Playing Doctor

Free as in stolen

I walked into the student office two Mondays back. The Italian student was reading an Italian online newspaper which would ordinarily be unexceptional. However on this fateful morning, on that very front page the Italian was reading, sat one of my photos.

I exclaimed "I look that photo!" to which the unbelieving reply came "No you didn't!". I was adamant the photo was mine and to prove it I showed the disbelievers my photostream where a copy of the original is displayed. All were amazed.

How did this Italian paper called Libero get hold of a photo from Australia? They had obviously searched Flickr for it. Interestingly the story related the details of a case where a man from the Philippines had attacked a Moroccan in Como. With an axe. In the head. Clearly this is all a bit violent. The title of the photo I took was "violenza domestica" and searching flickr for violenza, not surprisingly, yields my photo on the first page of results. I had meant to reference a Mr Bungle track after spending a long time in the kitchen that particular weekend.

I have to admit that I was feeling a bit pissed about the paper just using my photo without asking. Technically they don't have to ask, the license clearly states that there is free use if I am attributed as the photographer. It's also nice to know where your work is going. I guess you'd have to be pretty naive to expect that if you upload something to the internet that it won't be immediately exploited by anyone with an interest. I would have thought a newspaper, even an electronic newspaper would act with a little more integrity.

Yes I did write them an email noting their use of the photo. I'm not expecting a reply. In the end I'm happy that my work is being used.

The Passage of Time

  The Passage of Time
  Originally uploaded by phdstudent.

You are looking at a competition winning photo. Earlier I suggested my doubts about winning a certain competition in this post. Two days after that post I was informed that I had a winning entry and I should get my stuff together to submit the high resolution version required for finalists. I cursed the judges for choosing the only image I had submitted from my 3 mp Coolpix 3200; an anemic pixel count for publishing requirements. Fortunately the specifications of the competition only stated 300dpi and no larger than an A4 page. Sweet.

Bitter competition

About two weeks ago I entered the ANU Photographic Calendar Competition. They wanted shots from around the campus capturing the 'Spirit' of life on campus. I think they were as vague as possible to get as many shots as they could.

I was prompted to write from a letter than turned up on my desk inviting me to University House in two weeks time. There (all?) the entries will be displayed and the winners announced, in addition to the Last Lecture, where some poor bastard, elected by his (or her) students must give another lecture, this time to the ANU community.

The finalists for the competition have to submit a high resolution version of their photo according to the rules. Because they have already sent out this invite, and I haven't been asked for a high resolution image, I suspect that I'm not likely to place anywhere in the competition. However, since they did want to know if I would attend the function (or not) for catering purposes, the free wine that surfaces at these events might dull the pain.

The prize itself is not fantastic though, a framed print of the high resolution photo you submitted, and a certificate. It wouldn't be more than a footnote on a CV, if that. I guess it might be a bit of an ego massage. That might make it difficult to be a brooding artist for a while though. I'm glad that they won't be screwing with my process, really.

The travelling Velvia

I managed to get three rolls of Velvia to Russia without being X-rayed by keeping the rolls in my pocket. I thought that was pretty well done.

When I visited Lenin's Tomb, and Stalin's grave (more on that later) I had to check my pack at a baggage kiosk, because you aren't allowed 'large' bags in there, or in many others places for that matter, so a small bag is a good bet if you want to tour popular sites in Moscow (sometimes cameras are not allowed). At the baggage kiosk, it cost 60 roubles to check my bag, no problem. Here's my bag and the money. they handed me back a little plastic token then threw my bag containing two rolls of film and my camera with the other film loaded into a X-ray machine that was hidden from the line! Bugger. Ok, maybe it won't be one of those fabled Russian X-ray machines that is absolutely brutal. It might still be ok. Then the bag came out, they turned if over and put it back in again. Cook it on the other side!? I was a bit stressed about that. I avoided the x-rays with the pocket method again on the way out.

When I arrived in Singapore the first thing I wanted to do was get the film developed to see if my images were still intact. I went to the pro-lab that I had used last time and been happy with their results. They did three rolls of e6 same day, for the next day price without too much cajoling. Australian photolabs take note!! I was relieved that the images were fine, the film did not seem to have been noticably degraded by the kiosk ordeal. In fact, some shots that had been underexposed by three stops still came out! (More on that later.)

Development: A double edged sword

Dropped a roll of of Elite Chrome in for processing on Saturday. I was told that I might get it back later that day, or perhaps Monday. It's a phone when ready deal. It seems that e6 processing is a bit of a niche these days. There might be more to it than running it through the machine for c41.

This is the dichotomy: Waiting to see how the roll turned out is like waiting for any present: exciting. The problem is also the waiting. I want to see the pictures now. Guess I'm waiting till Monday.

