Diane Schuller, Your All Occasion Custom Photographer

For well over a decade now, we use nothing but pure all natural soap. No dyes, no drying chemicals, no phosphates, no perfumes; just pure soap made from ingredients found in Mother Nature. We used to order from a fantastic place out of Ontario, Lake of the Woods Sunrise Soap Company. The only reason we switched from their outstanding product was because we wanted to try and find a supplier closer to home. So now we order from Cascadia Soaps.

At Cascadia Soaps they raise their own goats and make an amazingly smooth and rich soap from the milk of their Nubian Goats. We discovered them about 10 years ago on a trip to Vancouver when we saw their lush display at the Granville Island Public Market. We purchased several bars to take home and try and have been with them ever since. Although you can buy all their natural soaps in bars, we purchase ours in bulk, then cut it ourselves when it arrives. There’s a bit of savings that way but what I really like is to be able to cut the bars nice and thick. These photos show the most recent order that arrived: two logs of lavender goats milk soap and one log of unscented goats milk soap. I love the wholesome earthiness of these soaps but the huge benefits are how gentle they are on my extremely dry & sensitive skin. The other big benefit is that it is so earth friendly to boot! Can’t beat that.

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Diane is a freelance photographer serving Grande Prairie and the Peace River region from her rural residence near Hythe, Alberta. She is available for commercial, environmental, editorial, and portrait assignments. Contact her (above) or visit her website to view her portfolio.

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All photos on this site are Copyright © Diane Schuller, All Rights Reserved. It is illegal to copy, download, take screenshots, or otherwise use these photos without the express written permission of the photographer. Thank you for your respect.

{This will be much longer than most of my posts, due to the nature of the subject. I must also warn that this was written with my own personal views and, as you’ll discover, I have some strong opinions on this topic.}

As soon as we post a photo online, it’s out there, a sitting duck for anyone who may wish to do so, to come and grab a copy of it and use it for who-knows-what purpose. It happens and it happens more on certain sites than others. This is particularly important to be aware of if we are posting photos of children and you can guess why that is. In this digital world photos are easily manipulated in ways that I will leave to your imagination. I wrote a post earlier this year about protecting your online images and, if you haven’t read it, that may be an ideal starting point in realizing how often & easy it is to steal other people’s photos. You’ll notice that in the past year or more all the photos I upload either have my watermark or have the copyright © symbol attached (Notice how big and almost obnoxious it is? That’s intentional). This doesn’t necessarily stop someone from stealing it but it makes more work for someone who might be wanting the photo. I also have the right click disabled although people can still take screen shots if they really want to grab a photo. Even though this is totally illegal and against all copyright laws, people do this kind of thing everyday. I’ve already gone slightly off track. Let’s talk about posting photos of children online, specifically about posting them at public photo sharing sites such as Flickr.

I admit that I did post a few photos of children on my Flickr account. I never used to but earlier this year I began to think it couldn’t be that bad. Each time (and that was only 5 or 6 total photos) I did not add tags and was very careful about the title I attached. Why, you wonder? Because those creeps out there who are looking for photos of children to put on their website, to manipulate the photos in ways that are disgusting, search using the keywords many people put in their tags: child, children, baby, toddler, kids, bath time, girl, boy, and so on. Those creeps also go to public sites such as Flickr, in particular, because there are thousands of photos of children posted free for the taking, many of which are tagged. They can find them anyway even if they’re not tagged but they have to work a bit harder to get around that — but they do. When they go to Flickr, for example, they also head straight to the Groups where thousands of images in one subject area (kids, women, babies, etc.) exist and make it so easy to pick and choose whatever they want.  The reason I have pointed out Flickr is because it’s a known ‘playground’ for these people who steal photos for any purpose but that includes weirdos who want photos of children. They also know that there are public places (such as Flickr) where the pickings are easy and plentiful so they tend to go for the easy fishing holes. After all, why head out into the big wide ocean (or Internet) when you know there are these great spots where there are so many fish you can actually pick and choose?

So, if you’re going to stick with using a public photo sharing site, there are ways to make it less easy (notice I didn’t say hard) to access photos of your children. You can change your settings (but this is NOT foolproof) so the images are not public but only available to friends or family. It’s really important to leave titles blank or not to use titles that say things like “Timmy in the tub” or “Baby Brenda bare on the rug” — you get the idea. Avoid tagging the images especially with some of the words/phrases I mentioned earlier in this post. Don’t post images in Groups at Flickr. Check every single person who “follows you” or becomes “a contact”: if they don’t have images, block them; if they have questionable images, block them. Don’t post images of children posed in adult-like poses. I have seen two different ‘photographers’ on Flickr who have posted photos of children (theirs, I think) and they have them posed in seductive Hollywood-like poses — I’m talking toddlers and elementary aged children. It’s disgusting in my view but talk about tempting the weirdos. Or, you can do as I’ve done and remove every single photo of a child from Flickr.

