A great Washington Post article yesterday about some issues facing amateur photographers who share their work online.   It focuses on unauthorized commercial use of photographs.  Many photographers never know that their work has been stolen (intentionally or not) until it is already in use or more commonly never are aware of it. Check it out “Hey, Isn’t That . . .” here or here.

Well clearly I’ve been a blogging slacker this past summer. Some was due to other priorities and a busy schedule, but mostly I was just too lazy or didn’t feel like writing.

So lets see whats been going on… Bought a new suv… Yes… For those of you that know me my 1994 Jeep “The Mystery Machine” Cherokee is being retired. It didn’t quit on me but it had over 200,000 miles on it and it was time to move on. I bit the bullet and bought a new 2007 Toyota 4 Runner as seen above. I like it and hopefully it will serve me well like the Jeep did for almost 12 yrs… Good memories with the Jeep…

Spent the summer doing a lot of shooting (the photography kind) and am very behind on post-processing it all. More to come on that end.

The Cubbies had a nice run in the baseball regular season winning the NL Central Division. I ended up going to a few more games in their last regular season homestand which was a good time. I even somehow got tickets to all 3 possible NLCS playoff games at Wrigley (which is kinda like winning a small lottery), only to see them get swept out of the NLDS by Arizona. Thus those games were never played. Figures I guess… It’s too bad really because this was a good year to make a run to the World Series. But considering last season they were the worst team in the NL, I’ll take this one as a good first step.

So with that I hope to be blogging a little more often.

Now that Zooomr has launched its new version - Mark III, the next week or so will mean fixing “post launch jitters”. This mainly means fixing bugs, releasing new functions, scaling servers, etc. Things should be settled in soon though. Here is a post launch FAQ

Above is the new sticker promoting Zooomr that you may see plastered around a city near you in the coming days. Special thanks to Randy aka RandyMan on Zooomr for making the stickers at his company Edwards Label. Check them out if you need some labels!

I recommend trying out Zooomr and its new features especially once the jitters are clear!

Command Module Abstract Hosted on Zooomr

I’m trying out a new photo sharing site named Zooomr. It’s similar to Flickr, however it has some interesting functionality like LightBox and better geotagging capability. A new version of this site is about to launch that will expand it’s capability. It’s great to see innovative photosharing sites like this. And the kicker… the founder of it is just 18 yrs old!

I just might switch over to this site if Flickr continues to force users to switch to unnecessary yahoo ID’s. Flickr is a great photo sharing site, but it’s disconcerting to see it continually integrate with the Yahoo. The site remained quite autonomous after Yahoo bought it, however that seems to be disappearing. Seems like they are not listening to their paying users anymore. Thus, sites like Zooomr will be attracting ex-Flickr users. If Zooomr can come up with an easy way to port over a Flickr user’s photos, EXIF data, tags, and geotags, people will jump over to them in a heartbeat.

At one time or another many Americans have been shopping for a new digital camera. And its inevitable, whether searching for the a digital SLR or point-and-shoot variety of camera, the number one feature people look for is the number of megapixels per photo the camera sensor produces. While “the more megapixels the better” sounds practical and logical, in many cases it really does not make a noticeable difference to the eye above 5 megapixels even enlarged to poster size. To prove it, David Pogue wrote this article the other day that demonstrated in a practical way why megapixels (above 5) matter less than most think. Check it out sometime before you run out to by your next camera.

UPDATE: David Pogue has a follow up here to his column.

Some have emailed me about the photo from the previous post wanting to know where it is, etc. I re-posted the photo again above.

It was taken near the dock of my Uncle Terry and Aunt Judy’s home on Beebe Lake in Vermont. Uncle Terry passed away October 18th. I took this photo along with a few others (see them here) very early that following Sunday morning. I couldn’t sleep anymore so grabbed my little travel camera (which I almost decided to leave back at home in Chicago) and walked outside to see this breathtaking sight.

It was a crisp, chilly morning with the pleasing fresh fragrance of pine in the air. There was a whispy fog moving just above the still, mirror-like lake. It was so serene, peaceful, and beautiful with the fall colors of the mountains still holding on for a few more days. I stood there, silent, for a while taking it all in and began to understand why he and my Aunt Judy love this place so much. As I thought more about Uncle Terry and the images captured here, it seemed a fitting metaphor for the emotions of that time.

In Loving Memory of my Uncle Terry, Jan. 26, 1938-Oct. 18, 2006.

Sorry for not posting in a while. Life has been busy lately, for fun and not so fun reasons. Will write more soon I promise! In the meantime, I uploaded more of my photographs to flickr. Take a look around if you haven’t before. Flickr added geotagging of photos, so you can find out where they were taken via a map or satellite view.

I recently visited Joshua Tree National Park in California and have posted a few photos on my Flickr photostream. I was impressed with the beauty in the desert there. It may seem that the two don’t go hand in hand, but in this case they do quite well.

A Vancouver photographer Kris Krug, who regularly posts his work on his Flickr photo sharing account, apparently had some of them stolen. It seems they were allegedly used by this guy on his website claiming that they were his work as a part of his professional photography portfolio.

So today the apparent victim in all of this, Kris Krug, received essentially a cease and desist letter shown here claiming that Mr. Krug’s post on his blog proving that the guy is a liar and is some how defaming him because it is now highly ranked as a google search result under his name. Wait.. so this guy thinks he is being defamed by an article that proves he is stealing Krug’s work.

The nerve of someone who steals photos and claims them as his professional work, threaten the victim with legal action. How backwards is that?! Now it seems that other photographers on Flickr (documented in the comments here) may have been victimized by this guy as well. Ironically, now that this person has taken this foolish legal action against one, many others many have legitimate cases of legal action in return against him.

Of course this does bring one issue to the fore, if you post photos you take, even if you claim all rights reserved, they are essentially open for anyone to steal unless you watermark them. The problem with watermarking is you can’t see the photo unobstructed. A benefit/curse of the internet all in one.

I post some of my photos on Flickr and who knows, someone may have done the same thing to me. Though I doubt it since my photos are amateur at best. Either way it is a risk one takes by making them public. I avoid some of this by making most of my photos only viewable to family and friends. However it is fun to share my photos publicly to get people’s reactions to them.

Update: 11:30 CDT. The thief guy’s site has been taken off line.