The Understatement of Unfair

I hate that the last post I write for the year has to be a tragic one.

On the morning of December 26th, 2009 my Step-father Phil suffered a massive heart attack in his sleep. My mother found him in his bed.

I thought my family would have a longer reprieve after my uncle died, but this wasn’t enough time. I think the part that bothers me the most is that there were some really shitty people in my mom’s life before Phil came along. Liars, thieves, abusers…the works. She finally found a man that deserved her and barely had any time with him. He cared for her like nobody I’ve ever known.

Moreover Phil did so much to help other people that he never took the time to handle his own needs. Never went to the doctor, never took a day off, never got himself life insurance just in case. All these things were put on the back burner because other people needed his hand. Giving is a great thing, don’t get me wrong. I just think there should always be time taken to tend to your own needs.

If you don’t, how can you continue to help anyone?

Maybe we all just think we have plenty of time. How can we be so sure? I was talking to Phil a mere 12 hours before he died. There was no sign that I could see.

Maybe we see ourselves as invincible.

Maybe we’re just to scared to take precautions.

It makes no sense to die out of fear of illness.

It makes even less to leave your family alone because you were too busy taking care of them.

Here’s the second reason I hate having to write this post:

I’ve spent the last couple of days making a website (www.phildhyne.com) to celebrate the man that gave my mom so much love and joy. Phil’s death put my family into instant debt due to the lack of life insurance. If you know me, you know how much I hate to ask for assistance like this…but I have nothing left to give.

There is a donate button at the top of his site. All of the proceeds from that will go to assist in paying for his funeral and other bills he left behind. You don’t have to give money, there is a section on the site where you can just leave a kind word if you want. Anything would mean the world.

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In closing, I’m going to ask you to do one last thing. Not for us this time, but for yourself and your own family. New years day is 2 days away. More often than not we make our resolutions and hit the ground running but burn out within a week or two. I challenge you to make a real change this year. It’s the start of a new decade and it’s time to become something different. Lose the weight you’ve been meaning to lose, spend time with the people you haven’t seen in too long, get the better job, the happier lifestyle you’ve always wanted and for once…don’t stop until you’ve done it, don’t take no for an answer, don’t get off the treadmill because it’s hard. More people need you than you think and if nothing else, you owe them that much.

If you need help with getting there…shoot me a message and I’ll find some resources to help you accomplish your goals. Just do whatever it takes to get that goal accomplished.

Thus ends my rant.

Take care of yourselves my audience,

-D

Central Missouri Humane Society – Charity Shoot

Finally!

I’m so happy this day came. I’ve been trying to do a particular project with the Central Missouri Humane Society for months.

See, here’s the thing. The Central Missouri Humane Society is having a very hard time staying afloat. They don’t turn animals away and they don’t have the funding for the essentials of care, let alone the space they desperately need. I don’t have much to donate except for some photo skills.

I felt this needed to be done.

So that’s what happened.

It was so much fun too.

A little difficult, but a lot of fun.

Read on for more photos.

Read more »

Barack Obama in Columbia, Missouri

Well ladies and gents, if you’ve been following along today then you already know I worked very hard to bring you the images you’re about to see. After the other week when I missed the opportunity in Kansas City, there was no way in hell this one at Mizzou in Columbia was getting by me.

So, after a tremendous amount of effort, negotiating and professional photographerism (new word), I made absolutely sure I got in to this one.

Read more »

Tin-Eye, The Photographer’s Bodyguard.

Let’s face it, image theft is rampant, and easy. Every professional photographer or visual artist on the net knows that much. With the number of websites in the world it is impossible to scour each of them everyday looking for someone stealing your work. Most of the answers to this issue lie in the realm of spending a lot of money to hire a company to keep an eye on things for you. Even that has flaws though as something always falls through the cracks.

It’s 5:30am here, and I’m awake fearing for my precious images’ well-being. That’s not really why I’m awake, but I am spending this fluke of free time today looking at something you need to know about. Tin Eye, and people if this thing delivers like it promises, well let’s just say that a career in IP law will be a very busy field soon.

The technology is still in beta right now, and the database is limited to about 900 million images. Obviously though – and this is the important part – the technology is here to find thefts of your work. I don’t know how it works, but it allows you to search the internet for your images, or altered versions of them. It is extremely easy to use, and at the moment it is totally free. Hopefully they will keep it that way. I imagine that a certain massive corporation will buy up the technology soon *cough* google *cough* and if they do I think the possibility of this being a free service is much greater.

I think beta signups are still open, so if you can you need to go check it out. I’ll keep playing with it, and let you know if I find a downside to this technology. I have to say though, unless they decide to charge hundreds of dollars to use it, I don’t see a downside coming.

*UPDATE – 10:57am*

So far I’ve tried to find most of the images that I have scattered around the web. No stellar results. I could view that as a good thing because that means it didn’t find anything stolen. It means something more important though. TinEye needs to update the database and crawl more websites. I understand that it must be very difficult to build something like they have. Fact is, it needs to evolve. 900million is an astronomical number of images for sure, but it doesn’t scratch the surface of the images on the web.

My stance is still one of hope, because the technology is fantastic, and the fact that I couldn’t find anything of mine doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.

My suggestion… crawl flickr, catalog their images. Then approach google and either work with them, or sell the technology. It has a ton of potential, but the database needs to get much much bigger before it’s a viable option for lesser known images and orphaned works to be found and identified.

It’s Advocacy Time!

When I was growing up I had a series of books full of animals. “The Wildlife Fact File” was what it was called. In the next 20 years, many of those animals may be gone. We are facing a point in history where our children face a very real possibility of living in a world devoid of biodiversity.

We are not disconnected from our environment, we are not above it. We are a part of it. As humans, we are responsible for it. The sad fact is that for centuries we have obliterated our environments to make way for “progress”. Now we see the damage, and something must be done because we’re running out of time.

The number of oceanic dead-zones is on the rise. Many places on Earth have become toxic that were beautiful and full of life just 20 years prior. Commercial loggers devastate acres upon acres of vital, oxygen producing, Co2 processing rain forests.

News about global warming is everywhere, but many people either underestimate it’s impact, many more simply don’t understand it. There are even those that completely discredit the idea that we impact the planet and it’s environment. Maybe you are one of those people. I am not well versed enough to counter your arguments but, what I can say is this. Everyone can benefit from living greener, everyone can live a little freer without having to pay $3-$5-$8 per gallon for fossil fuel.

Global warming is an urgent, but solvable problem. I’ve recently joined the “We Campaign”, a powerful nonpartisan movement of concerned citizens that was founded by Nobel Prize Laureate and former Vice President Al Gore. We’re already a million strong — and growing each day.

Visit this site to learn more and add your voice: http://www.wecansolveit.org/

Sign up, take a stand. This isn’t an issue we can afford to lose on. Our world is too precious, and it’s the only one we have.

The We Campaign is working to ensure that elected leaders make the climate crisis a priority. Visit: http://www.wecansolveit.org/. Here, you can learn about solutions to global warming, take action steps and even find events happening in your community. Although it’s not too late, global warming is very serious and there is no time to lose. So please don’t wait any longer to get involved – sign up today: http://www.wecansolveit.org/

Together, we can solve the climate crisis.

Thank you for reading,

David Bickley