Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Big Cypress Gallery - Swamp Walk & Open House

At Big Cypress Gallery, every year on Labor Day in
September and Presidents Weekend in Feb, we
open up, to the public, the thirteen acres of property
where Big Cypress Gallery and our house is located.

We offer swamp walks (reservations required) and
share our love of the swamp with those folks who are
curious and would like to see it for themselves.
It is a great experience to talk with people who, when
they return from the walk, are filled with wonder and
peace from being in the swamp.

The weekend was wonderful...

Clyde, Niki and Robbie

The weekend started with a birthday
celebration for Clyde with all of our
employees and volunteers. A fun
way to start a great weekend!

Jackie asked the bakery to make a cake
that looked like a swamp...I think they
did a good job!


When Jackie cut into the cake, Bob exclaimed, "Look,
the Core of Engineers is 'reclaiming' the swamp!"

Dinner for all the volunteers...and a few friends...

The next day whole gallery sang Happy Birthday to Clyde!

Jan Wilson gave us a gift of her talent. She
creates floral arrangements from native
species. It was a wonderful and loving
gift.The arrangement added a wonderful
splash of color and love to the gallery.
Thank you Jan!

Flowers on front counter
(photo taken after event was over)

Busy at the sales counter

Kayla, our grand daughter, was one of twenty-five high
school students in Sarasota County to be chosen for the
People to People Ambassador Program. She traveled to
Europe again this summer. (This time without
her mom and granma along!) She returned with
some great photographs. Her display consisted of
the images she took while in Europe.

It was wonderful to spend a weekend with her in
the gallery and watch as she interacted with her
customers. She sold her art and we're pleased
with that, but the best thing is sharing the experience
with her. Kayla's spirit adds so much to the gallery.

Robbie our nine year old grandson, displayed his
first efforts at photography. He was very pleased
that he also sold his art...a very good start!

Having Robbie and his art in the gallery added a
wonderful level of energy to the gallery. It was
great fun to share the experience with him and
watch him interact with his customers.

I gave a demonstration on the art of hand painting
a black and white photograph

Robbie and Niki

Kayla trying her hand at painting a black and white
photograph while Merry, Robbie and visitor look on

Nicholas Petrucci painted a full size image of
Clyde and presented it to the public several
months ago. It is currently being shown in
our Big Cypress Gallery. Nicholas joined us
for a day out in the swamp...it was was great
having him with us!

Nicolas and Clyde

The painting of Clyde by Nicholas Petrucci

Clyde signing books

Everyone gathered in the tent where they waited
for their leader to take them out into the swamp

Bob explaining the ecosystem of Big Cypress Swamp

Heading into the swamp

I have no idea what they're pointing too?!
Perhaps a bird?

Bringing them up the RIGHT way!

Rick Cruz leading a swamp walk



Curious about something?!

Bob with one of the kids that was absolutely
thrilled to be in the swamp!

There was a very LARGE water spider that
everyone had to stop and take a photo

The weekend was great...lots of fresh air, beautiful environment,
and great, caring people. This was the best swamp walk weekend
I think we've ever had!
I hope you're able to join us during Presidents Weekend in Feb.
or next year during Labor Day.

Hope to see you out in the swamp!

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Ft Myers History Museum exhibit Through Oct 31 2009

Robbie helping Clyde with setting up his
large format camera for the exhibit.

Robbie became our "PR" photographer
for the evening. Normally, that is what
I do, but since I needed to talk to people
about my art, I couldn't do it.
Robbie did a great job.

There was a great turn out. It is always fun
meeting so many wonderful folks from all
walks of life!

This was a very creative sign that Mat made
for the exhibit!


Clyde signing books

Not only was this cake beautiful, it taste good too!

Align Center
Great folks, great time and great food!

Friday, July 31, 2009

Gullivan Key


Last week we took the boat out to the Ten Thousand
Islands to clean the bottom. While looking for a nice
shallow anchorage we came across Gullivans Key.

Clyde cleaning the bottom of the boat.

Clyde heads out to the end of the sand-spit
where the composition is better. While he
chooses the location for his photo I hiked
around the small key.

The sky was incredible...a small bit of Florida paradise!
Amazingly, there were NO mosquitoes or no-see'ms!



Clyde waiting for the right light...

Gullivans Key 1

Gullivans Key 2

It was a VERY hot day and even though the water
was around 85 degrees, it felt cool!

