January Roses

 This is one of the last rose blossoms on the Iceberg rose.  It will soon be time to prune back all the roses before they start putting on their new growth for the year. 

 The cyclamen along the back old sidewalk beside the garage are starting to bloom again.  The dutch iris in this bed have 8 inch long sprouts showing.  As you can see the oriental poppies have new growth showing.  We have been having a mild winter, with lots of rain.  We needed the rain.  The river is not too high.. it is just running at a normal level.  People in other areas of the Island and lower mainland have had some snow and storms.  There were quite a few people without power a few days ago.

 This is a view up the old sidewalk along the side of the garage towards the back fence.  I need to get out and do the Autumn clean up that did not happen.  I am just not a tidy gardener.  I like the moss, too and let it grow on all the ugly cement.  The moss garden is expanding under the deck.  I think I need to move some of the ferns over to the cedar hedge side and let them go wild over there where those neighbors have beat the hell out of my cedars so that they are not screening anything any more. 

This is one of the cars that was out for the New Year's day run with the VCCC.  Lovely old Buick.

Now for my rant, which you will be seeing more of in my posts:
Copyright Infringement
Over the past few months I have become aware of the fact that many of my photos that I have posted on this blog are being taken and used by other people on social media sites, personal websites, and blogs, many of them on commercial pages.

The way I find the copyright infringement is by right click any photo I suspect is being used and doing a google search for it.  Another way is use Tineye on line search, or get the Tineye reverse search plugins for your browser.  Tineye Search.

When you find an infringement on your photo there is a suggested procedure to follow  using a DMCA take down notice. Here is a quote from an article on dpreview:  depreview
"If you find a website that is using one of your images without permission, contact the ISP that is hosting the culpable website to report the infringement and ask that the infringement stop. The letter you send is called a “DMCA takedown notice.” The ISP is required to make its agent’s name and address available so that you can send it the notification."  THIS IS A VERY INFORMATIVE ARTICLE.   Be sure to read it.

An informative article about Take Down Notices This is very informative article by  Copyright Carolyn E. Wright, Esq.
www.photoattorney.com
All rights reserved  that plainly gives you the steps to prepare a DMCA take down notice, including:
(if you go to the website you can click on each of the steps for more information.)
Step 1 - Finding the ISP that is Hosting the Website With Your Image, including a whois lookup and a dns lookup URL

Step 2 - Drafting Your Takedown Notice

First Consider Whether The Use of Your Image is a Fair Use
 - she gives us a link to her article regarding Fair Use.  In this regard I believe that any photograph taken by you has your copyright automatically. It would be a good idea to embed your copyright or watermark on your work.  There is information all over the internet on how to do this. 

Counter Notification
Under this point in her article is the last sentence:  quote:   But be sure to register the copyrights to your photos so that you have all of the tools necessary to fight copyright infringement. Unquote. 
This is in regards to filing a lawsuit which unfortunately is the only way to achieve some payment for the infringement of your copyrights.  I think you need to expect a substantial payment on the lawsuit before any lawyer would be interested in spending any time on the case.  Especially when they work on a contingency basis.  And that is really the only way to consider hiring a lawyer, in my opinion, for these lawsuits, unless you have very deep pockets to pay for the time and efforts of a lawyer.

Conclusion:  I will quote the whole of the conclusion of her article:
Quote: 

Infringements are much too common these days. Fortunately, there are tools to fight them – the DMCA takedown notice is one of the powerful ones.

Carolyn E. Wright is an attorney dedicated to the legal needs for photographers. Get the latest in legal information at Carolyn’s website, www.photoattorney.com. These and other legal tips for photographers are available in Carolyn’s book, The Photographer’s Legal Guide, available on her website.

NOTE: The information provided here is for educational purposes only. If you have legal concerns or need legal advice, be sure to consult with an attorney.  Unquote.

