This is the third May 1 since I’ve been living in Los Angeles. There is no day that has been more memorable, scary, or incredible in my LA experience than the past two May Firsts. May 1, 2006 had tremendous build-up, with some of the largest immigration rallies preceding it and it exceeded all expectations. Half a million people rallied and it made headlines around the world. More importantly, the local media began stepping up it’s coverage of immigrant issues as they affect every day life and commerce in Southern California. May 1, 2007 made headlines for different reasons, LAPD overreacted at MacArthur Park where rallies were taking place and many were injured by rubber bullets. It was horrible and a total embarrassment for the city and just an utter disgrace. Here’s hoping for a safe, memorable, and spirited May Day 2008 and a salute to the Dockworkers who effectively shut down all ports on the West Coast in protest of the Iraq War today.
I Shot the Photo for a Nuveen Ad at Wrigley Field
The Art Director of Nuveen Investment’s PR company (Fallon) contacted me a few months ago via e-mail asking if I’d be willing to let Nuveen use a photo I took at Wrigley Field last August for a print ad.
The photo was uploaded into my Flickr account and was well-tagged. I license all of my photos with a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial license, meaning that anyone is free to use the image with attribution, except for commercial purposes (I since changed this particular photo to all-rights-reserved to make it even more clear that I wasn’t willing to give it away to Nuveen).
Although I suspect the photo has been on display since the beginning of the season (I’m told it is one of eight on display in the entry way of the skybox area near the ticket booth) I was finally notified today of its use and agreed to terms to license it for the rest of the season. I must say I’m very happy to report that the Creative Commons system works, I’ve made money from shooting a photo that was discovered on Flickr and never expected to, and even though the ad is pretty stupid, at least it’s not above the communal urinal in the men’s room.
An interesting aside, the original photo was in color and was taken during the Chicago Air & Water Show. The jet pictured in the original was rubbed out for the ad.
April in Photos
It’s April and Spring is here — plenty of amazing stuff happening in Los Angeles. Here’s my experience in photos:
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Flickr Video Uploads Are Go
UPDATE It’s 6p.m. PDT and it is NOW possible to upload videos (for Flickr PRO account holders). My question is, will it accept video uploads via e-mail, i.e. directly from a camera phone? Let’s see.
The service will only take 90 seconds of video at up to 150mb for starters, which is fine. There are other options for longer video, and as Arrington wrote, “The short clips are a perfect compliment to event photos….”
Written at 3:45 p.m.: Or are they? I just wasted a good 15 minutes trying to figure it out after reading blog posts on both CNET’s WebWare and TechCrunch “announcing” the launch of Flickr Video hosting (complete with samples). But as far as anything official from Yahoo, only the rumor itself has been confirmed as rumor, albeit in a Flickr video — irreverent teaser from Stewart Butterfield and Heather Champ (with puppets) on the Flickr blog:
Hopefully this will be live later today (as rumored)!