The day is over...achieved a good photograph
and a clean boat bottom!

Monday, July 27, 2009

Face Book Controversy

Clyde and I both have a face book page and were shocked to hear that the images on face book are available for anyone to use. When I announced that fact on face book to warn others, several folks email back with the message below saying it should protect images from being used by whoever wants to use them:

Facebook has agreed to let a third party advertiser use your posted pics in ads that are targeted to you, without your permission. To disallow, click SETTINGS at the top of the page. Select PRIVACY. Then select NEWS FEEDS AND WALL. Next select the tab that reads FACE BOOK ADS. There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Then SAVE your changes.

I have done that on both my face book and on Clyde's. However, after reading the two articles posted below that Bill sent to us, I'm still not comfortable posting original 'art' images onto face book. I don't mind posting fun snap shot pictures, but 'art'...still uncomfortable.

Anyway, if this is an issue for you, I have copied the two articles below:

The Day Facebook Changed: Messages to Become Public by Default
by Marshall Kirkpatrick - ReadWriteWeb - June 24, 2009

One of the most anticipated days in the history of social networking site Facebook has finally come: the company announced today that it has begun making status messages, photos and videos visible to the public at large by default instead of being visible only to a user's approved friends.

Private by default has been a hallmark characteristic of Facebook, as high on the list as the lack of MySpace garishness. It's been key in making Facebook the biggest social network on earth. Now that's about to change. Facebook has been very careful to avoid the major backlash that it has seen in the past when making substantial changes to things like privacy settings, but it's hard to imagine there isn't going to be a backlash. From a web innovation perspective, the move could lead to some of the most exciting developments we've seen yet from the world of social media.

Remember the News Feed?

When Facebook launched its News Feed feature in Sept 2006, displaying all activity by a user's friends in a flowing list of updates on the page, the backlash shook the young service to its core. The News Feed is now the central feature of the Facebook user experience. The new public visibility of shared messages is going to change Facebook on that kind of scale.

Remember Beacon?

When Facebook launched its off-site advertising initiative called Beacon,users were seeing things like the purchase of a surprise engagement ring on Overstock.com exposed to a would-be wife on Facebook because people didn't understand how to deal with the new integration of 3rd party sites. The backlash was so big that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had to try and calm Barbara Walters down about it on national television. Beacon didn't disappear but was reformed in a more palatable way. The backlash against public default visibility is going to resemble the Beacon backlash, if not dwarf it.

Facebook Naked

And now we're at today. By default, all your messages on Facebook will soon be naked visible to the world. The company is starting by rolling out the feature to people who had already set their profiles as public, but it will come to everyone soon. You'll be able each time you publish a message to change that message's privacy setting and from that drop down there's a link to change your default setting.

But most people will not change the setting. Facebook messages are about to be publicly visible. A whole lot of people are going to hate it. When ex-lovers, bosses, moms, stalkers, cops, creeps and others find out what people have been posting on Facebook - the reprimand that "well, you could have changed your default setting" is not going to sit well with people.

Robots FTW

The soft fleshed creatures that we Facebook users are, will likely hate the new setting, at least at first. But robots are going to love it. As the largest social network on the web, with an incredible amount of time spent on the site by its users, Facebook holds a giant reservoir of demographic and sentiment data. It is the mother lode - and it's been inaccessible so far because everything has been private so far.

This winter there was a lot of discussion of a rumored "Facebook Sentiment Engine" believed to be in the works. We wrote about what could be both best case and worst case scenarios for the opening of Facebook user data to outside analysis.

Best Case

Think of the non-commercial, public interest kind of data that could be acquired. When the economic stimulus plan of 2009 was first announced on national television - what was the reaction of people in their mid twenties who lived in the Mid West of the US? Was that collective reaction substantially different from the reaction of self-identified queer people of color living in the North East US? How did the public reaction to the proposed plan change one hour, one day or one week after the announcement? This is all very interesting and potentially valuable data that could be, for the first time in history, available in near real time. Just by listening to what people are talking about in status updates and comments.

Worse Case

The worst case scenario is that Facebook will not open a free message search API for outside developers, instead it will make bulk access and analysis of all these public messages available only to commercial firms able to pay in order to harvest the data for marketing purposes. That seems pretty likely, unfortunately.