In conclusion of my post I will give you the URL that is the story of a Blogger who was simply using a photo she found some where on the internet and was totally unaware of Copyright Infringement until she was being sued by lawyers for Copyright Infringement.  Apologizing for the misuse of the photo and taking it off her blog did not let her off the hook.  She is a brave lady for posting this story on her blog:  Bloggers Beware she calls it.  http://www.blogher.com/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-using-photos-your-blog-my-story?page=0,1  sued for copyright infringement

Since I have learned about this issue I have spent a lot of time chasing the people who are illegally using my photos, with nothing gained for my time and effort.

... more of my adventures in copyright infringement in my next post, including information on Pinterest and how to prevent your photos on your site from being pinned... that is used by others on that social media site.

July in December

 Maltese Cross is a lychnis.  My mom had this fine old fashioned perennial growing in her garden.  I need to get it to spread around a bit more in my garden.  The flowers are very good in boquets, also.

 The montebretia is a good cut flower too.  In the garden it needs to be staked to keep it from flopping over everything.  The humming birds love it.

 The red currant bush was loaded with fruit this year.  I still have currant jelly from a couple of years ago, so did not harvest the crop this year.

The sumac trees in the woodland.  I like these trees for a number of reasons... the foliage and the autumn color.  They sucker and are producing a small sumac grove in the corner of my woodland garden.  They do not live very long or grow too tall.  They are easily removed if  needed.

As you can see these are plants from July with Christmas colors.  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is looking forward to an equally excellent year in 2013.

My new year's resolution is to get more of the albums for my web page finished.  I only managed to get the June Gardening album finished in 2012.  This is a start on the July album.  My travel page is getting further and further behind.  It was nice to have the Malta trip done up for show and tell to friends who were traveling there a few months ago. 

I have been spending far too much time chasing low lifes who have been stealing my photos from this blog and using them on their commercial web pages, and otherwise.  This is copy right infringement.  Anyone know a good lawyer who might work on a contingency basis?    In searching for help in this war I ran across this blog:  http://www.blogher.com/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-using-photos-your-blog-my-story   It is very informative, but as you can see from the comments,  these  thieves are everywhere and need more photographers to rally to the cause.  Why should we have our work stolen with no credit or compensation.  Why should the onus be on the photographer to find the law breakers and go to great expense and hours of time to get some justice?  The social media places like pininterest, facebook, and etc., seem to encourage this 'sharing' and make anyone using their sites have to 'opt out' of their sharing.  And this only after a class action suit.  Instagram is owned by Facebook and is, I believe the photo upload engine for the site.  They have recently been in the news for their terms of use that were set to give them the rights to use any photos loaded to FaceBook.  Who knew they even existed?  http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business/companies/121218/instagram-no-intention-sell-your-photos
With regards to this blog, it is owned by Google and is free.  You get what you pay for.  I have found many of my garden photos taken from this blog and used all over the net.   I think most of the photos are from older posts.  Since Google changed the format for publishing to our blogspot blogs I have not been using as many tags, labels, or keywords.  I think this makes it harder for the google bots to find the images and therefore I am getting fewer hits from the search bots.  I find it inconvenient to add labels to my posts in this new format.  This may well be a blessing in disguise.  I don't need the low lifes stealing my photos, nor am I in need of hits and views on my blog, as there is no advertising here.  My web page never has photos stolen.  It is old fashioned and not built for being searched by the google bots and so is probably the safest place to keep my stuff.  I know where it is, and I can send anyone there when I have something to show them.  I own my own domain and Godaddy provides ample hosting space at very reasonable rates.  I am thinking of getting another domain to use to build a wordpress blog.. perhaps in 2013.  Where will I ever find the time?

December in the Garden

 the white floribunda rose, Iceberg, that is next to our front door, still has some blossoms hanging on. 

 The last of the Autumn leaves have left the trees.  I have not been out for about 3 weeks.  But it won't take long to clean things up when I do get out there.  We have been having quite a lot of rain.  Our river is not over full, so we obviously needed all this rain.

This is an old photo of buffalo that I have been playing with and trying to make it into the 'Impressionist Painting' kind of a photo.  If you see it large and stand well back from the photo it looks suitably sharp.  I doubt that the impressionist painters ever had buffalo in their paintings though.  Monet would astounded, to say the least.

The apocalypse is upon us -- be sure you have some clean underwear on hand.