this is scary

check out this story that I found on yahoo.com. as a photog, this scares me!

Mo. family Christmas photo turns up in Czech ad
Ap
By BETSY TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer Betsy Taylor, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jun 10, 9:23 pm ET
ST. LOUIS – It's an international mystery: How did a Missouri family's Christmas card photo end up in the Czech Republic, splashed across a huge storefront advertisement? Danielle Smith said Wednesday that the photo taken of her family last year got sent to family and friends, and was posted on her blog and a few social networking sites. The photo showed her and her husband Jeff holding their two young children.
About 10 days ago, one of Smith's college friends was driving through Prague when he spotted their huge smiling faces in the window of a store specializing in Europeann food. He snapped a few pictures and sent them to a flabbergasted Smith.
"It's a life-size picture in a grocery store window in Prague — my Christmas card photo!" said Smith, 36, who lives in the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon.
Mario Bertuccio, who owns the Grazie store in Prague, said the photo was from the Internet. Details were sparse, but he said he thought it was computer-generated. When told it was a real photo — of a real family — he said he started taking steps to remove it.
"We'll be happy to write an e-mail with our apology," said Bertuccio, who said he would send the Smiths a bottle of good wine if they lived in his eastern European country.
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.
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Associated Press Writer Karel Janicek in Prague contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
Danielle Smith's blog: http://www.extraordinarymommy.com/blog

passion

it often happens in ways that we don't want it to. it = life. we get fat and sassy with things that we are comfortable with and often fail to open our eyes to see those things that challenge us and inspire us to capture the moment. photography is a passion and it is a way to tell a life story. if I do my job correctly, the pictures I take should make you feel something. that's the struggle. that's the challenge. that's the passion.

forgive me for being a fat and sassy "do-er" and give me the drive to get moving on this passion again!

as I often hear in a prayer at church, "Lord, grant me the energy to change the things I can and the awareness of the things that I cannot."

I can change this.

jg.

welcome back, june!

so i believe that if june were a woman, she would be beautiful. maybe a young bride with possessed by intense joy.. or maybe she might be a grandmother just home from picking strawberries with her granddaughter, with the warm smell of fruit on sweat-stained skin. if nothing else, she must be a mother carrying damp bathing suits to the laundry room after watching children run through a sprinkler until daytime sunshine was overshadowed by dusk. this is summer, undoubtedly the best- happiest- time of year. i feel like the world massages the tension of winter and spring out of their shoulders on memorial day weekend and then welcomes june, whatever form she may be, to come and relax with a glass of sweet tea for 30 days... or so.

happy are the days of summer when ties are sometimes replaced with short sleeves and bermudas. grass is softer for tumbling this time of year. water is the medium we use to soothe our wayward souls. june is the wonderful adjective-evoking season of love, strawberries and bathing suits. join in the fun!

jg.