You May Now Photograph The Bride

A bride and groom and their attendants pose for a photograph at the overlook at Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, which has a great view of Union Station and downtown Kansas City. The four pylons of Bartle Hall are on the left of the skyline.

I love photographing brides, whether they are relatives, friends or strangers. When I saw the beautiful wedding photographs from around the world in “There Goes the Bride!” by Terri and James Vance, I was inspired to look through my photographs of bridal parties. I’ve posted a few of my favorites here. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to take many photographs at my children’s weddings. Too busy! I also apologize to anyone whose view I may have blocked when I was trying to grab the perfect wedding shot. I lose my head when I see a bride.

A bride and groom relax on a bench along the Avon River in Christchurch, New Zealand.

A wedding party gathers for photographs in Fitzroy Gardens in Melbourne, Australia.

This bride laughs as she stops her wind-blown veil with her foot. She’s on her way to a park in Christchurch, New Zealand, to get her photograph taken.

Here’s an elegant newlywed pair heading for their limousine after their wintertime wedding ceremony in the Kansas City area.

An English Cocker Spaniel walks down a garden path with her newlywed owners after their garden wedding near Ithaca, New York.

A bride and groom walk on a beach in St. John, Virgin Islands, which is a favorite for destination weddings.

Newlyweds walk under a pergola at the Laura Conyers Smith Municipal Rose Garden in Kansas City, a popular spot for weddings.

Every guest seems to have a camera to capture the bride and groom as they walk down the rose-strewn aisle in this Napa Valley, California, wedding.

Bridal parties appear regularly at the Nelson-Museum of Art in Kansas City. I saw at least two bridal groups swarming the shuttlecocks on this day.

Brides and grooms love to get their photographs taken in front of one of the shuttlecocks at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. A Kansas City Star photographer was shooting this bride and groom for a feature on the shuttlecocks when I took this photograph. They weren’t the only wedding party there that day being photographed in front of a shuttlecock. There are four of these shuttlecock sculptures at the museum, designed by sculptors Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.

UPDATE: My husband took this photo on Signal Hill, Cape Town, South Africa, which we visited in January 2013. Photographing brides must be contagious!

My husband took this photo while I was looking elsewhere and didn’t see this bride and groom. I think my husband might have been bitten briefly by the bride photo bug. Here, a bride and groom consult with their photographer on Signal Hill in Cape Town, South Africa. Signal Hill provides a spectacular view of Table Bay and the city of Cape Town and makes a lovely spot for a wedding photo.

To see larger versions of these photographs, click on the thumbnails below.

A bride and groom and their attendants pose for a photograph at the overlook at Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, which has a great view of Union Station and downtown Kansas City.

This bride laughs as she stops her wind-blown veil with her foot. She’s on her way to a park in Christchurch to get her photograph taken.

Newlyweds walk under a pergola at the Laura Conyers Smith Municipal Rose Garden in Kansas City, a popular spot for weddings.

A bride and groom walk on a beach in St. John, Virgin Islands, which is a favorite for destination weddings.

An English Cocker Spaniel walks down a garden path with her newlywed owners after their garden wedding near Ithaca, New York.

Here’s an elegant newlywed pair heading for their limousine after their wintertime wedding ceremony.

Bridal parties appear regularly at the Nelson-Museum of Art in Kansas City. I saw at least two bridal groups swarming the shuttlecocks on this day.

Brides and grooms love to get their photographs taken in front of one of the shuttlecocks at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. A Kansas City Star photographer was shooting this bride and groom for a feature on the shuttlecocks when I took this photograph. They weren’t the only wedding party there that day being photographed in front of a shuttlecock. There are four of these shuttlecock sculptures at the museum, designed by sculptors Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.

Every guest seems to have a camera to capture the bride and groom as they walk down the rose-strewn aisle in this Napa Valley, California, wedding.

A bride and groom relax on a bench along the Avon River in Christchurch, New Zealand.

My husband took this photo while I was looking elsewhere and didn’t see this bride and groom. I think my husband might have been bitten briefly by the bride photo bug. Here, a bride and groom consult with their photographer on Signal Hill in Cape Town, South Africa. Signal Hill provides a spectacular view of Table Bay and the city of Cape Town and makes a lovely spot for a wedding photo.

