Angry Robins

Two angry robins for my series. It's pretty hard to find an angry robin because of the white outline around their eyes. They usually look very sweet and even a little sad. But, these two fit my profile nicely.

All images © Ginny A. Roth

The Orphan Works Bill

Please educate yourself and take action on opposing the Orphan Works bill. In short, this new legislation will make it virtually impossible for visual artists to protect their work because it essentially allows anyone to use an image without the copyright holder's permission.

Here is a link to the complete legislation - it is worth the time to read it because it will affect you and most people, if not everyone, you know: GovTrack.us

You don't have to be a professional visual artist to be affected by this. ALL OF YOU are affected by this, but you don't know it because this bill is being passed quietly and without publicity. All the images that you have on your blogs, personal Web sites, Flickr, Photobucket - any of these photo sharing sites - basically become commercial inventory if this bill passes. If this bill passes you will need to pay to register your images in the Copyright Office database in order to protect them, if you don't, they can be searched and harvested for commercial use, profit, reproduction, and creation of derivative works by ANYONE. Even if you DO decide to pay to have all your personal images registered, there is still hardly any liability on the part of the infringer because all they have to do is say they 'looked' for ownership, but didn't find any.

Here is an excerpt from an electronic letter by Illustrators' Partnership:

"Any image an infringer can locate without a name on it – or any he can remove a name from – can be run through a for-profit registry, and if it's not there, it will be fair game for companies to sell. In essence, it will be legalized theft and invasion of privacy."

Illustrators' Partnership has set up a site with electronic letters to make it easy to contact your congressmen and women:
http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/

Many of the letters are editable, so you can tell your story of why this affects you, your friends, your family, etc. You can also send it with the text as is. If you wish to send one, choose one that fits your standpoint as a visual artist, photographer, member of the visual-image making public, business owner, supporter of visual artists, etc.

Here is a letter http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11333001 that if you agree with and sign it, will be sent to your US Senators and House Reps.

Here is a link to a letter to the House Judiciary Committee that was set up to send directly to a member of the House Judiciary Committee from your district or to your Representative asking him to contact his colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee on your behalf to urge them to oppose the bill.

Please keep track of the status of this bill using the GovTrack link above. The capwiz site will also be updated with electronic letters that can be sent to the appropriate government officials during the legislative process.

Stay protected - you and your intellectual property.

Altered Book 1 - Ticket Folder

My first altered book is completed and I finally feel good about posting a member page on the ISABA Web site. I'm the Web manager of that site so I could have done it anytime. But I really didn't feel right until I had something to show for it. I volunteer, but it gives me inspiration, which I need desperately.

It was a fairly simply first project. I've been collecting ticket stubs my entire life and I never found a good place to display them. Throwing them in a box, like I do with my 4x6 prints, was not an alternative to me, nor was adhering them to a surface from which I would never be able to lift them off.

I saw an example of a book like this is in The Complete Guide to Altered Books and knew I could make practical use out of it. I used a small book to get started since I didn't want the book itself to overwhelm the contents. I found in my bookcase one of those small, skinny self-help books you find at the check out line of book stores. This one happened to be about stress management. The book was full of useless information, which stressed me out, but it was ironically very stress relieving to destroy it. I mean, alter it.

I folded each right page down from the top right corner to create a little pocket. The pyramid shape formed naturally from the folds. This left me with what looked like a elementary school project for a report on Egypt.

I had no idea what to do with inside front and back cover, or the bottom (the outside front and back cover). But after picking the thing up a few times I realized the paper quality of the cover was too flimsy to be a proper base for the structure, so I glued the entire thing to a relatively thin piece of cardboard, the kind you find at the end of any basic writing pad. It was bigger than the structure, and rather than cut it to size, I painted the frame black so it would make the white pages stand out more. Then to decorate the inside front and back covers I glued left over stubs and pieces of stubs to create a collage.

After it dried, about a day later, I put my tickets in the pockets and I was amazed how great it looked. I mean, it actually looks like a piece of art - a legitimate altered book. The pages remain a little stiff, but the whole thing needs to be handled gently anyway when browsing through. Some of the tickets are too big for the pages so either I glued them to the cover as part of the collage or just folded them over to fit.

I'll be able to use it for a while before I need to make a volume II. I'm on the prowl for ticket stubs I KNOW I have but for the life of me can't remember where I put them. Someplace safe obviously. In any case, I'm pretty happy with my first result.

I'm working on many Singles now (single journal pages) that I am keeping in a box I decorated for them. I'll be photographing those next. Then I would like to finish my 'bird wisdom' book, which I think will be great if I can ever stop trying to add to it. It's about 11 pages and I need to create a front and back cover. The middle is almost complete. I will probably bind it myself, which should be very interesting.

All images © Ginny A. Roth

Spam, Spam, Eggs and Spam..

"I don't like spam!"

I don't of course, and neither do you, but this isn't a general spam rant. This is a specific one. But more about electronic communication.

There is no doubt in my mind, and I experience this every day at work, and elsewhere, that face to face communication has become an almost archaic way of communicating, and many have lost the ability to address others with respect and kindness. I blame electronic communication for this. The informal cyber world has no facial expressions, body language, or the ability to speak back, thus it is easy to send useless communication, or be rude to anyone, because they are not a real person. When you deal with machines, not people, social graces go out the window. Someone may post an incredibly inappropriate comment on a blog or forum that they would never have the moxie to say to someone's face. Or, in my case, someone may just send out an incredibly useless email to masses of individuals, feigning friendliness and interest, cluttering inboxes everywhere, when this person knows NO ONE they are sending the email to and is seeking nothing but personal gain from other's naivety.

On this very day, the first day of Spring.. happy Spring everyone by the way. Wouldn't it be cool if the egg thing were real? If really, only one time in the entire year you could stand an egg on it's side? I missed my chance to kid myself since the correct time to try would have been when the sun crossed the equator at 1:48am EDT this morning (Universal Standard Time - 5 hours + 1 hour for daylight savings). But I digress.

I received my first irritating email from someone who obviously sent the message to everyone on Blogger, and God knows where else. This email insinuates that a person read my blog and liked it. In reality it is nothing more than a self-promoting request, disguised as a false compliment, to have me post his blog on mine.

Here is the message:

"Hi Ginny A. Roth,
I just came across your blog "Manual Focus" blog and liked it very much.
I thought i should let you know about my new blog "Slideshows for your website and Blogs"
link: yeah right i'm posting this link...
My blog basically consists of slideshows which fall in 12 different categories.
If you like any of the slideshows, you are welcome to embed it in your own blog.
-anuj
Do not be born good or handsome, but be born lucky."

So.. the Anuj fellow, obviously never read my blog or he/she (whoever) would have commented IN the blog and told me why he liked it. He also would have realized his slideshows do not fit the content of my blog which is not about showcasing other people's stuff unless it has such artistic or personal significance to me that I would go out of my way to share it with everyone. And here's some advice, as much as I love being addressed by my whole name, it wreaks of lack of effort to even remotely sound legitimate. You may as well sign your name "Publisher's Clearinghouse" if you are going to put so little effort into your scheme. (And what the hell does that saying mean after the signature?)

For all of you Anujs out there, stop sending this crap and cluttering up inboxes. When you send email with lies for your own shameless self-promotion you are communicating with human beings, not machines. Some of us aren't lucky enough to have your missive go into the junk mail box so we have to waste our time reading and deleting. I have to wonder, do you lie to people's faces the way to do in your mass email or do you avoid actual human contact knowing you will be labeled a fraud?