ADMIRE IT YOURSELF

My sweet Thomas is after me about copy righting pictures. He says that if you get on some list, you will be paid for them when they are published; claiming there is a list out there. Copyright or not, once on the Internet, unless you write copyright across the picture so pirating makes it impossible to say it is your work, it is out there and people are going to use it if they want. Besides, I know I took it.

Yet, there are hundreds of web sites with photos to purchase. One can order just the photo or one can have it mounted. On Facebook, where one can publish photographs, some folks write their name on them. I am smiling because it is in the corner and can easily be cropped out.

I am sitting amidst a group of 8 x 10 photographs I have just printed. Since Tom bought the optical business as a hobby, we have been bringing in items that have human appeal. It this stark time of dispensaries, he is finding people like the idea of 'stuff'. To me, it is an ideal way to pass along an idea that others may have considered. Men like the antique decoys; women like the silk flowers that look so real.

We are at the point of pictures. The idea is to change with the seasons. For summer, we have selected daisies, a Showy Lady Slipper, and some sort of weed with a bee on it. It is yet another thing for them to look at and remember when they saw it. Hand and hand goes the idea that Tom knows every thing in the decorating scheme as well as the flowers.

The picture book of the loons I did for him last year was a hit. This year we have started a new book, this one with other birds, like eagles and swans.

The point I am trying to make here is simple. I admire my own work. I see the beauty of the shot as well as how excited I was to capture what I saw. Now, because of Sinkler Optical and the Internet, others admire.

Isn't that enough?

Or am I small minded.

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