andrewlighten.com

Forgot to mention – we lost another chook last night. All five were doing just fine, and when we came home from the park and shops, just after dark, one was lying dead on the bottom of the cage. She was still warm, so she hadn’t been gone long. We’ve got no idea what got her because there was no sign of physical trauma. They are all nearing their expiry date because they only live for a few years, and they’re all 2-3 years old now. Four chooks left…

Kind of a weird ride this morning.

• Split into two distinct halves. From town out through Timor and over to Bet Bet no-one wanted to push hard at all. Once we hit Bet Bet and Chris decided to do some strength training on the first hill back into town all hell broke loose. The pack split into two; I was in the front half and we pushed back into town really hard.
• Gary and I rode yesterday, and he was talking about how some people go out without a water bottle, and how silly that is. Then he turned up today without a water bottle. He was suffering a little so I handed him my bottle to get some water, and when he gaved it back to me I dropped it. There were 8 or 10 bikes behind me, so I gave up on the idea of jumping on the brakes and grabbing it. Neither of us had water from then on…

If there was such a thing as a “2008 dickhead of the year” award, it’s already been decided. No contest.

In line with the comments I made a few days ago about changes the way I’m sharing photos, I’ve spent some time making some fairly drastic changes to my SmugMug account.

In essence, I’ve done the following:

• Consolidated a lot of smaller galleries into larger galleries.
• Deleted a bunch of galleries that were  holding old stuff.
• Made every single gallery containing personal photographs private and taken the password off each gallery.
• Setup a few SmugMug share groups to give specific people access to those private galleries.

I’ve done this because I want to start pimping my SmugMug account as a place people can go if they want to buy stuff I’ve shot, and I don’t want their experience cluttered with personal galleries. Share groups were the easiest way to do this.

I’m about to send out email messages with the share group URLs in them so friends & family can still get access to the galleries they had before.

A nice side effect of this is that passwords are no longer required to these galleries. Bookmark the share group that I send you, always access my SmugMug account through that URL, and you have password free access to any galleries. When new stuff goes up I’ll just need to add the new gallery to the appropriate share group(s) and you’ll automatically have access if appropriate.

If you’ve lost access to anything on SmugMug, please don’t hesitate to call or email me and I’ll make sure the appropriate share group is in place for you.

We had a BBQ lunch at Peter & Diane’s today. The paparazzi were out in force (as expected) so there’s a gallery up on SmugMug. Usual password.

All of the shots in the gallery were taken using the TZ250 flash, and they’ve got a very clean look. It is so much better having a decent external flash head and bouncing off the ceiling rather than using the inbuilt flash head-on. Much, much nicer look.

Sir Edmund Hillary, first man to climb Everest, died this morning, aged 88. Good innings.

We had another strong bunch (10 people) on this morning’s ride. Did the usual course, which takes us out through Daisy Hill, across to Cragie and Carisbrook, then back into town via the climb up Tullaroop Road. That last climb is always tough.

It was a fabulous morning for riding though, because it was still pretty mild and there was no wind at all. It’s forecast to reach 41°C in Melbourne today (that’s 105°F for US readers) so it was good to get the ride done before the heat kicked in. It’s not even 10am yet and it’s already getting pretty warm. Total distance for me was just a shade over 50km today.

Big shout out to Brad who came out with us this morning; good to see you back on the bike.

I like it!

These days it seems that any time you read or talk about digital media the issue of copyright and rights management isn’t far behind. For a long time I’ve sat on the sidelines and pretty much ignored the issue. Music I download from iTunes, for example, is soaked in DRM, and to be honest, I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t share of that music anyway.

One thing I have been very liberal in sharing though has been my photography. For a long time my flickr account had a creative commons licence applied to all the works there. This licence allowed for non-commercial use with attribution. That is — you can’t make money off my stuff, but use it for whatever else you want as long as you attribute to me. Here’s an example.

This year, however, I’m making a few subtle changes. I’ve changed all my flickr work to “All rights reserved“. I’ve also put a copyright tag on every photo.

I’m not big on new year’s resolutions, but one goal that I did have coming into 2008 is that I want to start earning a little money from my photography. It’s an expensive hobby (in terms of time and equipment) and I’d like to see some return from the investment.

I’ve still got a lot to learn about the art (and like everyone, I’ll continue learning until my days are done) but I’d like to think that some of the stuff I’ve got is perhaps worth something. I’ve signed up with one of the microstock agencies and I’ve got a few as yet unpublished photos that I’ll start pushing in that direction. I’m also going to approach someone about framing some of my work because I already have a venue lined up where framed work is displayed and sold.

This might well fall flat on its face. This time next year, if I’ve made $0.00, I’ll have to accept that I’m just an average hack, and I think I’ll be ok with that. My hope, however, is that works of good quality do start to provide some income. I’ll need to make a few changes to the thought process behind my work (and workflow), and that’s already in place.

I’m hoping to remain very much open to having people use my work for what they want, but I just want to start having a little more control over what that use is, and where appropriate, see some return. Someone who snaffles a picture from flickr to use as a background, for example, will continue to have my blessing.

Stories like this, however, worry me. My work isn’t at Rebekka’s level of quality or followed nearly as closely, but the web is an ugly place these days, and getting more so every day. I’ve decided to seriously rethink how much I give of myself into an environment where everything is considered to be free.

I like this report:

BICYCLE sales outstripped those of motor vehicles for the eighth consecutive year in 2007, according to figures to be released today.