good and (maybe) bad

Here's the good: it seems like people like my photos. I'm grateful for the positive responses, and it is always great to have my work appreciated. I feel that my photography has improved a lot since I started this blog (partly because I got a better camera).

Here's the (maybe) bad: It has come to my attention that people may be stealing my images for their profit-making schemes. I guess I'm a bit chagrined about that. If it is students using my images in bits and pieces for their MLA presentations, that's not a big deal. If people are taking the photos and just placing them on their own computer as inspiration, that's not such a big deal. But if people are using them to make money, that's another thing. In this day and age, I suppose people are desperate, but come on. At the least they should be giving credit where credit is due.

So here are my options, seeing what other people do with their photos in their blogs:
1. stop posting photos, post only written stuff that I don't mind people stealing or quoting.
2. post photos, but only show the crappy ones that I don't mind people stealing.
3. post the nice photos, but watermark them.
4. post the nice photos, but only show them in small sizes and very small pixel sizes.
5. stop caring about it. If people like them enough to steal them, that's cool, even if no one knows who took the photo.
6. post only the photos I don't care about.

The dilemma, of course, is that the reason I post the nice photos is, first of all, that the blog is a way for me to remember and document my garden, and second of all, I hope people get inspired by my trials and tribulations as well as successes in my garden, to work on their own garden and get excited about plants. Showing crappy photos may not accomplish either of those goals. Not showing photos would also not accomplish those goals. Watermarking photos, in my opinion, ruins the photos, and is distracting. Posting small photos also is not very inspirational to me. So that leaves me #5, to stop caring about it.

Or #6, somewhere in between, where I just post the photos I don't care about - even if they are not "crappy," they might not be my favorites. It is a public space after all. And here in Albuquerque, as in other parts of the world (so I hear), people dig out the plants in public spaces and plant them in their gardens. My friend who guerilla gardened the median by his house found that people dug out the plants while they were in full bloom, to sell down the street. Of course, here in the desert, those plants probably wilted and died within hours, since native plants transplant poorly when actively growing. I have heard that in England, people even steal cuttings of plants in public and private gardens, to the point where the plants are "pruned" to mere stubs, or killed. I guess you have to plan for it. So in that case, my rare and special plants I'll keep in my own private garden. I'll show them. Just come on by. And bring cookies (I like lemon bars).