It’s tempting to think that I could charge for the use of my pictures. But truthfully, although sometimes I take some great pictures, I’m not consistently good enough and I’m not willing to put in the effort to market my photos. And even if I were, the market for the kind of pictures that I like to take probably isn’t that big.

So when I started to get requests to use my photos from students or non-profit projects, I changed my license to a Creative Commons non-commercial attribution license.  And then when I started to get requests from artists who don’t strictly fall under the non-commercial aspect or agencies working on behalf of local government or struggling bands or writers working on niche projects who were never going to pay me – I changed the license on some of my photos to a Creative Commons attribution license*.

Today I got a copy of book in which I have a photo credit.  It’s from a well known factual publisher and they never offered to pay me for it, although I was offered a free copy of the book.  (I was too lame and too paranoid to send them my address – I have my freaky moments).  Cool.

Pay me not for my peony

Today I also turned down the “opportunity” to have one of my photos featured in an online television show about teenage fashion designers  I was approached via my Flickr account and asked if they could use the photo with credit but without compensation – they just wanted to base some design elements off one of my peony pictures.   Fine by me.  Let me know which ones you want and I’ll let you use it.  Unless you want exclusive rights – in which case I’ll have to charge.

I’m sent a two page legal document with herefores and whereas and I have to give them my legal address (remember how I wouldn’t share my address to get a free book?).  Ummm, no.  If you want me to waste my time filling out your form, I really have to charge.  My day rate is not inconsiderable.

I get a buzz out of other people using my pictures.  But I take them because I want to.   I have no love of form filling.  I applied a Creative Commons attribution license to my peony pictures and told them there’s no way I’m filling out the form.

Use them or don’t use them.  I’m all about the gift economy and sharing knowledge and content.  But please, don’t shoot a gift horse in the mouth.

*Images of recognisable people, especially my son – I do not let people use for free.

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It’s a struggle to spend as much time on photography as I used to.  I can’t really take the time to set up shots anymore.  I used to drive Simon crazy with my endless framing and fiddling, which was especially bad when I was using film and every frame had a marginal cost.  Now, I take shots as I find them mostly.   I don’t even do much by way of post-processing (though I do some). 

A Flickr group Top Shots of 2009, allows you to post one single item.  Your top shot from 2009, presumably.

But what would that be?  

   This rather odd shot of a pony club instructor in a tutu. 

  This heavily saturated pair of waterlilies?
I’m quite fond of this one, partly for its slightly voyeuristic qualities.  What can I say?  I’m a bit of a perv for a man in a kilt.

This scary photo of stampeding geese? (Ok, maybe not a top shot)

I love this photo of cyclist stopping to reflect on a war memorial in Belgium.

I got some great dogwood photos – and since I hadn’t seen a proper dogwood in bloom for over a decade to me it was an amazing sight.

I love this Christmas card perfect image of frost on euphorbia

And this is one of the most recent shots I’ve taken

(More of my fave shots from 2009)

What do you reckon?

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This photo has shot up in Interestingness on my Flickr account recently.  Not entirely sure why.  Interestingness is a funny measure of, well, interestingness for the images on Flickr.   It’s based on algorithm as closely guarded as the Colonel’s recipe, but you can guess that some of the 11 herbs and spices are views, comments, groups where it’s posted and links to to the image.   Interestingness is measured overall – so there’s a number one most interesting picture every day  and it goes on down to the top 500.    I’ve had several photos make the interesting rankings – no where near close to the top, and not for a while.  You can see  my most interesting photos.

When I took this picture, I had been sitting on the ground photographing the geese when a dog startled these geese.  They started running toward me, but veered away at the last minute.  I’m slightly phobic of geese (as in they scare me on a deep level but if I keep my distance, I can pretend to myself that no one notices that I’m afraid of them).  I’m very proud of myself for manging to squeeze off a frame.

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Polish Food in South Ken

Yesterday my most viewed picture on Flickr was “Polish Food”.  This picture was taken three years ago at a restaurant called Daquise which is close to the South Kensington Underground Station.  I’d seen the restaurant there on a number of occasions and just assumed it was French, it sounds French, right?

Simon and I had gone to one of the museums at South Ken, Science or Natural History or maybe the V&A and for some reason stopped to look at the menu.  Polish food sounded intriguing, so we went in.

Now I love Polish food.  If you look at the top of my plate there are some dumplings.  Those dumplings are meat pierogi – and look what they’re garnished with – meat! What’s not to love?

There’s been a substantial Polish community in London since World War II.  I didn’t know it, but there was quite a pocket of Poles in Tooting.  When the substantial Polish migration to the UK began after Poland joined the EU, apparently many Poles naturally were drawn to areas where there were already Polish community resources.  And in Tooting, that includes a Polish social club The White Eagle and I presume services in Polish at the Catholic church across the street judging by the throng of people I’ve seen on the sidewalk on the rare Sunday I’ve been up and about that way.

The White Eagle also has a Polish restaurant that anyone can go to, although you do have to walk through a strange bar with permanent 70s decor to get to it, faux wood panelling and all.  Although that’s probably not as weird as the fact that club shares premises with a genuine Spiritualist Church.  The food’s not quite as good as at Daquise, but it’s pretty close and it costs a lot less.  You can hire the hall at the club as a venue and it’s probably the biggest one in Tooting.  Salsa lessons on Tuesday nights (don’t hold me to that)…and there may not be anything quite so surreal as listening to salsa on a rainy Tuesday night and eating Polish food.

The best thing about the influx of Poles has been rise of Polish delis – the Polski Sklep.  There’s a tiny one between our house and Bill’s nursery and we stop in regularly to buy tasty, tasty polish bread…sourdoughs and brown breads with sunflower seeds.  Much better than the standard stuff and the best butter I’ve ever tasted.    I’ve never seen another native English speaker in that store.

The woman who runs (owns?) the shop is very friendly and sometimes gives Bill a lollipop or some other treat.   So much so, that he’s kinda come to expect it.  I keep thinking I need to teach him how to say thank you in Polish.

But since the Basic guide to Polish that I found on the Internet says:

I frankly wouldn’t know where to begin.  The sheer numbers of Zs in Polish has always scared me off.

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I haven’t been in the cemetery quite so much and when I have been there usually wasn’t a good selection of tributes. Either nothing at all, or nothing very original.  I wasn’t sure if it was just my bad luck or if there if these things had gone out of fashion, some kind of cultural victim of the credit crunch perhaps.

But yesterday I nipped into the cemetery and found I was in luck.   There was a fabulous floral tribute based on the London Ambulance Service Crest.  The occupational floral tributes is perhaps one of my favourite themes, and this one was a particularly fine example – well executed and with the inclusion of fake gems.

Sometimes I think that this a morbid fascination – and I suppose it is.  But on the other hand, these are works of a temporary nature and represent one of the really important moments in our lives (for the bereaved and of course for the deceased), and despite being made by professionals they have a kind of folk art feel.  And maybe they are folk art if you think about it as a collaborative commissioning process.  Anyway, I tell myself I’m capturing and celebrating an aspect of culture that’s little appreciated.

Or, maybe I’m just ghoulish.

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