Photo Sharing

Just in case you've never noticed, I have quite an addiction to photography. My Nikon 8700 is just coming up to its 10,000th photo, and I have a fair few albums on Flickr now. The thing with digital photography and the internet though, is that everyone (usually) can see your photos, and may use them. With or wihout your permission. And every now and then I get an email or message or otherwise get involved in a forum discussion about Creative Commons Rights and photo theft.

Creative Commons are a set of rights you can choose from and determine what people can or can't do with your photos. Some give permission for non commercial use. Other say whether someone can or can't alter downloaded copies of your photos. Whether they can be distributed or shared and more. Some people get really upset when they find other people have stolen their photos and uploaded them elsewhere. Me? I couldn't give a monkeys! I'd prefer them to link back to my photo on Flickr, but even if they don't I wouldn't get too upset. Why? Here is the latest letter I received and my reply...

Hi Gary, I noticed last night that your pics on flickr are all licensed under Creative Commons, and under one of the more permissive ones. I don't think this is the default on flickr, so I think you must have made a decision to do this at some point. This is interesting, and I'm curious about your thinking on this.

I am aware of Creative Commons, Copyleft, and GPL licensing (from my Linux hobby), though I'm now more curious than ever to learn more. I totally respect your photography and your thinking, so if you have time, please let me know why you picked the license you did. I think it will help me.

Dave

I think I did change the CC license, but such a long time ago, I can't remember for sure! But there is a reason for my very generous licensing. Firstly, I think some people get a bit too consumed by their passion for money. If someone wants to sell their photography, they'd best become a professional - take a degree, buy the very expensive equipment that goes with being a pro and quit their day job to take it up full time. Otherwise, and this applies to me and 99.9% of all Flickr owners...they are not going to make enough money from selling one or two photos (maybe, if they are lucky!) every couple of years for it to be worthwhile.

I've had a couple of people disagree with me on this, holding up the fact that quite a few of their photos over the years have been stolen from places like Flickr and used elsewhere. I try and point out that the fact they were 'stolen' in the first place should tell them these aren't the sort of people who would pay for photos!! People who do buy photos are likely to contact you anyway, whatever the licensing terms are. Of course, there can be geuinely warranted reasons to limit the sharing of photos. If someone's photo collection is almost entirely made up of family snaps then they might well have a different opinion to me. But then, who buys family snaps? And photo thieves aren't going to pay much attention to which license is being used before they steal it anyway!

There's just too much of a tendency for people these days to say "this is mine, get off!" and jealously guard things that in reality have little or no monetary value. I've heard of people valuing their photos in the hundreds of dollars. Dreamland. Most stock photos go for just a few dollars. $25 is good. $100 or $200 if the photo is really, really special. Which it might be, if you took that degree course and spent thousands on the equipment!

Secondly, selling photos legally quite often isn't as easy at it sounds. If there is a privately owned building or a person in it, then model releases have to be obtained for the photo to be sold. How much fun hunting around Mexico City for a random person you once photographed? How much fun does it add to your hobby to get model releases every time you take a photo...just in case? Not much I imagine!

Lastly and most importantly...I photograph for fun. It's a hobby. Getting comments on my photos is great. Seeing people use them elsewhere is even more of a compliment. I have a couple of photos that are used on Wikipedia, and last year a photo I took of the Milwaukee Art Museum got published in a book, a copy of which was sent to me for free in lieu of any payment. My choice of licensing helped all of that come about, and the satisfaction of seeing people sharing and using my photos is worth much more to me than a few dollars. My licensing gets me added exposure, visits to my blog and a sense of satisfaction. What more does anyone want from a hobby?

Sunflowers - Day 8

I now have a total of 11 sunflower seedling which are coming along nicely. Except for one which I think is almost dead. Oh well. Ten will do! They are just about 6 inches tall now. This weeks photo is a wide angle to show how nice they will look next to the two turtle pools I have! I'm sure the turts will appreciate the little extra colour they will provide too...