A picture is worth £100

Around a month ago now a UK firm approached me via flickr regarding one of my photos. They wanted to use it in a brochure they were making. They also said that they would be happy to pay a fee for the usage of the photo.

I found it really interesting that such a firm would trawl flickr for stock photography, but I guess it makes sense, especially since many amatuers such as myself have no idea how much should be charged for a photo, unlike istockphoto.com or Adobe's photo stock. I would think many would allow their image to be used without asking for money; not me though.

I ended up asking a few of questions such as what would it be used for, would I be credited for my image, could they send me a hard copy of the final brochure? I also stated that £100 would be a suitable fee. They agreed to all of my conditions so perhaps I could have asked for more.

I got a bit stressed about licensing conditions, and whether I should get them to sign a contract that outlined their rights to usage specifically. The local pro photographer at RSBS said that an email conversation stating that the image would only be used for one print run would be fine. He went on to say that any attempt to restrict usage would be meaningless in the long run and it would not be unexpected to see the image again somewhere else, miss, or uncredited in the future.

Initially they were going to use the image for the front cover, but then decided to use it only on the inside cover given that it was only 3 megapixels on an A4 sheet.

It was all set then, just send me my money! waiting, waiting. I didn't hear back for nearly two weeks. I was getting a bit tense. But a politely enquiring mail was quickly responded to and Paypal provided a satisfactorily rapid means of transaction.

Net result: Me happy.

Early Sunday Morning

I woke up at 6:00 am this morning. (I had tried to wake up at 5:00 am.) What is this madness? I had decided the night before that I would walk up to the top of Mount Ainslie and take some photos of Canberra with early morning sun. This was prompted by the acquisition of some expired (for maybe 6 years, unrefridgerated) Velvia 50 from my PhD panel chair. I loaded it into the Canon QL17 GIII and set out with purpose.

It was damn cold, had to be sub 10ºC. I still wore my three quarters jean pants. I decided that a hat (beanie style) and scarf (courtesy my wonderful fiancé) plus some fingerless gloves (to operate the camera without frozen digits) would be sensible in addition to my ultra warm foam hoodie. Setting off with my Dad's old Velbon victory 650 (which is a really sweet piece of gear!) over my back and the Canon in tow I realised that I didn't really know how to get to the summit. I was also worried that I was going to miss the light. Hurry!

I walked up to the Ainslie entrance to the Mt. Ainslie Nature Reserve. No signs pointing to a track, just the substation and a sign saying this was the reserve. I followed the red dust 4x4 track to the right. Damn it was cold. I walked wondering how far I would have to go before I found the start of a track pu the hill, then I noticed a path over to my left. I guessed that was what I wanted and charged up there. I would pay for my gung ho pace later but right now I didn't even know if this was the right track. The quality was awful. Broken rocks strewn everywhere, ubiquitous red dust, even on a wooded hillside! At least the path was obivious despite it's ankle devouring qualities.

I followed the path onward, unrelenting in my pace and determination. I disturbed serveral birds and an eastern grey kangaroo. Keep walking, walking walking walkingwalkwalkwalk... Hold on what's this, a tarmac, sealed path! The dodgy track met up with the 'real' path. This path also happened to be some Kokoda memorial thing. No time for dalliance! I surged forth sweat now running down my brow. I'm going to take some photos with the morning light if it kills me!

Occasionally on the slog upward I glimpsed the summit. People staring at what I wanted to photograph already. I felt I might miss out. Walk faster! My calves thought I was clearly unfit to be in charge of this operation and attempted a mutiny. I had none of it!

It hurt but I made it right to the top. It felt odd, an elevated core temp, but very cold external temp. I had to take off my hat, gloves and hoodie. There I was on top of Mt Ainslie, 6:45 am. It's about 10ºC out and I'm there in jean shorts and a t-shirt. I set up the tripod and took a bit of a panorama. Then moved on to some hand helds further down on a look out. Finally another purposely over exposed set of civic with shutter speeds that required the tripod again.

It felt good.

It wasn't long before I thought putting the wollens back on was imperative! Then it was back down the hill for a cuppa and warm shower. How did the photos turn out? I can't tell you till I shoot the rest of the roll. I'm using a camera from the 70s, with film from the 90s. What do you think this is, 2006?!

Interesingly, many people were up there (at least 10) to get photos of the hot air balloon meet that is going on in town at the moment. I met the store guy from RSBS up there with a Nikon SLR, plus large focal length lens. We recognised each other and said 'Hi', he could see that I had walked up the hill! I regretted only having the 40mm fixed lens on my rangefinder. I would have been nice to get some larger images of the balloons.

Diversion

I was playing around on flickr the other day and found that there are quite a few photos of Canberra there. Even some guy called 'cutejili' who posted photos of his room in this high-rise apartment complex which I didn't realise was student accomodation. It was kind of strange looking at those photos.