Marvelous Melbourne

People gather at Federation Square, which is a civic and cultural center in Melbourne, Australia. About Federation Square.

Four years ago (has it really been that long?) my husband and I and our long-time friends Mike and Anita visited Melbourne, Australia.  We’re enduring another snowstorm in Kansas City (it’s late March, doesn’t Mother Nature read the calendar!), so I’m looking through my photographs of warmer days and places, including Melbourne.  I’m feeling warmer already!

Melbourne is a gorgeous city of more than four million people  on Australia’s southeast coast in the state of Victoria. It’s known as the “Garden City” and Australia’s “Cultural Capital.”  Melbourne is also the home of the Australian Open. We coincidentally were there at the same time as the tournament as we made our way to Tasmania.

The Old Melbourne Gaol is now a museum. Between 1842 and its closure in 1929 the old Melbourne Gaol was the scene of 133 hangings including Australia’s most infamous citizen, the bushranger Ned Kelly, who was hanged on the gaol grounds on November 11, 1880.

Melbourne was ranked as the world’s most liveable city in ratings published by the Economist Group’s Intelligence Unit in August 2011 and in 2012. It’s no mystery why Melburnians call their city Marvelous Melbourne. People from Tasmania (it was then called Van Diemen’s Land) founded Melbourne in 1835, 47 years after the European settlement of Australia.  The 1850s gold rush in the state of Victoria transformed Melbourne into one of the world’s largest and richest cities.

We were only there for two days in January 2009, so I’m not an expert, but we did take a whirlwind tour of some of notable sights, such as the Melbourne Museum, The Melbourne Aquarium, Rod Laver Arena (from the outside), St. Paul’s Cathedral, The Royal Exhibition Building, Captain James Cook’s Cottage, and Federation Square. We visited the Old Melbourne Gaol, which held Ned Kelly, one of Australia’s most notorious bushrangers (highway robber), who was hanged there in 1880.  Heath Ledger played Ned Kelly in a 2003 movie, also starring Orlando Bloom.

This is the home of the parents of Captain James Cook. The cottage was built in 1755 in the English village of Great Ayton, North Yorkshire, deconstructed and and then re-built in 1934 in Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Melbourne is known for its cast iron trim, which adorns “Melbourne Style” Victorian terrace houses. The gold rush in 1850s triggered a building boom, enabling developers to build costly and ornate Victorian-style homes and public building.

It was a hot day on the streets of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, January 21, 2009.

Contemporary Aborigine Art was on display in an art gallery in Melbourne, Australia, January 2009. Melbourne is  Australia’s cultural capital and is home to the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia’s oldest and largest public art museum.

Coincidentally, we were in Melbourne during the Australian Open Tennis Tournament, held at Rod Laver Arena. This is as close as we got. It was very hot. The following week, after we left, was even hotter, and sadly there were many bushfires near Melbourne, resulting in the deaths of many people and animals.

On January 21, 2009, in Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia, people gather to watch a re-broadcast of Barack Obama taking the oath of office to become the President of the United States.

Melbourne, Australia, has the largest tram network in the world. We rode the Heritage trams that operate on the free City Circle route intended for visitors.

This is the interior of St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne, which is the cathedral church of the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne, Victoria in Australia.

The Royal Exhibition Building is a World Heritage Site-listed building in Melbourne, Australia, completed in 1880.

Phar Lap (1926–1932) was a champion Thoroughbred racehorse, whose on exhibit in the Melbourne Museum, which is in the Carlton Gardens in Melbourne, Australia, adjacent to the Royal Exhibition Building. About Phar Lap

Click on any thumbnail to see a slide show of more photographs in full size  of Melbourne. Below the slide show are links to information about Melbourne.

About Melbourne.

About Phar Lap

About Federation Square.

About the Melbourne Aquarium.

About the Melbourne Museum.

About Captain Cook’s’ Cottage.

About the Leafy Seadragon.

Here is why is there so much cast iron lacework on buildings in Melbourne.

