Photography Links – July 10, 2009

Here’s this week’s links – including links to posts from a few blogs I just discovered this week. Hope you find the information useful.

Jim Goldstein has a list of 11 Must Have Photography iPhone Applications

PhotoAttorney has a Q&A on Statute of Limitations for Use of Photos of a Person and info about fee increases at the US Copyright Office

Lisa’s Photography INFO blog has tips on Avoiding Big Lens Disasters

Gary Crabbe has a post on the Costco Photo Contest (avoid this contest!)

G Dan Mitchell has info on the Costco and Sierra Club Photo Contests

Black Star Rising has Can Look but Don’t Touch Ever Be Enforced on the Web

Juan Pons has a post on Why I Shoot AV or Aperture Priority Mode

DC area photographers – Mark you calendars for a July 25 Photowalk at Great Falls organized by Marc Benton

A Few More Pink Water Lilies

Here are the last few water lilies that I photographed on a recent trip to Longwood Gardens. On that one trip, I photographed 16 different varieties of water lilies (nymphaea). They were absolutely incredible. If you like water lilies, you definitely should plan a trip to Longwood. Apparently they will be at peak bloom later this summer.

First is a Charles de Meurville Water Lily – the inner petals are a dark pink with the color lightening to almost white on the outer petals.

Charles de Meurville Water Lily (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

The David Water Lilies are a striking combination of red, pink, white and yellow.

David Water Lily (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

The Sturtevant Water Lily is a spectacular large raspberry colored flower.

Sturtevant Water Lily (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

And finally a Comanche Water Lily – a nice soft pink water lily.

Comanche Water Lily (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

I hope you’ve enjoyed my photos of the water lilies at Longwood Gardens. In case you missed them, the other posts in this series are Pink Water Lilies, Purple Water Lilies, and Water Lilies.

Bears at Elkwallow in the Shenandoah National Park

Over the holiday weekend, Bill and I took some time to head out to the mountains in the Shenandoah National Park and along the Blue Ridge Parkway. We were hoping to photograph some wildflowers, a sunset and sunrise and Crabtree Falls. We managed most of those – the unexpected treat of the trip was the wildlife.

Usually in Shenandoah NP, we always see lots of deer and turkeys. This trip – we saw lots of deer, including one doe with three fawns at Big Meadow, and a pair of female turkeys with 10 chicks between them.

Every now and then, we’ll actually spot a bear. You’ll notice however – that you’ve not seen many (if any) photos of Shenandoah black bears before this weekend.  As we drove into Shenandoah on Friday, a cute little bear raced across the road and up the hill. He was moving so fast, we had not chance of taking his photo. So we figured – hey – at least we’ve seen a bear this trip.

On our way out of the park on Saturday, we stopped at Elkwallow Wayside. As we were getting back into the car – Bill spotted something dark and fuzzy moving climbing down a tree! It was a bear cub! So he grabbed the camera and headed over to see if he could get a few photos.

There at the base of the tree was an adorable bear cub.

(c) 2009 William Lawrence

Then we spotted a second cub and their mother

(c) 2009 William Lawrence

And then we spotted the third cub! This is the best photo we got of all three cubs – you need to count the ears to see that there really are three cubs

(c) 2009 William Lawrence

As we watched, the cubs started nursing.

(c) 2009 William Lawrence

Bill got several photos of the mother with her cubs

(c) 2009 William Lawrence

(c) 2009 William Lawrence

Then two of the cubs started to climb back up the tree.

(c) 2009 William Lawrence

While Bill was photographing the bears, I grabbed the second camera, and headed around to the other side of the area where the bears were, hoping to get some photos from a different angle. As I headed up the road, the mother bear and cubs left the area where they were – and crossed the road in front of me.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Here’s the mother bear with one of her cubs, waiting for the third one to catch up.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

And then two of the cubs found another tree to climb . . .

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Seeing bears in the wild is always wonderful. This was the first time we’d seen a mother with three cubs. They were incredible to watch. The bears were the highlight of the trip!

