This sounds like a great project to support and be involved in . I've not found it easy to get viewing figures with photography, despite fairing ok in some of the contests.

From what I see and gather though, plagiarism is the bane of photographers and photography lovers, and is the one main thing that scares off the more powerful upvotes, for the good reason that nobody wants to pay rewards to 'content thieves', and although any genuine photographer will be verifiable, we can't expect a big to huge fish to take time out of what is probably a busy day to check the credentials of the photographer of every photograph that they like. Anyone who repeatedly upvotes a good proportioned reward to every photograph that strikes them, without running checks, is certainly going to be paying out an element to scammers and thieves.

Bearing that in mind, have you any innovative ideas to help alleviate this issue and therefore give the viewer more faith that it is the actual photographer who took the photograph that they're paying out of the reward pool to?

That has to be the game changer regarding photography here at steemit, but I can't think of an easy answer. I curate/moderate for two respected facebook 'street' photography groups, and even with no financial incentives/rewards, we still have to occasionally deal with photo thefts.

I feel it makes things a lot more difficult for photographers to get noticed here in steemit land, even if they are worth their salt(rewards).

Photo theft affects every photographer, not just the photographer who's work is stolen, as it affects the 'trust' in 'the photograph' itself.

Investors, being the wise shrewes they are, they're not in the habit of investing in something that can't show them any validity.

So I'm always wondering, how do we regain the trust for 'the photograph(er)'? Undeniably one of the most important and infrormative mediums one could ever dream up, but unfortunately, in our astoundingly good and advanced technical age, photographs are still so easily stolen from us.