Welcome Spring!

So - meteorological spring tiptoed in last week with a snow storm.  Um... goodbye winter?  It's a little backward this year - a fall storm (3-4 days without power) and a spring storm, but technically nothing during the winter.


With us getting to "spring forward" this weekend, I put away the "happy light" hoping the end of the long dark winter tunnel is near.  The daffodils area all up and rarin' to go under the blanket.  Hopefully they aren't all frostbit.

This was the first thing I saw today - on "the daily squee".  Love it.  I went online and found it where it was stolen from originally.  A collection of 50 Best photos from The Natural World on boston.com.    It was taken by a photographer named "Kham" for Reuters news service.  Which brings me to one of my pet peeves.  The material on the internet was created by  someone.  Attribution is necessary.  This is being ignored, and "stealing" is being taught in schools.  Makes me absolutely bananas.   


The Kid has a project every couple of weeks.  One of the parts of the project he's graded on is grabbing photos from the internet, printing them out, gluing them on to the page in his notebook.  As a photographer, from a family of artists, this pains me.  These students should be taught to attribute the photographs.  List, at the very least, the site they grabbed them from.  I think the next one I'll require my kid to cite the source of his photos, even though it's not required.


My FIL recently was contacted by a student putting together a thesis and wanted to ask if he could use some of this photographs from his portfolio.  FIL was tickled pink because the kid ASKED before he just printed them out and stuck them in his paper, which would have been ridiculously easy.


Just because it's on the internet, doesn't mean it's free for your use.  Too many friends have discovered their photos (exif included) in various places.  It's not "orphaned" just because it was posted.  A teeny bit of work can usually uncover who produced it.


I had a book on "How to draw Celtic Knotwork" years ago.  I wrote the author (we didn't have email back then) in Ireland if I could use some of the designs from his book in my jewelry designs.


This should be common sense, but it isn't.  And it makes me sad.