Category: Photography

Photos on your screen are nice, but photos on your wall are better!
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User Generated Theft

swanksalot8 Comments
Piney Woods TRI-X 400
Piney Woods TRI-X 400, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

outside of Leesville, LA

Republished with really lousy credit:

www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/carbonfundorg-reforestat…

Discovery Communications, the parent of TreeHugger, market capitalization exceeding $2,000,000,000 apparently doesn’t mind bending the rules when it comes to User Generated Content. Flickr hosts my photographs, and has printed clear guidelines outlining what is acceptable usage:

Do link back to Flickr when you post your Flickr content elsewhere.

The Flickr service makes it possible to post content hosted on Flickr to outside web sites. However, pages on other web sites that display content hosted on flickr.com must provide a link from each photo or video back to its page on Flickr.

[From Flickr Community Guidelines]

TreeHugger downloaded my photograph from Flickr, stripped out the copyright information that was embedded in the photo, changed the photograph’s name, uploaded it to its own server, and added it to a blog post without linking back to the original photo1. Now this image has become public domain, available for anyone to download from TreeHugger’s high profile site, to use, sell, or whatever, without ever realizing where the image came from2.

I actually don’t usually mind my photos being used on other websites, as I say on my Flickr profile page, or else I wouldn’t bother to upload images anywhere on the internet in the first place. But multi-billion dollar corporations should try a little harder to respect the rights of the little guys.

Suppose I copied some content from the Discovery Channel, a documentary about American Loggers, for instance, and rebroadcasted it on my own television station, while putting a small on-screen title at the end of the broadcast saying, “all content originally created by the Discovery Channel“, I’d soon receive a sternly worded letter from their corporate attorneys. What rights do I have? What cause of action do I have? None, other than this whiney-ass blog post, and a big spit on the ground in TreeHugger’s direction.

Update, left this comment at TreeHugger

So I’m curious, why did you strip out all of the copyright metadata on my photo when you republished it, and why didn’t you follow the terms of use (which are simple: attribution, and link to the original photo). Is this TreeHugger policy? Discovery Communications policy? In effect, you have released my photo to the world as uncopyrighted, is that your intent? Would it bother TreeHugger/Discovery if I did the same with your work?

Curious as to your response, either here, or at my blog where I ask the same questions.

Update: 9:10 CST, TreeHugger didn’t publish my comment, just removed the photo. Now, they are stealing Brion V.’s photo, without a link to his photo page. Still scummy, but not my problem any more. Just wish I had bothered to take a screenshot of their theft before blogging about it. Remind me to steal as much TreeHugger and Discovery Channel material as possible before I die. Or get served with papers.

As twitter and Flickr pal Friendly_Joe suggested, I should still invoice TreeHugger for the time3 that my photo was on their site.

Footnotes:
  1. they did write below the image, Photo via: Swanksalot, but without a link to the photo they borrowed, or bothering to use my actual name. [↩]
  2. my trip to East Texas on a day when both of my grandfathers died [↩]
  3. somewhere in the neighborhood of 36 hours [↩]

Snow, Snow, Snowdio

swanksalot0 comment
Snow, Snow, Snowdio

Snow, Snow, Snowdio, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Snow in the morning…then mostly cloudy with chance of snow early in the afternoon. Partly sunny late in the afternoon. Snow accumulation of 2 to 4 inches. Blustery. Highs in the upper 30s. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph. Gusts up to 40 mph until late afternoon decreasing to 30 mph late in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation 100 percent.

and just a few days ago, the temperatures climbed to the mid-70s…

Dance

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Dance
Dance, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

West Loop sign, for a dance studio, surprisingly. I don’t know why exactly, but I like the type face. Boeing Headquarters in the background.

Republished with partial credit (no link to the correct page)

http://blogs.webmd.com/all-ears/2009/03/dancing-with-scars-emotional-ones.html

Reading Around on March 17th

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Some additional reading March 17th from 13:38 to 14:12:

  • Taste of a thousand lemons – Los Angeles Times – On a wiltingly hot late summer evening, when all the plants are fainting and there’s not a breath of wind, you pour a tiny glass of limoncello straight from the freezer. It’s colder than ice, and it explodes in your mouth with all the freshness and optimism of lemon. Each sip seems to say, “Poor kid! Poor kid! What a scorcher that was! But everything’s all right now — your old friend night is on the way.”They know a lot about hot summer evenings in Sicily, where limoncello was invented about 100 years ago. It might just be the most sympathetic after-dinner drink there is, as bracing as a gin and tonic but more cheerful and fragrant. Limoncello’s fans have found a lot of other uses for it too: spiking lemonade, flavoring cocktails and splashing onto ice cream, poundcake or fresh fruit

  • Pallini Limoncello

  • Seattle Food – After Homemade Limoncello, You’ll Accept No Other – page 1 – Limoncello, the southern Italian after-dinner treat, is an invigorating refresher with an aroma and flavor unmatched by any citrus-flavored vodka or dessert wine. It’s the sensory equivalent of eating lemon meringue pie on a lazy Sunday picnic in the middle of Paolo’s lemon grove. It’s a potion that gets you to stop and live in the sun-drenched moment, even when it’s cloudy outside.

    The Luxardo brand that your state liquor store may carry is all fine and well, but once you’ve had homemade limoncello, you’ll accept no other. This recipe is a monthlong project that yields huge rewards for just a little patience and hardly any work.

  • Swanksalot’s Solipsism: Fifth Ward – Milwaukee, with biker – “As a billionaire, there would be a lot of buildings I would purchase in Milwaukee. This was one, for some reason. I’d turn most into art collectives – cheap studio space for artsy-fartsy types”

Another Time perhaps

swanksalot1 Comment
Another Time perhaps

Another Time perhaps, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

A Bushmills bottle filled solely with sunlight

As I’ve blathered before, despite having a large percentage of my DNA derived from Irish ancestry, and despite having a mighty thirst for alcoholic beverages, I think St. Patrick’s day is a stupid holiday. Amateur night indeed.