Intellectual Property Rights

As a writer and photographer, I’m often territorial about my words and images, so I can understand any creative person getting huffy or even litigious when their intellectual property is used without permission. If I want some pithy quotes, I use the words of a long-dead people, always crediting them, of course.

I designed a greeting card using a photograph I took of old books my mother has collected. I added some quotes from five long-dead authors and philosophers about books and then posted the card on a Print on Demand (POD) site where I have many products. The card is to be a small gift for my fellow book club members (Shhh, don’t tell them.)

A few days later, I received an email from the POD site informing me that my “design contains an image or text that infringes on intellectual
property rights. We have been contacted by the intellectual property right holder and at their request we will be removing your product from …’s Marketplace due to intellectual property claims.”

There was no clue which element might have offended, so I pressed the POD site to find out. Was it one of the publishers listed on the book spines in the photograph? I couldn’t imagine that it would be any of the people I quoted. They’d all been dead at least seventy-five years, when copyrights expire. I realize that copyright issues are much more complicated than that (after all, lawyers are involved) and some copyrights can be renewed. I’ve recently learned that even many versions of the Bible are copyrighted. The King James version, however, is in the public domain.

A plaque featuring Mark Twain's words about Australia is on Writers Walk on Circular Quay of Sydney Harbor in Sydney, Australia. Somehow I must have known I'd meet up with Mark Twain again when I took this photograph.

This was the advice I’d been given about Fair Use. “Public domain works are works whose copyrights were issued before 1923. Many authors choose to use quotes only from people who have been dead more than seventy-five years because their quotes are now considered “Fair Use” under the public domain. Copyrights are good for the duration of the author’s life and for seventy-five years beyond their death. It is generally safe to use quotes from authors who died 1936 or before.”

The POD site fingered the complainer: Mark Twain, or, more accurately, the representatives of Mark Twain. “We have been contacted by the licensing company (I won’t name them) who represent Mark Twain, and at their request, have removed the product from the …  Marketplace.”

I went to the Mark Twain Rep site where I read: “We work with companies around the world who wish to use the name or likeness of Mark Twain in any commercial fashion. The words and the signature “Mark Twain” are trademarks owned and protected by the Estate of Mark Twain. In addition, the image, name, and voice of Mark Twain is a protectable property right owned by the Estate of Mark Twain. Any use of the above, without the express written consent of the Estate of Mark Twain is strictly prohibited.”

Since I make no money from this blog, I hope Twain’s representatives don’t hunt me down here. I’m not even putting Mark Twain or his real name Samuel Clemons in the tags.

Mark Twain was very concerned about protecting his work from pirates, even though he also fussed over nitpicking copyright laws. He wanted the profits from his works — and he was sure there would be plenty of them — to continue to go to his daughters after his death. In Twain’s day, copyright protection expired after 42 years.

Twain is one of the most widely known authors in the world and is still kicking up a fuss today. A publisher recently republished  a politically correct version of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by substituting the word slave for the N word, which provoked a lot of discussion — and more sales.

In November 2010, the first of three volumes of Twain’s autobiography were published complete and unexpurgated for the first time by the Mark Twain Project a hundred years after Twain’s death. Twain had said that he wanted to suppress the publication of some of his more biting comments for a hundred years, but Twain shrewdly also knew that this new version would start the clock ticking on new copyright protection.

Here are two discussions about Twain and copyright:
Mark Twain’s plans to compete with copyright “pirates” (in 1906)

The Mark Twain Project’s Discussion of Copyright and Permissions.

About the Politically Correct Version of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

Here’s a link to the revised greeting card minus the Mark Twain quote.   I did use a quote from Abraham Lincoln and another from Kenkō Yoshida (or Yoshida Kenkō), a Japanese Buddhist monk, who died around 1350.  I think I’m safe there, but you never know.

Love of Books Card.

“A day is coming, when, in the eye of the law, literary property will be as sacred as whisky, or any other of the necessaries of life.” ~ Mark Twain ~

A Year Ago…

On January 21, 2009, in Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia, people gather to watch a re-broadcast of Barack Obama taking the oath of office to become the President of the United States. Outside, another group is watching The Australian Open Tennis Tournament on a giant screen. The tournament was going on at nearby Rod Laver Arena.

