i never said i wasn't a jerk

on flickr, i have a firm "no groups or pools" policy, which makes me sort of anti-social as far as flickr groups go. i also tagged my photos under creative commons; i use the attribution, non-commercial, no-derivatives tag. that means i want to be credited for photos if other people use them (which happens on blogs and stuff, very cool), but i don't want them used for commercial reasons and i don't want people to alter them and then use them. pretty basic stuff. i know a lot of folks go for the whole "let anyone use it! for any reason! any time!" and that's great, but i like to let people know where i stand. the fact is, they are on a public website, for anyone to see, and swiping them and using them however you want is easy. in fact, it's the easiest thing on earth and i do it to my sister all the time when she posts photos of maggie. it's important for me for my intent to be there, though, even if it is a bit silly and useless as far as enforcement goes. i made them, and i want them to stay how they are, and if you use them, i want people to know i took them. i also don't want any jackasses using them to make money, because DUDE i have a shitty job to pay the bills and if anyone's going to make money off my photos, it's going to be ME.

but i got this weird email from some company who wanted to use some of my vegas photos in their on-line tour guide. if they had emailed me before they used them, i probably would have been ammenable, but they used one right away and then sent me an email giving me the option of withdrawing my photos. the website itself was free to use, but there were corporate sponsors and partners, meaning it wasn't a website who's owners weren't making any money. regardless of whether or not they're charging joe public, this was still a commercial use. to me, my photos are just snapshots, some turn out better than others and some i really love for various reasons, but mainly they don't have much use outside of the personal. it weirded me out to be included in something like that, and i withdrew my photos and asked them nicely to remove the other one they were already using. i felt like a jerk, but the backhanded way they did it annoyed me. and really? i don't mind being a jerk sometimes.

i use flickr so that kids i know can see my photos, and in a way, see a little part of my life. i keep the photos public because i like looking random photos taken by folks i don't know, and i like being a part of that. it's the same reason i blog. it's both for people i do know and love, and people i don't know who are curious about what someone else is thinking about. i like to eavesdrop, and i don't mind if i'm on the other side of that occasionally. before flickr and blogger i still took massive amounts of photos and wrote in journals obsessively. i'm like an archivist in my own private library (which would be the movie you would make about my life, rather than my own private idaho). documentation has always just been really important to me, from a very ridiuclously early age. i do it because i can't not do it, but i don't have any delusions that it's art or interesting to very many people. because it is so personal to me, because i can't see a photo of vegas without thinking about the drive out here, they mean more to me than just pretty sparkly things. it's nice to know someone liked my photos, but the way they wanted to use them just wasn't for me.