Friday, May 28, 2010

Getting your picture taken.


Building dry stone walls is different from taking pictures. A wall can't be taken. It usually can't be stolen either, not without a lot of trouble. Thieves may try and take some of the stones but they will have trouble reproducing your beautiful wall.

I once had the coping stones stolen from a wall I helped build . The property owner asked me to come back and put new ones on. She had a pretty good idea who had taken them. This time she put a small red dot of nail polish on each one. Shortly after, some of the copes were stolen again. The lady told me she had an idea who it was and drove over to confront them. Apparently they were caught red-nail-polish-handedly. I never found out if they returned them all or just said they were sorry and promised not to take any more.

Usually though, a well built stone wall with a good home and people who care for it will live a long happy life and isn't in much danger of being stolen.

Photos, on the other hand, often get 'taken'. In fact they keep getting taken all the time. Once a picture has been taken it can be reproduced easily, and then, in a sense it is as though it has been abducted. If it is stolen this way, you never know where it might end up. You may not even know it has gone missing, and even if you do, it would be counter productive to put a 'missing' notice up all around the neighbourhood, with a picture of your photo.

If you are lucky it may show up on the news or appear on someone's website or in some newspaper article about another waller. Someone may report it. Still, it's more likely you may never know about it.

If you get your picture taken, all you can assume is that the picture was a good one, and probably has a good home in someone's portfolio now and if you don't get any credit for it, just take consolation in knowing it was worth stealing.

On the other hand, if you take any pictures, just make sure they are yours!