Once you post something on-line it is difficult or even impossible to know what will happen to it. It starts a journey of its own. It has its own life. You hope that people will find the information and images informative or interesting. Everything is copyrighted and you hope that people will seek your permission for its use, and that you will be credited as author and photographer. It doesn’t always happen. You may be unaware of miss-use or abuse. It is a bit like throwing a sealed bottle with a message into the sea and waiting for it to return with a reply. Happily, responses do appear. Mostly in the form of ‘likes’ and comments but also by e-mail with questions and contributions of knowledge. Requests to use the images come from all kinds of places, organisations, and people. I love to hear how people want to use the pictures. Since I started blogging nine years ago, I have had requests for authorised image use for an amazing range of purposes, and I thought I would share some of these to show the new lives that some of my photographs have assumed.
The picture shown above is one of a series of images that appeared in a much earlier post of March 2016. The photos of frog spawn were taken at my village pond. This week I have been pleased to respond to a request for the use of an image from that series by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Department of Earth, Atmosphere and Planetary Sciences. They are using one of my photographs [see below] of frog spawn as a background header picture to illustrate a series of lectures that were recently given on the subject of the Origin of Life. The image features in their current March 2018 EAPS Monthly Newsletter, and on the department’s Facebook page too. Technically, it is not a great shot; the resolution is too low to permit it to be shown in this post’s own wide header; but it served their purpose and it is nice to feel that I have made a small but useful contribution to some real science and the dissemination of it.
A lovely interesting use of one of your images Jessica….
Jessica, its good that you are getting the recognition you deserve for your excellent work. I have noticed that you are delving into your achive a lot recently. Is there a reason for this? Its good to see them though as I only recently joined you following.
Thanks Bob ‘not a coconut’ South Oxfordshire England
Thank you, Evelyn.
Thank you, Bob. The old posts written in 2009 had been in “cold storage” for years, hidden from public view, and I just thought I would make them public again. I tended to do this on days when I was posting a single image of water or rock to give something a bit more interesting for regular followers. The old posts would not have been automatically visible to general internet users. It is true that current followers of the blog might not realise that there are over 1600 earlier posts and tens of thousands of images accessible via the category search or search box.
I love this photo, for one thing. And I am glad that your work lives on and gets new viewers. I know it’s sparked a lot of thinking for me. Congratulations.
Thank you, Claudia. Yes, It is pleasing that the photographs are considered useful, and in a surprising variety of ways. I will post some more examples in due course.