Blast from the Past: Hohenschwangau from Neuschwanstein

A view of Hohenschwangau from Neuschwanstein Castle (Schwangau, Germany 2002). Neuschwanstein was built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria and is said to be the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. Bavaria is a beautiful place to visit: beautiful views, tasty food, nice people, wonderful beer.

Blast from the Past: Gimmelwald, Switzerland

I've decided to try something new in this blog. Every Wednesday, I’ll feature a photo that I took in the past. Many of these will be from old low-res point&shoot digital camera or scanned from film. The quality of the photo may not be the best, but hopefully the image itself is interesting. Hopefully, this will inspire me to digitize a bunch of old slides and film.

This picture was taken near Gimmelwald, Switzerland during my sabbatical in 2002. I got interested in going to this area thanks to Rick Steve’s European travel series on PBS. Apparently, I’m not the only one. While in Gimmelwald, we stayed at Walter Mittler's Mittaghorn Hotel. After dinner one evening, we all asked for Heidi Cocoa (a hot-chocolate with peppermint schnapps). Walter grumbled something like “damn that Rick Steve’s and his Heidi cocoa!” I don’t believe we ever mentioned Rick Steve - it just appears that Walter has been asked for Heidi cocoa too many times and knows who to “blame”. We had a wonderful time there and that was one of the funnier moments.

Swiss Cows

Here's another blast from the past. This picture was taken near Gimmelwald, Switzerland during my sabbatical in 2002.

I went on a hike through a local dairy farmer's land, stopping along the way to buy some wonderful Alpenkase cheese. I can still hear the bonging of the cow bells.

Legal Stuff

I'm looking for places online to store my photo.

The first issue to think about is copyrights. If I upload my photos to a web service, what rights do they take on?

For instance, Goggle Picasa's 'Terms of Use' specifies the following:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

This license seems to be in rather broad terms. The website Phanfare.com has a similar provision.

I like ImageEvent.com terms of use better:

ImageEvent claims no ownership rights in any image contained in any of your photo albums. For the sole purpose of displaying your images through your Album, and fulfilling any print and gift orders you or your album invitees place, you grant ImageEvent to use such images to fulfill such orders.

Flickr.com also uses the terms "worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license" while professing to no claim of ownership rights.

Currently, I have a bunch of pictures up on ImageEvent.com and Picasa.

I've been an ImageEvent customer for a long time. However, I don't like the features of the service very much when compared to others. I'd like to find a new web 2.0 site, but the "worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive" licenses worry me. Perhaps needlessly.

Hmmm.

photoGRAPHICA

I entered a couple of pictures (the rose displayed in the last post, and this one - a favorite of mine) into photoGRAPHICA challenge. I'm bluehiker on that site.


Canon G2, 1/15s, f/5.0, 21mm

Boy, its hard to put them out for public scrutiny. It helps getting positive feedback. Now its my turn to offer comments on others. I find that difficult also!