Sleepy pillows and bumble bees

SFMOMA

Some very great photographers are currently on exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art! Photography is my jam, so I'm definitely going to the MOMA, but if you're in the bay area you should take a moment to appreciate photography and check it out.

(Cindy Sherman - Untitled)

I friggin' love Cindy Sherman. She takes identity and representation to a whole new level all by doing very imaginative self-protraits. She can be in a photo anyone that she wants to be!

(Cindy Sherman - Untitled)

One super fantastic thing she did besides take great self-portraits was show up at the opening of her exhibit at the MOMA and not tell anyone who she was. What I mean by this is that everyone knew she was there, but they didn't know who she was. How great is that? Someone could have been standing right next to her and had no idea...

Another great reason to go is to see work by another photographer, Naoya Hatakeyama. He is a landscape photographer that takes a lot of images of land in transition after disasters, making a point of showing us that nature is a stronger force in shaping land than we humans are. 

(Naoya Hatakeyama - Lime Hills)

My point in showing this and trying to get you to go to a museum - photography is important!

Use of an Artist's Work

I found this on youtube today via flickr's referrer's section (ie the section that tells me where people viewed or how they find my photo, be it from my blog, via google search, from tumblr's blogs, or in this case, from someone who used my photography and gave me credit). Yes, this video has one of my most popular photos in the background for the entirety of the song.

It happens that this song is nice and it's great to see that someone had a connection with this photo - however no one asked me whether or not they could use my photography. This gets complicated because they did indeed give me photo credit. They being the person who chose the photo with this song (it was not the band).

So, what I'm getting at here is how do you feel about people using your created art/ideas/whatever without your permission, but by giving you credit? This happens to me all the time with tumblr, (which does give some credit) and Pinterest, which usually gives the artist no credit what-so-ever (which is why I don't use Pinterest and generally hate that website). FYI, my photography is copyrighted on Flickr (all rights reserved) and via myfreecopyright here on this blog.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Updates

I haven't been writing here much - but I have been taking a huge amount of photos. I'm near the end of many rolls, have started an awesome architecture/San Francisco/urban space project with my good friend Devin, and am working on a couple informative photo projects of my own based on lighting and film formats.

Creative things are happening and I'm excited to share them!

Meanwhile, here is an awesome picture I took of my friend Devin floating in the San Francisco skyline while playing banjo:

What I've been up to...

1. Going to dollar night at the boardwalk every Monday and Tuesday.
2. Taking tons of pics with my new 110 camera.
3. Making Batman's (my betta fish) tank legit.
4. Drinking nick's home brewed beer.
5. Decorating my new home.
6. Reading a lot of Ursula K Le Guin and Joan Didion.
7. BBQing
8. Walking all over Santa Cruz.
9. Going to the beach and eating cheese.
10. Hanging out with my buds!

Monterey Bay Aquarium

The aquarium is my meditation space - the cool blues and quiet fish are very calming to me. I've had lots of fish growing up so it's something that's familiar to me and can bring me to my less anxious quiet place. Besides my mental health, it's absolutely beautiful to see the fish and other sea creatures swimming around (and the otters and penguins are always adorable!).

Right now the aquarium is featuring jellyfish and sea horses. The jellyfish are floating works of art, and the sea horses are ridiculous looking. I mean, why did they evolve that way? How did that happen? I like it but I don't understand it. I also didn't take any pictures of sea horses because I was too busy laughing at them. Sorry, folks.

This jellyfish are also ridiculous looking. They look like swimming mushrooms!





Hammerhead!


Tuna. Delicious.


The bird sanctuary - always a calm place.


Sleepy bird.

The aquarium inspired me to get a fish of my own. Since I've moved out, I haven't had any pets (all the pets are at my parents house). So on Sunday, I went to a petstore and rescued a Betta fish.