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.

Avery

something gets us up each morning. something gets us going during the workaday week and probably something much greater gets us up on the weekends. if i had to pick a reason that my vantage point of the world is behind varied lenses of a reliable camera, I suppose the answer would be avery. she was my muse and continues to be on a regular basis. from the moment she entered this world she was a happy face to the camera. capturing her life as she lives it makes my life worthwhile. my love of putting her in picture was the natural progression toward putting others in picture as well. i feel that i can connect to you and your life because i understand- based upon my own little family- how much it means to capture life in action- or childhood in action- or love in action. i suppose that's why i take the pictures i take...
don't get me wrong-i love seeing pictures of avery dressed up for picture-taking. sitting pretty on the stool of photographic mastery. it has its place amidst of all of us. there is a certain timeless quality of a posed portrait that is a staple of every home. ..but those are not the pictures i create. just as with words, or stories, or even a blog, i like to find the story to it all. whether it's bubbles at dusk or barefeet at noon. my job is to capture it.
avery gave me that ability.
she is fluid motion and boundless energy. the cross-examination of every new experience and the angst of every studio photographer. so instead i focused my photography on her, as she is- and usually, sometimes effortlessly, she gives me raw happiness. captured. unadorned. unplanned. unexpected.... and it's beautiful. and now i have been fortunate and blessed enough to pass my love of capturing the beauty of living on to anyone who wants to have it.
what it all adds up to is a menagerie of life. these pictures- your pictures- are a novel spun in photo, a wordless story that tells a thousand tales.
and though my story is titled Avery... yours is whatever you imagine.

jg.

Thursday--we didn't forget

Hello all. I know that it's really Friday but I'm writing for Thursday. We haven't forgotten about the blog--just got a little busy. More to come soon.

jg.

hadley rose jones

the combination of a perfect spring afternoon, blooming flowers at the arboretum and a bright pink tutu makes for happy happy pictures. besides the fact that she is my bff, I think she's infectiously adorable and fantastically photogenic.

enjoy the pictures and be on the lookout for a brand spanking new price-sheet, with some upcoming events!

more tomorrow-

jg.

going to the dogs...

every good home and each wonderful family should be in possession of an ill-behaved dog... or maybe two. our home inhabits two such animals. daphne and isabella. the cautious observer and the unsuspecting thief, respectively. never a dull moment on our street... as if it were not enough to be outnumbered by females to the point that i find myself posting things about lacy socks and smocked dresses... even our dogs are the feminine variety.

we have daphne and isabella- or perhaps they have us. two italian greyhounds full of vim and vigor... endlessly scolded, perpetually lazy, admitted cowards, and common thieves.. loved and coddled as though they walked on two legs instead of four. couple them with avery and melanie and our happy bow-clad family unites a concerted front against me. despite it all, i accept it happily and figure that as the odd man out, i am at least something to spectate and be amused by.

dogs make great companions and i find that they make great pictures too. at the very least they are great for helping the guy with the camera go unnoticed amidst laughter and chase. children tend to smile when dogs are around- unless of course they aren't around usually, at which point, mass chaos ensues. nonetheless, my point is only that i like dogs... and so far, most dogs like me. they are unpredictable (much like children) and they do their own thing (again, much like children).. and they are usually happy (well, it goes without saying.)

having the travel-size version of a greyhound, i am often tested in the capture of fluid motion and quiet solitude. and yet, almost without fail, their pictures turn out as portrait-worthy candids.

we are working on scheduling a photo shoot during the dog days of summer. hopefully we can incorporate some great pound puppies into the mix and make it a fun day for children and canine alike. who knows, maybe a toddler who didn't have a puppy can take one home and have a friend for life- and the picture to prove it.

keep watching for details!

-jg.