Is there a safe online place? No. But if you’d like to have a way of sharing your children’s photos, why don’t you simply email a few to grandparents, aunts & uncles, or friends? Or better yet, mail a few prints to them. Consider avoiding these sites altogether and burn photos to CD and mail it to family & friends. If you really, really want to have an online spot for your child’s photos there are places that are less dense in terms of numbers and that require password protection. That is likely what I would suggest as an alternative to the public photo sharing sites. For anyone who has a Mac for instance, you can use the online gallery (MobileMe) with the password protection turned on (again, don’t tag them) and make the url available only to grandparents, relatives, and close friends. Also, change that password from time to time; don’t use the same one all the time. Password protection is a help but it definitely is NOT foolproof either. If you don’t have a Mac then seek out a place where you at least have the password protection for people to view the photos such as FamiPix, but there are others out there. (By the way my personal view is that I am adamantly against the use of Facebook for photos of any kind. But that’s a long topic all by itself.)

One quick note about blogs. If you post photos of your children on your blog, be sure you are (daily) checking your comments and those who are linking to you. Get savvy in realizing that many of these creeps attach themselves to blogs by saying things like “Love your site” “what great information” “I’ll come back” and other smarmy, flattering things. Many are spelled incorrectly, some aren’t using proper English (though some do), many use women’s names (that are surely false btw), but they are a bad kind of spam. Many of them are ‘feeder’ blogs (linking to you and linking to ___ ). Get rid of them! I have visited some of your blogs and have seen these in your comments; I’ve even given a hint in my comments, so hope the hint was caught. Be careful because this sort of spam is for sites that don’t respect children, if you understand what I mean. Don’t be flattered — that’s what they are counting on; check them out, thoroughly.

So now, some of you are wondering about why I post photos of children here on my photo journal. I’m not alone and you’ll find that nearly all photographers who photograph children and families, do post those images on their websites and blogs. These are harder to find for those weirdos out there because they go where the fishing is thick and easy. Would they or could they grab a photo from a photographer’s site? They could, but ours are harder to locate in terms of tags but also harder to capture (unless they do screen shots). It’s so much easier for them to head to those public places where they can pick and choose and help themselves so easily, I doubt they head off into deep water much at all. And then they have to get rid of the watermarks and so on … it’s so much easier to head to their favourite fishing hole (Flickr and Facebook public pages).

There’s more to discuss about this topic but I hope this gives people food for thought. Feel free to share these thoughts with others or to send the url of this post to others. Get a discussion going. Consider safer ways to share photos of your children. I think a lot of grandparents, in particular, would prefer to get actual snapshots of their grandchildren in the mail rather than those online glimpses. {Yes, I practice what I preach: although I do email a few photos to family, I regularly have images of the grandkids printed and send them in the mail! Who doesn’t love to receive mail?}

Recommended Resource:

“How Safe are Photo-Sharing Websites?” this addresses another important aspect of safety ( I recommend printing this article out and sharing the url with others so they can do the same. )

UPDATE (July 2010) FYI: The same principle now applies to posting photos on Facebook. Those same creeps who have been using the thick pool of photos-in-one-place for stealing photos of kids, babies, or women are now doing the exact same thing with Facebook. That is why I deleted my Facebook business page earlier this year and now only have a personal page for friends-only (and I have NO photos posted there either).

{Recipe at the end of this post.}    I live in a region known as Peace Country thus the reason for my title. Living in the country does have its benefits, though I still long for the day we can return to the city. What I will miss are my beloved barn swallows. I love those birds and they are truly one of my morning delights.

A few days ago Roberta Murray tweeted that she noticed the hummingbirds are beginning to migrate south. I see that occurring as well (remember that I live north of the 55th parallel). My yard is currently a smorgasbord of sources for hummingbird nectar: tall blue delphiniums, maltese cross (lychnis), beautiful spires of fireweed, a vast array of lilies, coral bells (heuchera), and believe it or not, hummingbirds have been seen taking nectar from the holes in our birch trees created by the sapsuckers. I had to force myself indoors this morning knowing how much work I had waiting for me — but watching the hummingbirds and all the other birds was so entertaining and relaxing.

