing, neither of the business websites that Mr. Vasas lists in his bio -http://www.thomasvasasphotography.biz and http://www.tvphotography.us- seem to be working.

However, hisauthor profile on Amazonis currently live as ishis profile on Goodreads.

Thomas Vasas Reviews

Screenshot of Thomas Vasas Photography page on TrustPilot. Note that this page used to be claimed by Thomas Vasas but it is now unclaimed.

If you Google “Thomas Vasas Reviews,” there isn’t much to speak of.

As I noted earlier, I have left negative reviews on multiple platforms like Yelp and TrustPilot. My Google review has been removed, though.

But if you look at Thomas Vasas Yelp reviews and Thomas Vasas TrustPilot reviews(shown above), there’s only two reviews on each platform. On Yelp, there’s my review and the review of one other user. On TrustPilot, there’s my review and what appears to be a review Thomas Vasas left for himself.

What’s Next for The Thomas Vasas Photography Plagiarism Scandal?

As I noted earlier, I have attempted to contact Mr. Vasas on multiple occasions to no avail.I have contacted Amazon and filed a copyright infringement claim against him as well.

I think we can all agree that this is a very sad situation. I know my team works very hard to create original content, and I’m sure the staffs of the other websites that Thomas Vasas has plagiarized work hard at what they do as well. I hate that their hard work is being ripped off.

It’s frustrating, to say the least, when people rip off other people’s work. But what makes this even worse is that it’s a member of the photography community that’s doing the plagiarizing!