More

There is more information on the Orphan Bill here.

Impact

The US just passed the Orphan bill. This means that unless images have a watermark on them when posted to an open viewing site such as flickr they could be downloaded by a third party and used without permission. So, for example, a company could download one of your images to use in an advertising campaign instead of hiring a photographer to take the image and then claim that they could not contact the creator and were able to use this image because of the Orphan bill. The impact of this is worldwide not just in the US as everyone uses flickr or some similar type of site for posting images for the world to see. I am not slamming any of these photo posting sites, it is up to everyone posting to make sure their contact information is embedded in the images along with some type of watermark is visible on the image itself. It is indeed unfortunate for those of us trying to make a living at this wonderful business that a bill like this can be slipped in while everyone is waiting to hear about a billions of dollars bailout that died on the floor. It will impact us all!

Summer?

This weather we have been having lately is unreal. It feels like summer. I would be happy with this until December 24th but alas this will not happen. It would be nice if it stayed until this Saturday at least as it would be wonderful in Fernie with this weather and the leaves changing colours. So, where ever you are get out and enjoy the nice weather while it is here because before you know it we will be shoveling snow dreaming about when the nice weather will return.