Scientists Discover Origin of a Cancer in Tasmanian Devils

This Tasmanian Devil looks menacing, but he's just yawning. Devils can get peevish, though, particularly at meal time when they have to share. Devils have the strongest jaws per size of any mammal and can completely devour their meals, bones, fur and all. They are stellar members of the clean plate club!

Above is a photograph I took of a Tasmanian Devil in January 2009 at the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park in Tasmania.  Links to my previous posts on the Tassie Devil are at the bottom.  (I’m just wild about the devils!)

The Tasmanian devil, a fox-sized marsupial, was listed in Australia as an endangered species in May 2009 because of a contagious cancer that has wiped out more than half of the wild population.  New research shows  that the cancers are caused by infectious tumors, rather than viruses as previously thought.  One scientist described the tumors, which are passed from devil to devil through bites, as a parasite.  The new finding will help scientists to devise vaccines that could save the Tasmanian devils and also shed light on the nature of infectious cancers in humans.

Two young Tasmanian devils.

Devils do not exist in the wild outside Tasmania, although zoos and wildlife parks on mainland Australia as well as on Tasmania are breeding captive populations as a strategy against total extinction.  The Tasmanian Devil is the largest carnivorous marsupial now that the Tasmanian Tiger is extinct.

For details on this study, here is a New York Times Article: Scientists Discover Origin of a Cancer in Tasmanian Devils

My previous posts about and photographs of the Tasmanian Devil:

I’m a Friend of the Tasmanian Devil.

More Deviltry.

 

Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa

Artist assistants stand next to 3,604 cups of coffee which have been made into a giant Mona Lisa in Sydney, Australia . The 3,604 cups of coffee were each filled with different amounts of milk to create the different shades! Those Aussies sure do know how to have fun (as I know from personal experience.) 

Another fun-loving, art-loving, puzzle-loving person is Shouts from the Abyss (despite his grim name), who posts some of his pixel puzzles.  To find them, click on pixels in his tags on his blog (on my blogroll).  Here’s one of his puzzles. They get harder, but I thought I’d start you out easy.

 

Farmville on Facebook

A cousin's virtual farm.

I signed up for Facebook a few years ago to see what my children were doing at college.  Yes, that sounds like spying…. Instant Messenger, MySpace, Facebook.  They signed up, I signed up.  (They weren’t sneaky enough to keep it a secret.) As soon as they moved on — it took me a while to catch on — I trailed after. (The latest is LinkedIn.) I wanted to reassure myself that my children were still alive, since they weren’t big on calling home or answering their cell phones, which never seemed to be charged — or so they said.   When my daughter was very sick with mononucleosis, I saw it first on her status update. She had dragged herself to her computer, typed in that she had never been more sick in her life, and then collapsed.

Both children are graduated now, and although my anxiety is no less, I have found that I’ve been sucked into some of these sites without giving much thought to my children’s online activities. (They seldom post anyway…)  A recent Time Magazine article reported that Facebook  isn’t even for young people anymore, even though it was started for college students.  Too many parents have invaded it.  Middle-agers are the ones who seem to use Facebook the most.  I’ve re-connected with far-flung relatives and friends.

A friend, also on Facebook, recently urged me to sign up for the Farmville game on Facebook. I’d never seen much from her on Facebook, but she is very active on Farmville.  She claimed it was addictive.  I signed up as a favor, since you need neighbors on Farmville.  But you can’t sign up and forget it.  Immediately, my strawberry crop withered because I forgot all about harvesting it.  Farmville is a very interactive game, because you help out your neighbors, rescue their crops, give them livestock and other gifts, etc., a very idealized version of the real world.  You can’t rise in the Farmville world without helping out your neighbors or getting help from them.

It’s only been a week since I’ve joined, so I don’t know how long I’ll last. I’m not a video or computer game player. I’ve accepted other invitations for other Facebook games and never played them.  I waste too much time already in the “real” world.  However, I already feel responsible to my neighbors in this virtual world.  I was amazed to see how many Facebook friends were playing this game. You can publish your results on Facebook, but most don’t, so it’s not until you join that you see the “closet” players.   It’s fun to see what different “neighbors” have chosen to plant or raise. Masses of daffodils, vast herds of cows, avocado trees, acres of corn….An Aussie Facebook friend playing Farmville has a lot of leisure equipment, a pool, many topiaries and a lovely banana grove on her farm, which looks more like a resort. Those Aussies know how to live!