It's notable that there is not yet an option to search publicly shared content, as in full text search of messages, on the Facebook search page. It may not be searchable at all, except through very specific and possibly paid access granted by Facebook - even though it's all visible to the human eye. As Fred Vogelstein wrote in a long post on Wired.com this week:

By Facebook's estimates, every month users share 4 billion pieces of information -- news stories, status updates, birthday wishes, and so on. They also upload 850 million photos and 8 million videos. But anyone wanting to access that stuff must go through Facebook; the social network treats it all as proprietary data, largely shielding it from Google's crawlers. Except for the mostly cursory information that users choose to make public, what happens on Facebook's servers stays on Facebook's servers. That represents a massive and fast-growing blind spot for Google, whose long-stated goal is to "organize the world's information."

Comparisons to Twitter search are only useful in talking about theories of value, in terms of actual value an open Facebook search would leave tiny Twitter in the dust.

So there are two ways this could go. Free programatic analysis to the publicly shared information from Facebook users could be like a high-speed, real-time Library of Congress for all the robots in the Republic. Or it could be limited access, like the high-priced market research reports bought and sold by marketing firms about other pools of public sentiment today.

We know which scenario we're cheering for.

We also feel pretty sure how most Facebook users are going to feel about this fundamental change. They are going to hate it like most residents of the Wild West must have hated the first US Census agents.

In time, though, people may very well decide they are comfortable with their social networking being public by default. That will be a different world, and today will have been one of the most important days in that new world's unfolding.

----------------------------------------------------------
Digital Photographer Magazine
Issue 82

Who owns your photos?
DP INVESTIGATES

If you take photos and presume that they're your rightful property and no one else's, then you may be somewhat shocked and disheartened to discover that the reality is not always so clear cut.
Back in February, when Facebook changed its terms and conditions, there was panic on Internet chatrooms across the world that the images posted on the popular social-networking site would be the site's property forever, even if you removed them. Few admit to using Facebook for solely keeping an archive of professional shots, and web limitations suggest the quality would be too low to do too much damage with, but the fact remains that many don't read the terms and conditions that come with sites or competitions. In some cases photographers have unwittingly signed away their rights to the images.
All photo contest and competitions will stipulate something concerning the copyright of submitted imagery in its full terms and conditions. More often than not these will specifically state that the photographer retains copyright, but usually there will be conditions that enable the organizer to have a royalty-free license to distrubte the winning images for publising the competition and its results. Any other use, including image sales, will have to come through the photographer from the organiser, protecting your assets....

.....the rest of the article is about entering competitions and warnig those who do so to be sure to read the fine print first.
As for the images have 'web limitations' is correct...and to me that means they can only be used for web advertising and thus they CAN be used.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Sandra

We are very fortunate to have a wonderful group
of employees. Not only are they great to work with
but they also care about each other.
Teresa felt that Sandra should be honored as the
hard working employee that Sandra is, so Teresa
entered Sandra's name into 92.1 Lite FM in a
contest for the best employee...and Sandra won!
The folks from the radio station came to
the office and gave Sandra flowers and an
OFFICIAL certificate!
Of course we knew she would win because
she is a great employee and a wonderful person!

Cigar Orchid Swamp Photo Trip

Kevin, Clyde, John and Rick

Clyde had been wanting to return to this area
when the water was high, so when the "CREW"
said, "Let's Do It!"...off they went...!

Clyde setting up his camera...photo by Rick


As the guys were walking through the swamp Clyde
suddenly heard Rick yell at him, "Clyde, look out!"
Clyde looked down and about three inches from
his ankle was a giant diamond-back getting ready
to strike! Clyde quickly moved out of the way.
We have never had snake chaps in all the years
we've been out in the swamp, but after this close
call I'm sure we'll never go out without them again!

The above image of a diamond-back rattler was taken
by Rick on a previous hike. He allowed me to use it
so those of you who have never seen one would
know what I'm talking about.

Rick took this image of Clyde and did "his thing" to it.
I really like this one because it reflects the way that
Clyde sees the world around him...in black & white

Rick also took this image of Clyde and played
around with it...FUN STUFF!

Kevin took this photo of Rick and Clyde eating
their "vitamins"....M&M candy...

Ahhhh...nothing like a nice cool dip to relax in
the middle of the swamp....perfect end
to a perfect day.

Clyde Butcher....www.clydebutcher.com
Kevin Barrier...KevinWBarrier.com
John Brady...Timeandlight.com
Rick Cruz...RickCruzPhotography.com