Raulane controversy: Hundreds of thousands noticed the images, however photographers paid the worth

“You travel, share your passion for photography and document your experiences only for someone to take your work and pass it off as their own. It is a sad reality and a major reason why photography is losing its authenticity and will soon fade away. Credit does not buy you lenses please note this,” Kanwar Pal Singh, a photographer and entrepreneur, wrote on Instagram after a sequence of his images from the Raulane competition went loopy viral on the Internet. Crazy viral is an understatement right here, by the way in which.

Until every week in the past, barely anybody exterior the area had heard of Raulane, a put up Holi competition within the distant Kalpa village of Himachal Pradesh, the place locals bid farewell to the Saunis, the celestial fairy spirits believed to protect the mountains by means of the freezing months. But now, Raulane is in every single place, on each Twitter scroll, throughout Instagram’s Explore web page, in newspapers and media web sites (together with ours), on worldwide popular culture pages and in our on a regular basis conversations.

No one can cease gushing over the wealthy tradition of the hills it unveils. No one can cease swooning over the textile and style finesse of India it parades. From pink colored stoles protecting the faces to the beauteous gobs and gobs of ancestral jewels, vibrant Kinnauri weaves and an general mysterious vibe of the uncooked, unfiltered celebration, each little bit of Raulane has the Internet spellbound.

Behind its frenzy lies a set of images shot by a number of passionate journey photographers. Captured in March and rediscovered months later by a Twitter consumer who posted them with out credit score, the pictures – unseen visuals, good frames, shifting storytelling – exploded throughout platforms.

Photographers communicate up

Equipment price lakhs, freezing winds, an unforgiving climb, infinite setbacks and the craft required to doc Raulane’s untold story – none of it mattered in the long run. Their images unfold like wildfire throughout social media, normally the dream of any artist, but the photographers discovered themselves unsleeping night time after night time, battling for the one factor that ought to have come effortlessly: credit score.

“It is a clear case of digital theft. My work is on hundreds of tweets, Instagram posts and millions of people have seen it. Instead of this being a celebratory moment, it has stolen my peace of mind. Forget monetisation, people did not even give us credit,” says Laksh Puri, a photographer from Amritsar whose photos are amongst people who went viral.

“Viral content does not help us as artists. They took our work without credit. This is our full time job, we spend money, time and energy to create these frames. Artists already struggle; acknowledgement is the least we expect,” he tells India Today.

Since the weekend, when the images first went viral, Puri has been busy submitting copyright strikes towards pages and customers sharing the pictures with out credit score or, worse, as their very own.

“Filing takedowns one by one is exhausting. The only alternative is going legal and that is expensive. We are individual artists, not big agencies with legal teams,” he says.

March 2025 was Laksh Puri’s first time attending Raulane. He had been in Sangla, a city in Himachal, to shoot the favored Holi festivities when locals informed him about it.

Work used with out permission, credit score

For Ashwin Katariya, a Jaipur-based wedding ceremony and journey photographer, watching the state of affairs unfold has been disheartening.

“Initially, it felt nice that my work reached so many people. But then I realised none of the viral posts had my permission or my credit. My photos were everywhere from newspapers to social media – but nowhere was my name mentioned. That felt really bad. If your work is used without permission and without credit, it feels like your effort has no value,” Katariya tells India Today.

“I don’t shoot for virality. I shoot because I love travelling, culture, storytelling. But if my hard work is being used everywhere, I shouldn’t have to fight for basic credit.”

The good facet of the web did present up for him, although. His Instagram put up now has nearly 1.5 lakh likes, and he acquired sturdy help from real images fanatics.

“A lot of real people appreciated my work. That felt good. They supported me, shared my story, stood by me saying the photos deserved credit. No new work or money yet, but the support meant a lot,” he says.

“A doctor benefited from our photos but not us photographers”

For Kanwar Pal Singh, the virality has introduced extra stress than pleasure.

“It was a doctor who first took all our photos from different profiles and posted them on Twitter. Her post is down now after multiple reports, but what is the point? She got millions of views. She barely had a few thousand followers earlier and now has over a lakh. And Twitter pays, so she benefited, not us photographers,” Kanwar provides.

The images had been initially posted months in the past on the photographers’ personal pages. “For the last few days, I’ve been chasing credit from content creators and pages who’ve never attended the festival, know nothing about it, yet freely use our visuals to comment on it.”

With the pictures in every single place, the web has been behaving as if it collectively owns them.

“Even when you politely ask for acknowledgement, people say, ‘Why should I? Everyone else is posting without credit, why should I be the one to credit you?’” Kanwar tells us. Content creator Sufi Motiwala responded to Kanwar this manner too.

The concern of over-tourism

Credit isn’t his solely concern now. Over-tourism looms giant over Kalpa this coming March.

“The spot where the festival takes place is so tiny you can’t even accommodate fifty people comfortably. If there’s a sudden rush, it’ll become unmanageable and disrespectful to local culture,” he says. He is now coordinating with the administration and neighborhood to determine find out how to handle or divert crowds, as a result of the area merely can’t deal with it.

In an Instagram plea, he urged individuals to not deal with Raulane as a development however as cultural heritage.

Saurabh Rastogi, a Delhi-based advertising and marketing skilled and photographer by ardour, shares this fear.

“Look at Dev Deepawali in Varanasi. Locals don’t go anymore; it’s all tourists now. Even Sangla Holi last year had outsiders drinking beer while locals couldn’t participate. We don’t want that happening here,” he says.

Rastogi has attended Raulane twice. His first time was half scary, half thrilling.

“From far away, the costumes remind you of fantasy characters, so seeing it in real life in a remote Himachal village can throw you off. But locals explained everything to me. It’s actually a fun festival with playful pranks. They put flour on you, tease you. It’s all friendly once you understand it,” he recounts.

This yr, he loved it much more. Locals had been flying drones themselves. “The only concern is the emotional and cultural value of the festival. And that’s something outsiders must respect,” he says.

“Next year, thousands might show up just for content, not culture. That spoils festivals. It’s happened to many Indian destinations. People chase reels, not art or culture. They don’t connect with the Himalayas or its traditions, they only want viral content,” fears Laksh.

The solely silver lining

For the Raulane photographers, the one silver lining has been the renewed curiosity in images as a medium. After years of brief kind movies dominating the web, they lastly witnessed nonetheless photos, not reels, making a mammoth degree affect.

“Despite it being a Reels era, the photos went viral. Photos had become almost irrelevant after reels took over. This is the first time in four or five years I have seen still photographs get such viewership,” Kanwar shares.

At the identical time, the incident sparks a deeper dialogue about digital theft, plagiarism, appreciation of images as artwork and the alarming ease with which labour, tradition and creative id could be stripped from their creators on-line.

The complete Raulane incident is definitely a second of pleasure for Himachal, however it comes with duties, to credit score artists, to honour locals and to recognise {that a} {photograph} isn’t just a visible to repost however the results of talent, persistence and lived expertise behind the lens.

– Ends