Embracing Social Media

I am happy to announce easier ways to keep up with my photographic hijinx, shenanigans and endeavors!  There are now Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and RSS buttons right on my homepage for easy following.

Also once you get into those nice looking galleries, there are individual buttons for quick sharing via Twitter or Facebook.  Simply click on your favorite social media outlet and share your favorites with the world!

Photographers: be careful with contests!

I wanted to pass along some valuable information for my fellow photographers and future photogs as well.  Be very careful when entering photography contests with respect to your copyright.  I was about to enter Outside Magazine's South African photography contest when I noticed a little blurb in the fine print... [bold added for emphasis]

GENERAL CONDITIONS: Submission of an entry grants Sponsor and its designees the right in perpetuity to publish, use, adapt, edit and/or modify the Entry in any way, in commerce and in any and all media worldwide now known or hereinafter developed, without limitation and without further consent, consideration or notice to the winner. Submission of any entry further constitutes the winner’s irrevocable assignment and transfer to the Sponsor any and all rights, title, and interest in and to the Entry, including, without limitation, all intellectual property rights.

Seeing how I am not an attorney or adept in IP law, this still raises a big red flag to me.  I follow Carolyn E. Wright's Photo Attorney blog and upon reading a lot of her posts I have decided to heed her advice and be choosy in the contests I enter.  I suggest you do the same!  While it would be great to enter as many contests as possible, giving up your copyright and IP rights is a deal breaker for me.  Especially for some of my best work which I do not want to even come close to giving up any part of my ownership to some corporation.

So be careful and read the fine print!  Cheers!

Share your best!

Have you captured some great photos lately? Want to share them? Send them my way and I will put together a blog post of some of your best work! I love learning from others and growing my own photography at the same time. Email your favorite pic to nick.lasure [at] gmail.com !!

The Bean - Chicago, Illinois

Recycled Business Card Holder!

So some of you may know that my other business is making lamps out of recycled bicycle parts. I had been trying to think of some new projects for awhile to expand the recycled bike art side of the house and needed a new business card holder for my Amante Coffee exhibit.  Well, the two ideas came together and low and behold I came up with my new recycled business card holder!  I used an old cog from a Shimano bicycle cassette and a bit of spare hardware to fasten it altogether.  Stylish, recycled, sustainable, functional and dead sexy all at the same time!

I will probably have these for sale pretty soon over at Treeline Designs, but for now a nice picture of the prototype.