Tag: Puerto Rico

Colorful Old San Juan

Dmitrii34 Comments

Photo Pirating

This topic comes once in a while on different blogs and publications. Folks discuss copyrights and protection of their photos from unauthorized use, different techniques and their views on the subject. Personally I have never registered any of my photos with Copyright office, I don’t put any watermarks on it and I allow download of fairly high definition version of my photos. I don’t go as far as to allow download of the original photos, but you can download it at X3 size from my SmugMug gallery. For folks who use it for non-profit purposes I ask to provide link back to my site. I do not allow unlicensed use for any money making reuse.

I have never tried to see if any of my photos are floating out on the Internet, mainly because I have no time to seat and search for it. It never been high priority and I actually didn’t think that they have any reuse or large viewing audiences, other than you fine folks, who come here to my blog, my SmugMug gallery or see it on the flicker or 500px sites, or via occasional re-blogging on your WordPress sites.

So out of curiosity, last night I searched for couple photos via Google image site and was shocked and surprised to find dozens to hundreds of links to sites that have some usage of my photos. Blog posts, photo galleries, screen savers, screen backgrounds, mobile applications, to name a few reuses that I found. I did not see a single reference back to any of my sites or my full name. Most reuse had no names at all, some crediting other people (this one is super annoying), some had my first name only (how helpful is that?).

Will I do anything about it? Probably not. When I saw android mobile app (free) that uses one of my photos as background, my first impulse was to find contact information for folks who develops this app and write them a letter to either take my photo out from this app, provide credit information with link to my blog, or share $$$ that they make from advertising in the app from their 50K+ downloads , yeah, right! But reality is that I would probably spend a lot of time, a lot of energy and aggravation and get nothing in return from all those efforts. So I’m not going to do that.

Yes, it is annoying that folks out there on the World Wild Web use my products without giving any credit or sharing any profits. I have no time or desire to spend my time going after people like that. I do believe that there are still good number of folks out there who are honest and if they really like some of my products then they will find a way to provide credit back to the author or license it properly. But I don’t loose my sleep over all those photos floating out there. If I did, I would probably never sleep…

Do you sleep?

Today’s Photo

Old San Juan has couple streets that are used only by pedestrians, they a like a little shortcuts. This is one of them – Escalinata de las Monjas.

Colorful San Juan - click to see in high def!!!

Washed Over

Dmitrii22 Comments

Or not. Sometimes the visual effects play some tricks and make us see what is not real. What do you think about this one?

btw, this is the cemetery in the old town San Juan Puerto Rico and it is not getting washed over by the Atlantic, it seats way above the sea level.

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Friday Mystery Photo

Dmitrii11 Comments

This time around I want to know not just where it is, but whose statue that is and why it is there.

Saturday Update: Well, no one knew this one at all. Even my wife thought that it was in Savannah Georgia, which it is not anywhere close to. The statue is of Queen Isabella I, the queen of Spain who financed Christopher Columbus on his voyage to discover the route to Asia. During his second trip he discovered Puerto Rico. The statue is in Old San Juan Puerto Rico.

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Friday Mystery Photo

Dmitrii13 Comments

Yeah, today is the last Friday of this month, May is around the corner with some warm weather. Time to get out and spend some time at the pool, maybe similar to this one. I actually didn’t go into this pool because ocean is not that far from it. If I have a choice I usually take ocean or sea  and leave the pool to everyone else. How about you?

Where is this place anyway? I’ll update the status of this post sometime on Saturday, as usual.

Saturday Update: This is Caribe Hilton in San Juan Puerto Rico. Looks like no one stayed or recognized it at night. If you visit San Juan and want to have a mix of the resort life and quick access to the old town then this hotel is the perfect place. They have many pools and their own private ocean laguna where you can swim and play all day long. It is only five minutes away from the old town, using bus is 75c per person or taxi is about $10 per ride. We never ate at the hotel, so have no idea how good it is, I know it was pricy. They do have Starbucks in the lobby so morning coffee with some snacks is easy to get.

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Cueva Ventana

Dmitrii8 Comments

The Window Cave is located on HW10 about the same distance from Utuado and Arecibo. The entrance is actually not hard to spot from the road and it is located next to a gas station, with a bathroom to which seems like no one had a key.

After paying $5 per person and having a short 10 minutes hike you will arrive at the entrance of the cave. There actually two caves there, side by side, one is a huge almost like a dome and the second one is the Window Cave. This photo shows the first chamber of the Window Cave, it leads you through a pitch dark halls to the huge opening, showing the valley bellow. The pitch dark halls and chambers are full with bats, they are hanging from the ceiling in huge batches and fly all around. Pretty cool place to visit.

I used my headlamp to light up this cave, had to move it in circular motion during long exposures, to get it evenly.

And yep I did take couple photos of the window too, just have not had a chance to process it yet.

Cave1-small

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