Winterlude

Out on a walk. A dog walk. What else would I be doing?

We went out at about blue hour. That wasn’t intentional. The dog who takes me for walks wanted to go out. So, out we went.

The sky was kind of magical in every direction. I unleashed the magical phone to try to capture nature’s magic. Yeah. I know. How many times can I work magical or magic into one sentence? Trust me. It started out as me not being aware. Then, I was. It was a happy accident. I do that a lot.

Anyway.

Remind me to tell you the story of how anyway came to be in my posts.

We turned a corner and there it was. A full moon that was trying to shine through the almost bare trees. I realized that I didn’t have the reach to photograph the moon as a dominant subject so I went the other way. I photographed the tree with the moon just poking through the branches.

That was my thought process.

After about  five or six pictures, I was done on location. Note that phrase. “Done on location.” This image took a lot of work in post production. I didn’t want the trees to be silhouetted completely. Nor did I want the sky to overpower anything. It took some time to create the image that you see.

I also went completely the other way. I made a black and white image that is all silhouette. I’m saving that one for my Instagram account.

Let’s talk about just one other thing. My website is hosted by Squarespace. They did exactly what WordPress did. They linked Unsplash to their services. For those of you who don’t know, Unsplash is a stock agency. You can use pictures for free. You don’t even have to credit the photographer. If you modify the picture in any way, you can call it your own. I smell a class action lawsuit in that.

I’m trying to figure out what’s in it for the contributing photographer. They don’t get paid. And, they don’t get any kind of credit.

Although I complained about it to WordPress, I sort of understand. About 90% of the blogs are writers blogs. They need illustrations. As I wrote a post or two back, nobody wants to pay for anything. I may test that here. I may rework a writer’s post just a little and call it my own. After all, fair is fair. Right?

However, Squarespace websites are primarily visual. That means there are a lot of photographers using their services. This is a direct slap in our faces. A big boycott movement is starting. If nothing changes by the time I pay my yearly bill, it’s likely that I won’t. I’ll leave.

The funny thing about Squarespace is that even the non-photographers sites are primarily people who produce stuff. There are a lot of bakers and chefs there. They don’t want stock pictures. Somehow they want pictures of what they do.

Life in the trenches.