P.S. on Nov. 8, 2009.  On Farmville, a popup informed me that I needed to buy more coins.  I said ok, but it asked for real money!  I could pay with a credit, paypal, whatever.  Pay real money, no way!  I feel I’ve logged enough hours that I should get paid! 

Here’s the Time Magazine article.  Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook.

Stoned Wallabies Make Crop Circles in Tasmania

Tasmania produces about half of the world's medicinal opium poppies, under strict regulation. But they can't keep the wallabies out.

My friend Anita, who lives in Canberra,  emailed me this story.  We traveled together in Tasmania in January of this year and saw these poppy fields, and we saw wallabies lounging in rutabaga fields, but we didn’t get to see this!

Stoned wallabies make crop circles
Thu Jun 25, 2009 1:30pm EDT
SYDNEY (Reuters) – The mystery of crop circles in poppy fields in Australia’s southern island state of Tasmania has been solved — stoned wallabies are eating the poppy heads and hopping around in circles.
“We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,” the state’s top lawmaker Lara Giddings told local media on Thursday.
“Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high,” she said.
Many people believe crop circles that mysteriously appear in fields around the world are created by aliens.
Poppy producer Tasmanian Alkaloids said livestock which ate the poppies were known to “act weird” — including deer and sheep in the state’s highlands.
“There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles,” said field operations manager Rick Rockliff.
Australia produces about 50 percent of the world’s raw material for morphine and related opiates.

Aussie Speak

It's the Bar of Babel as speakers from all nations attempt conversation at the Sydney Opera House Bar.

I laughed when I read my friend Anita’s recent facebook status report: “having fun using words like kerfluffle, bungle (as a noun), shambolic (as in shambles), rectitudiness, verballing, and of course tradies, unis, bikies, footies. . .”

Anita, an American, moved to Australia last summer. As a journalist, part of her job is communicating with government officials and other journalists, so she is an interpreter of the various kinds of English, too. In her last position, she spoke Spanish, so she’s up to the challenge.

When we arrived to visit them, Anita and her husband began translating for us.  For example, they advised that “You don’t root for teams, you barrack for them.”  Rooting means something quite different from our definition and is probably not mentioned in polite society…….But we’re all friends here. Most Aussie words and phrases do make sense (sometimes you have to think about it), even if they aren’t the words we normally use.  Sometimes it’s the pronunciation that throws me.

We in the U.S.A. yield, but the Australians give way. Their signs require more letters to get their message across, but it's easier to spell. (Don't we just look at the shape anyway?) Also, note the one lane bridge. We found a lot of those.

I’ve been reading letters and later emails from Aussies for years and thought I knew what they were saying, but hearing it in person I found myself saying or at least thinking “What?”  I need a hearing aid of a different kind.

The people I most easily understood were transplanted English people.  Maybe it’s from my years of watching Masterpiece Theater.

Two of my favorite words are “brilliant” for everything wonderful and “shocking” for terrible, which I heard from my friend Monica when we were stopped in a massive traffic jam in Sydney.  Another good word is “chuffed,” which seems to mean excited, proud or happy, which I’ve heard Down Under and even from fellow English blogger Paula who writes beautiful posts.  She’s on my blogroll as Locks Park Farm.

A “good on you!” to Janelle of What Makes Me Laugh for her funny post on Aussie-isms.  Click here: It’s Not Weird, It’s Not Wrong, It’s Just Different.  She wrote several funny, insightful posts on her recent trip to Australia.  Don’t miss them!

Here's an Aussie mailman on a motorbike with mail saddlebags. Love the orange!

Jan of Planetjan had fun with the language and other differences when her English friends came to visit her in Los Angeles.  Here’s one of her funny posts on the subject: Back to Reality.