Most years, although we do get robins, none of the babies make it to fledge from the nest (because the squirrels & magpies eat them). For some strange reason, we actually have a couple families of robins that made it (though I was quite diligent about getting rid of magpies this spring) and they are a delight to watch.

[caption id="attachment_1025" align="aligncenter" width="750" caption=""Fireweed grows wild and hummingbirds love it; one reason why I intentionally grow it in my garden. Besides, it's beautiful.""][/caption]

I’m grateful for the feedback from some of you regarding upcoming topics. With the topic of posting photos of children on online photo sharing sites, that is a very long and involved discussion with multiple aspects. For that reason, I may discuss it in segments in a series of posts. It’s something I’ve been aware of for a very long time, in fact, I no longer post any photos of children at Flickr. Photos of children will only appear here and on my website. I’ve discussed in previous posts how people use sites like Flickr to actually search for photos and then help themselves to them. I won’t get into the topic today but will discuss it in upcoming posts. Yesterday, Shutter Sisters, had a discussion on the topic of having children’s photos on Flickr if you’d like to begin thinking about the concerns of posting children’s photos to online sharing sites.

Oh, before I log off and get back to work, I have a killer recipe to share with you (I know, what’s up with me?). All my life I have been a fan of egg salad, whether on its own or in a salad. Not everyone makes it … well … as tasty as it could be. Although I do have an old standby way of making it, today I made a similar version with a bit of a twist. It’s killer! I have to share it. I never use a recipe for anything and always go by eye so these amounts are approximate.

DIANE’S EGG SALAD

4 hard boiled eggs, peeled and sliced into small dices

Approximately 1-2 Tbsp finely chopped celery

(Optional: 1 finely chopped green onion)

Pinch of your favourite seasoning salt

Pinch of fresh ground pepper

Dressing:

2 Tbsp. mayonnaise (not that awful low fat stuff)

1 Tbsp. white vinegar

Secret ingredient for killer egg salad: about 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

Mix dressing to emulsify, adding more liquid if necessary. It should not be runny but just barely moist enough to hold the egg together.

Now add the emulsified dressing to the egg mixture, stirring only enough to evenly coat and not to mush the egg. Serve as is on a bed of greens or in fresh rye (or bread of your choice) as a sandwich. It’s killer! Enjoy.

The reason I haven’t been posting is because I’m struggling with a bad flu (yes, again). Today is Canada Day so a big shout out to all my Canadian neighbours! Enjoy the day spent outdoors away from the computer. 

See you when I’m feeling better. If wishes could come true, this is where I’d want to be today.

My tulips are blooming!

Yes, finally my tulips are blooming and so are the dandelions. It just so happens, I don’t mind dandelions. In fact, I like them (hence my logo). If, unlike me, you do mind dandelions, I wrote about controlling dandelions in my last week’s environment column for Grande Prairie Ink! You can check out the archive of that article if you like but if you wish to hang on to the information, I’d recommend printing it out. The newspaper does not keep the archives online forever.

Although in last year’s environment column (for the newspaper I write for) I covered several other tips for controlling dandelions without using toxic chemicals, I would love to learn your methods or strategies for controlling dandelions. Please share them here in the comments.

Diane is an on-location lifestyle photographer based from Grande Prairie, Alberta (serving central & northern Alberta/BC). Visit Diane Schuller Photography.

“The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.”  ~Hanna Rion

Did you catch the previous post on Down Jackets and Lawn Mowing? It’s worth a quick peek.

 

Diane is an on-location lifestyle photographer serving Grande Prairie and northern Alberta/B.C. Visit Diane Schuller Photography.

At Shutter Sisters I learned about an exciting one day event coming up for photographers of all stripes. It’s a day through the eyes of photographers around the world (whether you’re an amateur with a point & shoot, a pro, or somewhere in between). This is Scott Kelby’s second annual worldwide photowalk on July 18, 2009. What a fun way to get out in your own community (or if you’re traveling, attend the one in the area where you will be). Check their website to watch the video, learn more, and to see if there is one scheduled for your area. If one isn’t yet scheduled, no problem, you can apply to lead one. It doesn’t matter if you live in a large metropolis, a small town, or wee village. Everyone can participate — simply join up! It doesn’t cost a penny and at the end of the day there is a chance to win some prizes too. Can’t beat that.

