Be Careful What You Wish For...

Craigslist is often a source of jobs and gigs for any creative that knows to visit on a regular basis. At times, though, some of the gigs posted are too rich for words. Such as the following:

beautiful/hansome pool person (Burien)

I am having a party for my daughter and need someone to stay by the pool for 3 hours.There will be other adults with the kids (mostly 11 year olds)but last time I could not count on them to stay there or make sure another adult was supervising.You can wear your suit,lay in the sun,swim and eat.I would prefer someone very attractive as I feel it will help to keep some of the adults by the pool.I need you to be there on Friday July 24th from 3pm-6pm.Please reply with photo.

• Location: Burien
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
• Compensation: $30 cash

For $30? That doesn't sound like too much pay. Seems like this woman is fishing among the dregs for this one. She's obviously not going for the refined, well mannered cabana boys with a payment like that. They say be careful what you wish for, but can you imagine this poor mother's reaction if she received a photo like this one attached to an email?

I don't know if it's only me, but that guy is exactly the type of person I see responding to the ad. Perhaps this woman should save herself the hassle and stay by the pool on this one. Me? I'm flagging the ad for Best of Craigslist. Consider this another cautionary tale from the guy bringing you the vitamins for your optic nerves.

Earning Residuals in Eastern Europe

One of the reasons that I always try to watermark my images is due to a story that I stumbled upon thanks to Sheryll, another friend in the photog business. She posted it on her Facebook -as did I- but I felt like posting it up on the blog. The news has broken world-wide about a Missouri family's Christmas card photo being used in promo ads in the Czech Republic. Take a look at the images for yourself:

The original Christmas card photo above, as posted on the family blog.
And this is what a college friend discovered while traveling through Prague:

The Associated Press article says it best. I'll let this quoted piece from their article sum up my feelings on the matter:

The Smiths and photographer Gina Kelly hadn't authorized anyone to use the pictures. Kelly said she has asked a professional photographers' organization to help figure out how her image wound up in Prague.

Smith has gotten 180,000 hits to her Web site since she recently posted the story about the well-traveled snapshot. She said the photo wasn't used in an unseemly manner, it was just used to tell potential shoppers about the store's delivery service.

Smith said next time she posts a photo on the Internet, she's going to lower the resolution or add an electronic watermark to make it hard to reproduce.

"This story doesn't frighten me, but the potential frightens me," Smith said.

So the moral of the story is protect your images. There is no clue as to where they may end up being used. After all, in a situation like this how does one go about beginning to earn residuals in Eastern Europe?