One more photos from the photowalk in St John’s. This one is of a graffiti filled lane way and I waited for people to walk down at the end of the lane. Looking back at the photos I took though I was crouched down leaning against a wall to get a good angle everyone was looking up the lane right at the camera, it’s as if they knew I was there already. I wonder if I was reflected in the car window or something.
Alley Cat
Here is another photo from the St John’s photo walk. This cat was sitting on a ledge down a little alley way watching the world go by. He was very calm about the group of photographers who invaded his space and pointed lenses at him.
St John’s Photowalk
First of my photos from the Worldwide Photowalk for 2013. This was early on in the walk as we were walking around the row houses. This old run down blue house was across the street and I just about to start taking photos when I saw this guy in a blue hoodie striding into shot. Something about the way he looked and walked caught my attention and I was able to get a couple of shots as he passed quickly in front of the house, this was the best of them.
Salvage
I’ve been quiet again, busy period of time but here is another photograph from our trip out of town. This is from Salvage, one of my favourite little communities that I’ve visited in Newfoundland.
I should have some more photos to post soon, I’m off to the Scott Kelby World Photowalk in St John’s in a couple of hours. Weather is a bit bad but I think it should still be going ahead, I might learn of some great spots to take photographs around the city I now live in.
Port Blandford
It’s been a busy couple of weeks here again with work, processing the photographs from Carla and Brian’s wedding and training our dog but we managed to get away for a few days our to our favourite weekend break spot, Port Blandford. We try to get out there every year and try to stay in the same cabins. Usually it’s used as a base for visiting other town and communities in the area such as Trinity but this year we had very bad weather so I spent some time in Port Blandford itself taking photographs. This photo was taken from a metal rural bridge that I’ll try to post a picture of later.
Seanad
There is a referendum coming up back home in Ireland to do with abolishing the Seanad which is the Irish Senate. Unfortunately over the years it has become a bit of a toothless tiger filled with retiring Dail politicians, wanna-be Dail politicians or government appointees who tow the government line on every issue rendering the upper chamber a useless rubber stamp for the lower chamber. The government now wants to abolish it instead of reforming it. While it cant continue to exist in it’s current form it would be a shame to see Ireland left without one of the important democratic checks and balances.
This is an old photo from my library that I took some years ago during a photo tour of Leinster House and the Houses of the Oireachtas. We got the opportunity to go into the Chambers and take some photos like this while they were empty. It was posted to my Flicker page at that time as an All Rights Reserved photo. With the Seanad now the center of political attention in Ireland one organisation contacted me and requested permission to use it and several other photos I had taken, which I gave them. Last night I was curious so I decided to do a quick Google image search and discovered some people have already used it without my permission. Two media companies, a group Facebook page, a PR company, a blogger and a couple of Seanad candidates.
I’m naturally pissed. My stance on my photos is simple, ask don’t steal. Sometimes when my photos are used I get paid, especially for commercial use. Sometimes after chatting with the person who wants to use a photo I will allow them to use it for free so long at they give me suitable credit. This did not happen in this case. I can understand amateurs grabbing pictures and making a mistake but media and PR professionals do know better, after all if someone stole their work they would drag them to court. So now I’ve had to send out emails and will probably have to follow them up with invoices and get into all that hassle.