To Catch a Thief

It’s come to my attention that someone has been or had been selling at least one of my photos (the one pictured here) on a site called deviantART. It greatly saddens me that I have just recently started selling prints of my photography and art in order to generate a little side income, and here I find out my first sale went to a thief trying to pass themselves off as a creative type over a year ago, maybe more.

I found this out from a person who lives more than halfway across the country from me who, I accidentally discovered, has had this photo hanging on her wall for over a year. If the seller stole one photo, they more than likely have more (perhaps mine, perhaps other photographers) which they’ve been passing off as their own. If anyone has any information leading to the whereabouts of the perpetrator, feel free to contact me here in a comment or through a message on Flickr or Etsy.

The happy side to this story is the kindness of others. The original purchaser of this photo bought it AGAIN…from me, this time. Not expected, or required. How very nice of her, I must say! And another of my Flickr/Etsy contacts has told me that she is a member of deviantART as well, and is putting out her feelers on my behalf to bring down the lowlife….er….thief. (Thank you both, Janine and Nancy, I truly expected nothing and the kindness and help from each of you has been a wonderful gift!)

Scrap of Paper

During moments of pauses in time at my day job, my hands instinctively search for any little blank piece of cardboard or margin of paper invoice; something to doodle on. I draw over and over, and place each scrap in my bag for transport home at the end of the day, many no larger than two inches long, by just a half inch wide. (Recently, I even drew people on those red dot stickers which you buy in the office supply store; the half inch ones.) I don’t care; give it to me, pass me that pen, (don’t throw that away!) I need to draw. Eventually, the doodles of people, odd characters, make-believe and real animals make it out of the bottom of my bag to my Epson scanner and become digital files then stored in folders on my computer. The intention is that it will be used later in some digital art piece, but some never make it. Nevertheless, that fact doesn’t seem to have any effect on the continuation of this process. Just something I must do.

The Way It Was

I like old things. My apartment is filled with antiques, I’m drawn to old black and white movies, (even if they’re bad) as well as listening to the crackly sound of old records on my 100 year old Victrola; I also collect antique toys. My toys are very sentimental to me. They are not left, forgotten on the shelf, mere objects of investment, but receive lots of attention and [one-sided] conversation. Always sort of in the back of my mind is the realization that each one was probably very much loved at one time, but was at some point dumped, considered trash, or unworthy of keeping. And it’s a thought which makes me feel protective of them. It must come from the odd fact that as a child I used to have guilt over ‘abandoning’ a toy; relegating it to the bottom of the toy closet, so in my silent nightly prayers I would send it a secret message that I still loved it, in case it felt sad and alone. Even board games. (I know.) They all had souls to me. In addition, I always felt kicked in the stomach if I went to a playmate’s house and they hit or beat their toys, (which probably is a bad sign, anyway; children who ‘torture’ teddy bears) but was too embarrassed to let them know how I felt, since even then I knew my sensitivity to the soul of a plaything was unique and would be considered crazy in the nut; I'd therefore instead resort to distracting the attacking child with suggestions of other things to do. “Let’s go downstairs.” I would say, or “Didn’t you tell me you got a new bike?” Anything to stop the action. I couldn’t stand being a witness to the cruelty. If possible, I'd even tend to the injured toy when the devil-child had his/her back turned, assuring the toy that everything was going to be alright.

My picture today is a Polaroid taken with an old Polaroid 100 camera (the big kind, with the bellows) using expired film and a fixer, which is like a little chapstick thingie you wipe across the film to set it. This is just a small example of all the little ones I’ve adopted.