Today on What’s Your Play over at Dolce Pics, she is using an image I submitted for the week’s ‘play’. My image is a very ordinary, nothing special, SOOC (straight out of the camera) photo of a teapot. Laura sometimes  uses her images for the ‘play’ and invites others to submit photos for consideration. I thought that particular teapot shot was perfect because it certainly is in need of post processing. That’s the whole idea behind What’s Your Play. Laura does this every Tuesday purely for fun and some interesting post processing experience. If any of you head over to today’s post and decide to take part, please leave a link here to your resulting image. I would love to see what you’ve done with it!

Looks like my newly re-launched website and this improved photo journal are working: I have had three enquiries for photo shoots this past week and have just booked the first of the three!

Coming up tomorrow is a long post I have in my drafts talking about mistakes to avoid when starting up a photography business. Check it out.

PS: As some of you have noticed I ditched the Tofurious template for my photo journal and purchased the ProPhoto2 template. I’m so pleased with the look but especially with how easy it is to use and customize.

Diane is a lifestyle photographer serving Grande Prairie & Northern Alberta. Visit Diane Schuller Photography.

Today is Earth Day around the globe. Being responsible stewards for the environment is not a one-day event; living responsibly every day is how we really make a difference.

[caption id="attachment_1251" align="aligncenter" width="287" caption="Web of life. Copyright © Diane M. Schuller. All Rights Reserved"][/caption]

“This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” ~Chief Seattle

The environment column I write for one of the local newspapers goes online a week after it appears in the newspaper. For a list of some of my recent columns dedicated to making a difference to the environment, with a focus on simple everyday changes, visit the Everyday Earth Wise archives index. Perhaps you will find some small way you can make a big difference — in your life and to the environment. If each of us makes an effort to make small changes, each of these small changes add up to make big changes. Consider talking to your children and your grandchildren about the environment and being responsible stewards. Help them grow a garden this year, learn to compost, and go for walks in nature. If we teach them now, they grow up learning the important habits of a responsible earth steward. Although it’s best to get outside with them, visit Eco-Kids Canada or Eco-Kids (World) for some great online resources and teaching tools. I’ve listed a few books below for you or the kids but there are many more available at your local library or bookstore. Turn a new leaf starting today!

Before you head off to take some green action, here are links to two of my archived environmental columns. Please note that the newspaper does take these down after a time so if you find either or both of these helpful, I’d recommend printing it out. Here are tips on Repurposing Around the Home and a Do-it-Yourself Eco-Clean Kit. Print them out and put them to use — you’ll be surprised how easy it is to be green and how much money you will save too.

Earth Day is (also) for the Dogs.

Earth Day (Rookie Read-About Holidays)

The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time

Everything Kids’ Environment Book: Learn how you can help the environment-by getting involved at school, at home, or at play (Everything Kids Series)

Easy Green Living: The Ultimate Guide to Simple, Eco-Friendly Choices for You and Your Home

Invigorating: giving strength or energy to

 

[caption id="attachment_1269" align="aligncenter" width="576" caption="Canada Geese in Spring near Valhalla, Alberta. Copyright © Diane Schuller. All Rights Reserved"][/caption]

Yes, that is the best word to describe my weekend. There are two reasons why it was invigorating: I spent the weekend with people and interacting with them plus I was able to get away from the farm and being tied down by the dogs. Don’t get me wrong, I love the dogs but because of them I can’t go anywhere unless my husband is home to take care of them. As for the former reason, a reminder that I often go weeks (very literally) without seeing another human being. So, this weekend was fantastic! Saturday I was in Grande Prairie all day attending a workshop where I also led a session on goal-setting for writers. Sunday I spent several hours driving through the spring countryside heading north of Grimshaw to meet a woman for a writing consult. We spent a few hours together talking about writing projects and I helped get her started on setting writing goals as well as other writing-related discussion.

[caption id="attachment_1268" align="aligncenter" width="576" caption="Spring calves, northern Alberta. Copyright © Diane M. Schuller. All Rights Reserved"][/caption]

Just being around people, interacting with them, plus the time away from the farm was so invigorating. What invigorates you?

An optimist is the human personification of spring.  ~Susan J. Bissonette

[caption id="attachment_1191" align="aligncenter" width="576" caption="Canada Geese, Trumpeter Swans, and a wide range of ducks on frozen ice here in Alberta. Copyright © Diane Schuller. All Rights Reserved."][/caption] [caption id="attachment_1192" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="... notice the Northern Pintails in flight. Copyright © Diane Schuller. All Rights Reserved."][/caption]