Calendar Girls

Meet calendar girls Luka and Olivia from the nearby city farm. They are girls (sisters, in fact) and they are on a calendar. The calendar is sold by a Brittish publisher called Avonside. This particular picture was on a 2008 calendar on pigs.

Of course it´s pretty cool if people use your pics to put it on a calendar that is actually sold. Some people had 'my' pigs on their walls for an entire month! But there was a catch here. Avonside bought the picture (and many others) from Shutterstock at the lowest available rate. These rates are very low, but they do not allow for reselling. Which is basically what you do when you put a picture on a calendar and sell the calendar. So Shutterstock send out their legal people to defend the rights of their submitters (and their own of course, microstock is no charity). Shutterstock and Avonside setteld the case and each photographer was paid properly for the use of their pictures.

That's what I like about microstock agencies, such as Shutterstock. Yes, they get a substantial percentage of sales, but they take care of all the hassle. They provide the marketing so their subscribers get a much larger audience than they would through their own website. And if something goes wrong, they provide the legal support. Thanks guys!

Chicks!

Do you remember Mr Peacock? I was totally wrong about him. To be more precise, I was totally wrong about his two ladies. I was pretty sure they were in no way impressed by his loud and showy behavior. But at least one of them must have been playing hard to get. On my visit to the city farm yesterday, I saw one of the lady peacocks wandering around with four cute pea-chicks. Mr Peacock got what he wanted: offspring.

Congratulations Mr and Ms Peacock. May your four lovely children grow up to become as good looking as their daddy.

Meet Mr. Peacock

There is a small city farm fairly close to where I live. I take my kids there quite often, to give them some sense of where food comes from. And it's fun too. The farm has quite a number of pets and small livestock, such as rabits, chicken, sheep and goats, and even two large pigs.

The farm also houses a male peacock with two females. When spring comes, his feathers are marvelous and one can hear his loud screaming a couple of blocks away. This fellow does all he can to impress both females. They hardly seem interested though. Last year, after several careful approaches, he allowed me to come close enough to use my 35 and 50mm primes on him. This year, my two year old son is too loud and too fast and way too interested in this loud and colorful bird. There is no way to get near the peacock without my son chasing it away, so I'll stick to the 90mm instead.