Remember – if you do see bears in the National Parks – no matter how cute and cuddly they look – they are wild animals. Don’t get too close to them – and don’t feed them. You don’t want to do anything to provoke the mother bear into feeling like she needs to defend herself and her cubs.

We took all these photos with 100-400mm lenses – most were taken at 400mm. In addition, we cropped the photos to emphasize the bears. We made sure to give the bears lots of space – as did all the other people who were enjoying watching them.

Many Colors of Columbine

In early May, I spent a few hours one morning at Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, Virginia.  I had a wonderful time exploring the early spring flowers and was delighted to see some many types of Columbine (aquilegia).  I had photographed two types of Columbine (McKana Group and Robin) at Longwood Gardens in April. So it was  great to see all the colors of Columbine at Green Spring.

Here are a few of the colors of Columbine I photographed that morning.

Pale Yellow (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Pale pink and yellow

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Red and yellow - aquilegia canadensis

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Light purple

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

And finally dark purple

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

The columbine has finished blooming for the year. I do have a few more photos of columbine from Longwood Gardens to post. Hopefully I’ll get them posted in the next week or so.

Photography Links – July 3, 2009

A few links this week -

Marc Benton has 4th of July Fireworks Photography Tips

William Neill has an essay at Luminous Landscape on Meditations in Monochrome.

Photo Business News has info on the NY Times Advocataing Copyright Infringement,  and their apology.

Photofocus has 7 Questions to Ask When Selecting a Lens

Virtual Photography Studio has One Great Idea – Meet Neil Creek

Digital Photography School has 8 Family Portrait Tips

MacWorld has a review of PhotoMarkr – watermarking software for iphone

And one that I’ve posted before – PhotoAttorney Carolyn Wright’s Using the DMCA Takedown Notice to Battle Copyright Infringement. This is the letter that I used this week with Flickr when 3 of my photos were stolen.

Field of Sunflowers – July 2009 Photo of the Month

Field of Sunflowers (c) 2007 Patty Hankins

Field of Sunflowers is the BeautifulFlowerPictures.com Photo of Month. It was photographed at McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area in Poolesville, Maryland.  If you visit McKee-Beshers WMA in July, you’ll find a couple of large of sunflowers. You’ll also see lots of photographers, painters and other artists smiling as they create their art. It is my favorite place to photograph in early July.

Until July 31, 2009,  SAVE 20% off the regular prices for Field of Sunflowers. The photograph is available in two sizes of gallery-wrapped canvases.

Save $ 17 on the 8X18″ Canvas – regular price $ 85 – July Photo of the Month Price – $ 68.00

Save $ $ 53 on the 14X30″ Canvas – regular price $ 265 – July Photo of the Month Price – $ 212.00

Free shipping to U.S. Addresses for either size photograph.

As with all photographs from BeautifulFlowerPictures.com, Field of Sunflowers comes with my Unconditional Happiness Guarantee. You have one year to decide that it is the perfect photograph for you. If it’s not, just return it (in original condition) for a full refund.

Water Lilies

When I headed up to Longwood Gardens recently in hopes of photographing water lilies, I expected to see mainly white water lilies, since those are the ones I’m nost familiar with. I’ve already posted photos of some of the pink and purple water lilies I photographed. Here are some photos of the white water lilies I saw.

First a group of water lilies – white petals with just a hint of pink at the base. Unfortunately, I forget to take a photo of the sign for this group – so I’m not sure what variety they are.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Next is a St. Louis Water Lily – a stunning white water lily. This one was much larger than many of the other water lilies I saw.

St. Louis Water Lily (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

And finally, Virginalis Water Lily. I had fun photographing this flower, trying to get the reflection just right.

Virginalis Water Lily (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

I’ll post the last few water lily photos in a few days.

Dealing with a Photo Thief

It happened again. Another set of photos of mine were stolen and posted on the web without permission. Usually, I’m fine with just getting the photos removed. But this time, the story needs to be more public due to the actions of the thief.

On Sunday morning, I received an email from someone on flickr alerting me that one of my butterfly photos from the Butterfly Rainforest was in Tulsa7035′’s photostream. I did a quick check – and yes it was my photo of the banded grecian shoemaker butterfly. After doing a little exploring of Tulsa7035’s photostream – I found two additional photographs of mine in her collection.

