I DON'T WANT TO CROW BUT...

What did you do with your wonderful Saturday? I spent nine hours on my laptop finalising Witch on the Warpath. As you know I spent much of this week wandering round Thanet taking piccys. Took a couple today too - of Ramsgate Library. There were only a few I couldn't nail down and I got those off the internet - which was a saga in itself.

 Listen closely.

If you use someone's work from the internet, be it written, image or design etc you now have to declare it or risk being sued. (the new law came in force 2008) Even if you don't use it as it stands, if you adapt it, or trace it, or do what I did and change it to a pencil drawing (yes there's an app)  they can take you to court.

You required to have a Common Creative  Licence now. The licence isn't law, I don't think, it's just good practice to cover your back. Reading through the legal blurb the main thing is to acknowledge the original artist in your work.  So I took 6 photos off Google to use and thought Oh no! I've got to include all 6 in my acknowledgements section. Apparently you only have to do this if they have titled it and owned their work.
If you're unsure right click on the picture and go down to properties where it will not only tell you who shot it, but the date, time, camera and what filling they had in their sarnie.

Fortunately for me just two artists have, so I've duly attributed their work and provided a link to their website where I could find it. This is what promoted me to go out and shoot my own work. You can judge for yourselves on my efforts. I took these on the grass outside the crematorium (yes I had another lovely time being strange - it was dead boring!) The crows were over 40 feet away and I was struggling to hold my breathe and shoot without wiggling.  I have turned them into drawings which feature in my book. You might like you know they didn't pose for me but hopped this way and that while several wasps took a liking to my perfume. It wasn't easy but the outcome speaks for itself - I think. More tomorrow.