For years I've been taking flak on some of the photos in this blog. We're referring to my crappy photos of course, taken proudly with my cell phone with absolutely no attention paid to composition, lighting or even focus. Things have improved in the last couple of years--especially since I started using a smart phone. I even received a nice little Canon digital camera for Christmas last year, and I still haven't gotten in the habit of using it for blog photos. It's on my big long list of things I need to do right now.
To summarize: I'm a writer, dammit, not a photographer.
That's why I was surprised when I received an e-mail a couple of weeks ago from Andreas of the The East Bay Monthly. Apparently he was scanning Google Images for a photo of Amoeba Records in Berkeley for an article titled, "A Rebirth for Telegraph Avenue," which was written by Dave Weinstein. For some strange reason he settled on my photo from this blog entry from almost exactly three years ago.
Now I have been approached for photo permission a few times, but in each instance I had purloined the pic from Google Images myself--generally with credit given but no expressed permission. (I try to avoid that now, since it's viewed upon as kind of douchey. Andreas did it the right way.) This was the very first time that I could honestly say, "Yes, that is my photograph! Use it in good health, young man!"
After I gave my permission to Andreas, he asked me if I wanted him to send me a hard copy of the Monthly. I almost said no, that wasn't necessary, but then I changed my mind, perhaps because I thought it was all so whimsical. Yesterday I received a manila envelope in the mail, and enclosed was two copies of the August 2014 issue. My photo's in there, top of page 8, with credit given. They even spelled my first name with a "c" instead of the usual "k."
So thank you to Andreas and The East Bay Monthly for treating me like a pro, even though I'm the furthest thing from one. They seem to be a extremely classy organization.
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