The first thing I did after finding the photos in her photostream was to make PDF files of the Flickr pages – and downloaded copies of the files to my hard drive.

Next I sent a letter to Flickr that met their rules under their Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy My letter was based on PhotoAttorney Carolyn Wright’s excellent letter in her Using the DMCA Takedown Notice to Battle Copyright Infringement.

And then I posted info on the theft, with links to the copies, to Twitter. From past experience, I knew that my twitter friends (and all of their friends) can be a great help in dealing with situations like this. Not too long after I posted my tweets, comments began to appear on the photos in her flickrstream – with links to my original photos.

I believe the comments caused Tulsa7035 to remove one of my photos from her flickr account. As of this morning, two of the photos are still posted under her account.

The two photos of mine that are still in her flickrstream are

A Giant Charaxes butterfly – my photo on flickr – and the copy in her photostream

A Golden Birdwing Butterfly – my photo on flickr and the copy in her photostream

Please note the difference between my photos on flickr and copies she posted. On the copies in her flickrstream – there are no watermarks on the photos. All the metadata is missing. They are posted with a creative commons license (rather than the all rights reserved I use).

In other words – by stripping all of my identifying information and changing the license – she effectively has turned my copyrighted photograph into  orphan works. If someone wants to license them, they have no way of knowing that I am original photographer and that I did not place the photos in the commons.  I no longer have control over these three copyrighted photographs.

Tulsa7035 has deleted several comments on the photos in her photostream linking her copies to my originals and identifying them as stolen photos.

Tulsa7035’s actions aren’t going to stop me from posting my photos on the web. I’ll continue to post them – watermarked with my copyright notice and with my contact info in the metadata. And I will file DMCA notices every time I find a stolen photo. Unfortunately, dealing with thieves is the price photographers have to pay for sharing our work on the web.

There is, however, a bright side to this entire mess. In the past 24 hours, I have received so much encouragement, support and help from my network of friends on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. They have posted spectacular comments on Tulsa7035’s flickr account, filed complaints with Flickr, provided me with contact info to help get this resolved – and emailed, tweeted and FB commented so much wonderful supportive notes. Thanks everyone for all the help – having online friends like I’ve got makes it much easier to deal with the occasional photo thief.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to post soon that the stolen photos have been removed.

Update – Monday evening – Flickr has let me know that they have taken appropriate action. My photos have been removed from Tulsa7035’s account.

Thanks again for all the help in dealing with this mess. I really appreciated all the wonderful comments my friends made on the photos on Flickr!

Sempervivum Braunii

I recently photographed a fascinating member of the Crassulaceae family called Sempervivum Braunii. It’s a variety of houseleek, also known as Hens and Chicks.

What first caught my eye was the textures of the large and small rosettes.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

And then I spotted the very delicate flowers growing up out of the rosettes.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

The flowers were blooming at the ends of stalks with lots of buds on them.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

From the side, the stalks look almost like miniature trees.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

And finally, a stalk just beginning to grow and develop its buds.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

The Hens and Chicks were a wonderful combination of shapes, colors and textures. Great fun to photograph.

Purple Water Lilies

For me, one of the great surprises of my recent trip to Longwood Gardens was all the shades of purple I found in some of the water lilies (nymphaea).

The first to catch my eye was a Blue Cloud Water Lily. Between the incredible purples of the petals and the bright yellow center – it is an amazing flower.

Blue Cloud Water Lily (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

I really liked the look of the Panama-Pacific Water Lily – with it’s petals in various shades of purple.

Panama-Pacific Water Lily (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Eve’s Solitaire is another stunning purple flower. I really like the way I was able to photograph the flower with its reflection.

Eve’s Solitaire Water Lily (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

And finally, Madame Ganna Walska Water Lily – with petals in shades of lavender.

Madame Ganna Walska Water Lily (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

I’ll be posting more photos of Longwood Garden’s in a few days. If you missed them, I posted photos of some pink water lilies a few days ago.