An Argentine Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mothers Day here in Mexico, and a very big national celebration it is too. This year it falls on a weekend, but even when on a weekday it's a public holiday. Anyway, we went off to eat at an Argentine restaurant near Tasquena, a few miles from home. Argentine food always involves a lot of meat, so that's fine by me! And whilst I was there I checked out the decor and the map at the front of the restaurant - ok, now that smoking is banned in restaurants, I had to go outside and the map of Argentina was all there is to look at....now what are these Malvinas Islands? They're not on any of my maps! :)

Pimp My Flickr

I started blogging about 2 and a half years ago now. Before that I used to design, maintain and update my own websites which was far too much hard work! Unnecessary hard work. I did look at Blogger at the time as a candidate for my blogging platform, but, well...it wasn't too good. So I chose My Opera, which had blogging, community and photo hosting all in the one place. Which was cool. But Blogger has come along way since then, and I now use Flickr for my photos.

So about six months ago I started this Blogger blog (yes it is Blogger - I just removed the Nav Bar) and ran it as a duplicate to my My Opera blog. Using Windows Live Writer I posted identical content to both. Just to see how my Blogger experience would progress, without over committing myself! I tried the free version of Wordpress too, but I just wasn't that impressed.

And I have to say I really like Blogger, and have gone off My Opera a bit. So I am now in the process of manually transferring all my photos to Flickr and all my old posts to here. It will take some time! But it's worth it. I just don't like the idea of starting a new and abandoning all those years of posting.

I have to say I am quite enjoying doing the photos though. I'm going through the 100 and something albums I have on My Opera, getting rid of the really cruddy ones and spending time 'fixing' the ones I am keeping in Photoshop, uploading them to Flickr as I go. It's a real trip down memory lane.

So really this post is just to pimp my Flickr account! There will be plenty of uploads over the coming weeks - maybe months! Old and new.

Volcanic Thunderstorm

You might have heard of the recent massive volcanic eruption in Chile. Okay, so it's a little bit of a departure from Mexico, but it is still Latin America so I'm staying roughly on theme! I came across some quite amazing photos though, too good not to post. Volcan Chaitén has really been spewing out a lot of the thick black stuff that volcanos spew - enough to spark off an electrical storm. What did the Incas used to make of these sort of events? I'm sure there were some human sacrifices following such a spectacle!

Sunflowers

I have a little patio, with an even littler garden bed, and a few plant pots. Just for decoration. I can't say I'm much of a horticulturalist but I give the garden an occasional makeover now and again. For the turtles benefit really. But there is one simple rule which all plants in my garden must live by, or they will die. They must be able to survive with whatever the weather gives them. If they rely on me to water them, they're disappointed! As a result, almost everything in my garden is green. Although I do have a Poinsettia from Christmas which seems to have survived, and a geranium.

But it is summer so a little extra colour would be nice. So last Friday I planted a packet of sunflower seeds in a big pot I had spare. By Sunday the first one had sprouted and today there's more than a half dozen showing. And this, thought I, was blog worthy stuff! A weekly photo showing the progress of my sunflowers! I'm sure you can't wait to see how it turns out..

Day of Horror

We took the usually Sunday stroll in the city today with Paola's family. Not much to say about it really, except that I have discovered just how nasty the conquistaors were. We went to the Museum of Torture, which is just opposite the National Art Museum and just a block or two from Bellas Artes. I've wandered past it so many times, but until today had never been able to convince Paola to go in.

It's just a largish display of instruments of torture, execution and other implements of pain and humiliation. Along with graphic descriptions of what each contraption can do. I didn't know that Spain continued garotting people until 1975 when Franco, finally, died. I did know though, that France were still guillotining people up to the late 1970's. Shocking. Really. Actually perhaps the most shocking thing was the fact that the museum had all these descriptions and stories in English as well as Spanish. That's pretty rare. Even rarer...the English used was pretty good. When you do find something written in English, it usually looks like it was put through BabelFish or some other online translator.

Click here to see all the photos on Flickr.