Speaking of Flickr, I found this fantastic video via the Flickr Clock timeline-thing. Wonderful tool.

Here’s some photos I took from the roof of Eric Scheid’s apartment block. (Thanks for inviting us up, Eric!)

You can read the rest of story, or just go straight to my photos from the wedding. (They’re higher quality than the versions shown here too)

The flight was reasonably okay – although the flight out of Sydney was delayed by about 30 minutes, due to Sydney Airport having only one operational runway. As it turns out, I had allowed enough time so that I ended up arriving at Melbourne’s Southern Cross (formerly Spencer Street) Station on time.  From there I slept on the train out to Drouin, waking up about a minute before we pulled in to Drouin station.

Paul met me at the station and we wandered back to Nat’s parents place - a literal hive of last minute planning activity. Parents and relatives running around organising things, and Nat and Paul visibly stressed out from the weeks of preparation.

Ryan (Paul’s best man)  and Paul dropped me off at The Royal Drouin Hotel. Where the entertainment was certainly laid on. I’m not talking raffle night here folks – they had “proper gentlemans entertainment”! Yep, that’s code for strippers!  

Now, before you get too excited… I didn’t stick around for the show, the one stripper I did see who came down from the rooms up-stairs was, well… lets just say she wasn’t  exactly Parisian Cabaret Show material.

I’ll spare you all the details about how small and icky the room was and how the strippers spent ages practicing moves or something up the hallway from my room…

I got a lift with Andrew & Amanda out to Glenfyne, where the service and reception was being held. There’s not a whole lot I can say except that the day went really well. I took a heap of photos, everyone looked great and had a good time. They really lucked out on the weather too.

Nat and Paul really do make a great couple, and they both seemed to have a good day. The slushee machine was a hit, especially with those of us that stuck around to help pack up at the end. Several of us were getting stuck into the remains of the slushee mix.

So, Congratulations to Natalie & Paul – Best wishes for the future.

This is Claude, he’d just like to let you know that he really dislikes:
- Vampires
- Werewolves
- Zombies
- People who Poke/Prod
- And other silly Facebook applications

Claude says he’ll come visit all the people who send these through.

Just… y’know, so you know what to expect.

PS: Claude is a Huntsman Spider. He’s currently residing in my bedroom, and plays around on Facebook and Twitter whilst I’m asleep.

Let me just say first up, that the pie was great… and it’s all gone (I had the last bit for dessert tonight)

Unfortunately, because I was trying to help serve (we had folks over for dinner) -  I didn’t have a huge amount of time to get the exposures right.

A slightly too large piece of Mulberry pie… they’re messy things.

Apologies to the colour-space fanatics – I tried to get the colour of the pastry to match between each of the three shots and still show as much detail as I can, but it’s difficult.

Today we got a big bag of Mulberries ~3KG I think – they had their stalks on them, so I had to remove them before they are made into Mulberry Pie(s) tomorrow.

Needless to say, my hands got, err… a little stained from the mulberry juices. I imagine the stains will hang around longer than the Mulberries themselves will last (in pie form or not). Mulberries are kinda like little tasty packages of anti-theft dye.

Photos of the mulberry pies will come later.. Yum.

Another girl who’s likeness was used in the Virgin Mobile campaign. Credit: Jason Meredith “It’s fine to text about someone, just don’t send it to them by mistake” says Virgin Mobile.

Some quick facts, for those of you who aren’t aware of the background on this:

• Virgin Mobile Australia ran an ad campaign called “Are you with us or what?” earlier this year.
• The ads used pictures which were obtained from Flickr – a photo sharing service.
• The photographers who posted the photos on Flickr marked them with a Creative Commons licence of some variety – although apparently not all of them allowed commercial usage.
• Model releases were not obtained by Virgin Mobile/Advertising Company/Photographer – Which is required for commercial use (with some disclaimers) , but not non-commercial use (such as posting to Flickr)
• Neither Virgin Mobile nor their Advertising/Marketing agency contacted the photographers to let them know their photos would be used.
•  Some of the pictures were not exactly flattering, and the captions (added by Virgin Mobile) could possibly be offensive to those pictured.

I find it interesting the viewpoints of some of the people commenting about this.

With the exception of someone shooting with the intent to use pictures commercially; I don’t believe it should be the responsibility of the photographer to obtain model releases for all those featured in a shot.  Many apparently disagree with me, for example the first comment by ‘wjkocik’ on this photo 

There’s also some confusion about the role of the Creative Commons folks in this. The Sydney Morning Herald says “Creative Commons Corp, [is] a Massachusetts nonprofit that licenses sharing of Flickr photos”.  The Creative Commons folk simply provide a way for people to use a pre-prepared licence for their works which clearly states what the work can be used for.

I’ll be watching the lawsuit to see what happens.

Check out the close-up on the head. Strange looking little ear-ish things.

Very cool.

Very interesting to see.

FWIW: I really lucked out that day – almost all of the people were happy to pose for a few seconds to have their photo taken, so even though I was having issues with the flash (too bright/too dark), it worked out well.