What a busy weekend

Long weekends. You gotta love them.
Last Friday Paul Zizka, the whole Caffeine and Cameras group and I, went to Bow Lake to photograph us some star trails.
Long story short. I was home at 5am. ;) Wonderful night. As if the night couldn't be any better, on the drive home I saw beautiful patches of thick heavy fog. I didn't stop I just enjoyed the views I was getting.

For those who are interested in doing some star trails. I am planning on doing a how to very soon. Hang in there. :)

Then on Saturday (just as I was making plans to sleep in) I got a heads up on some possible aurora activity. So I went out again. Every time I see the Northern Lights, they are so different. This time around the colours were the weirdest I've seen so far. From pinks and purples to light teals(!) and deep greens. AWESOME!!!


Aurora Borealis 30 July 2011 - Images by Olivier Du Tre

Also one of the images got featured on the official Nasa '3D Sun' iPhone app. All though – thanks to my quirky accent in my last name – my name showed up weird. But I'll take it.



And then on Sunday I simply had to cross the street and shoot the fields in front of my house. We were getting some awesome clouds. I couldn't miss that!



And yesterday (the statutory holiday) I DID NOTHING! ;)

I found myself this week

Ever since I started out with photography I knew I wanted to do landscape photography.
When I was still being schooled as a darkroom black and white photographer, my teacher was always complaining about how dark my skies and pictures where. I'm happy that I did not listen to him all the time. It just felt natural back then to burn skies really heavily. I did it instinctively. Not because somebody told me to. It's a bit hard to explain but I guess you could say it came from the inside, from the heart. I guess people call that vision.

Fast forward 10 years. I am now living in the most beautiful part of the world, Canada, where I can pursue that vision even further. And I am happy to say that I found my little niche where I can be who I am and I can do what I love doing. Even where I am proud of doing what I do.

Sure my landscapes are not photographed in the most scenic spots of Alberta and they are not taken at sunrise and or sunset. Yes they are dark and full of blacks with a lot of contrast. They do have a particular look. But that look just came naturally. This is what I like to look at.

For me it is more about the light itself. How light interacts with the sky, with clouds, with air even. Not how spectacular a mountain scene is.

I leave you with my favourites from this week so far.

Aurora Activity July 20th

So, last week a few shots got de-watermarked and re-uploaded to Twitpic.
I just like to share the album I've made yesterday with all the shots I took that night.
Just so you all have an 'official' link to share. And please DO SHARE!

As you notice, I am still very p*ssed there are actually people that lower themselves to the point of stealing someone else's efforts and claiming them for themselves.



Aurora Borealis 20 July 2011 - Images by Olivier Du Tre

Copyright anyone?

This morning I went through my Twitter account and saw – just by luck – somebody posted pictures of 'auroras boreales en Canada'. I was like 'hey, somebody else took shots last night! Let's check'em out'.

One of the original tweets.

My stomach turned a little when I saw that as a matter of fact it were MY images I took on the night of July 21st, but with no watermark! I could swear I watermarked them before uploading them to www.spaceweather.com.

The two shots without ANY watermark, link back or just any hint of my name.

After checking that (I did in fact watermark my 4 shots and you can see the original post here), and some more digging, I ended up at the 'original' posters' Twitter account. A – what looks like – a genuine science and technology site.

Now I do LOVE science and I would do almost anything to help these usually under funded people out. But grabbing shots and removing watermarks (and NOT giving ANY credits or link back) is just plane old stealing in my book.

I sent a tweet out to them asking them to remove the photos from Twitpic but haven't recieved anything back yet.
I don't mind sharing pictures. As a matter of fact how would you otherwise get your work out?
But when I am missing out on potential clients that have no clue where pictures came from, that is another thing. Then you are pushing me into a corner and I have no clue how I will react.

If you look at the stats of these two images you'll see those shots got viewed approximately 9,000 times and got retweeted in about 1/10 of the views it got.

And to top that, they felt that they could repost this to their Facebook page as well.

SO here is my question. How would you handle this? Would you let this slide? Or would you sent them the bill? This is copyright infringement right? But I have no clue what I can do to people like this. Do I contact TwitPic?


Update 1
Here's the issue I am having. Thanks to all the privacy laws in place I can't see Twitter or Facebook page owners email addresses. I rather handle this through email though than shouting it in Twitter-space. So far they are not quick to react.
I got one tweet back saying, and I quote "we didn't remove it, our followers send us all the pictures, we just post them, send us the originals and we'll post them". So who did remove the watermarks then I question?
I tweeted again asking them (for the 2nd time now) to remove these shots. I am also filling in the Twitter Copyright Infringement form, but I'm not sending this off for now.
I like to believe these guys will remove the pics before I am forced to use more drastic measures.

Update 2
The owner of the page took the images down. SO that part of the issue is solved.
They claim they received these from an outside source and they were not the once that cropped the watermarks out. Could be, but how are we going to prove that?
I still like to find out who that 'source' was and go after them.

Update 3
The two pictures from yesterday were taken down. BUT I just found another one of my shots on their Twitpic page. This time around I sent them a simpler email. Asking them to take them down in 24h or I am filling a complaint through Twitter, and filling a complaint with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.

Update 4
After 24h the picture is still up and I am putting the wheels in motion. Yes it is a weekend (but I don't give a damn). I gave them 24h to comply OR...
So here goes.

Update 5
I just got a reply from the CEO of Twitpic notifying me that as of 7:30pm the photo has been taken down.
I also filled a complaint with Twitter. Awaiting the response of that.