  

In New Zealand…well, let’s not go there right now, except to say that egg is pronounced eeg, as in eek, and left as leeft.  Instead, I’ll hand you over to native New Zealander Kiwi Bloke, who has lived in Australia, Canada and even Texas, for all things Kiwi.  He’s Kiwi Bloke on my blogroll and is multi-lingual in the English language.  

Why don’t you tell me your favorite language choices?  Cheers!

I’m Addicted to Digital

My newest addiction! My photographs are the tabby cat in the second row and the Texas waffle in the third row. After all of the "arty" photographs I've taken and submitted, I never dreamed that my two most popular photographs, featured on the RedBubble home page, would be my cat and a waffle I made for my breakfast.

Last month, I stumbled across a photographer’s blog that mentioned the RedBubble art and photography website, so I checked it out — then I signed up.  Now, I can’t stay away from it.  The amount of incredible excellent art and photography on cyberspace is mind-boggling — and from teenagers, even.  

If only we’d had digital photography and computers when I was a kid.  (We did have electric typewriters with correction tape.  And boy did I need the tape! ) All of my hard-earned darkroom skills are now archaic.  Using film, an enlarger and developing chemicals these days is like listening to your music on vinyl disks.  You have to be hard-core to do it.  I love the instant gratification as well as the ability to edit in so many ways in digital photography!  We “edited”  in the film darkroom, too, but it was limited.  And I only did black and white.   (I won’t even go into cameras.  More on that later.)

Birds are an extremely popular photography subject. You need a twist to stand out from the flock. I took this photograph of a cardinal holding on for dear life as he's buffeted in an early spring snow storm on a pear tree branch outside my kitchen window. You can't see the detail here, but the blossoms are covered with snow and the branches encrusted with ice. The poor cardinal, as brave as he is, is probably too common.

I started with Flickr, but I love RedBubble’s Aussie cheekiness.   Etsy is fun, too. (I discovered Kenna Foster on Etsy. She’s also on Flickr.  She’s on my blogroll. Check her out!)  I don’t know how many photography and art sites are online, but there must be tens of thousands of photographers and artists looking at and commenting on one another’s work, everyone from professionals to the people posting their first work.  It’s inspiring, overwhelming and humbling at the same time.

My photograph of Paddington with his mis-matched eyes has been very popular with other cat owners and lovers. Paddington is tired of me pursuing him with a camera and is going to take out a restraining order against me.

On RedBubble or Etsy, there’s a chance that someone will see one of your great photographs or artworks and decide that they can’t live without it. On Etsy, the artists themselves produce and deliver the work.  

If you order through RedBubble, RB produces and ships the art as a card, print, canvas, calendar or poster.  I suspect that much of the art sold on RB is to the artists and photographers themselves.  I bought my own photograph (below) of the View from the Sydney Tower on canvas.  Those RedBubble people know what they’re doing!

Anyone who signs up for RedBubble (It’s free) can also get a free photography website, which is very cool.  You can organize your photos into galleries.  It was incredibly simple.  You can join a huge number of specialty groups on RB, such as landscapes, sunsets and sunrises, wildlife, doors and windows, old theaters, rivers, pets, food, skies  — in fact not even the sky is the limit.   Each group has sub-sets, too.  There are groups with minimal standards, and there are groups by invitation only, and everything in between.

I like to photograph oddball things, such as this van parked at Bondi Beach in Sydney. I think the driver is trying to contact the mother ship.

Featured photographs and art usually are exceptional, awe-inspiring, off-beat, fresh or eye-popping or else tug at your heart-strings (or else the person who selected it just took the next artwork that came along…..)

I know many of you out there are photographers.  What is your favorite photography website?  What are your favorite subjects. What do you do with all of your photographs? Do you print many?  Why do you take photographs?  I wanna know!  If you want to see a RedBubble website, here’s mine.  I’m still working on it.  My favorite gallery is “Fun Stuff”.  Catherine Sherman Photography.

RedBubble.      Flickr.   Etsy.  Beholden to Nature – Kenna Foster Photography.

Thanks to my daughter for saving the RedBubble screen shot for me.

I thought my photograph of this view from the Sydney Tower was spectacular, but the number of spectacular photographs in cyberspace seems to be infinite!