Who Were They?

For this week’s Sepia Saturday prompt we have big hats and a picnic on the lawn. I may have even used one of these photos in the past, but with over 600 posts on the blog now, I’m not inclined to dig back through to find out for certain. :-) These 20th century images were probably taken in the early 1900s or 1910s by an amateur photographer, probably a friend of the family or family member. I have about 20 or so photos that are the same format – square mounted photo on a square, embossed card. The embossing varies, but generally trends toward vines and flowers. None of the people are identified.

Recently in another group, we were discussing Pinterest and how often the original owner of an image loses track of where their stuff gets pinned. I have experienced this myself, and so am working to watermark all my images for my various sites (I have 4). Recently I have been trying out PhotoBulk for the Mac. This little app allows you to determine a preset location for your watermark, font, color, and even if you want to use a logo. Then, you drop how ever many photos you want onto the app, and it processes the watermark onto every image. In some instances this is problematic if you use the wrong color font, as in I recently put a black watermark onto a black background. Duh, that didn’t show up! It’s fast, too! In the length of time it took to write these sentences, PhotoBulk could process 20-30 images, maybe even more. I have played with using Picnic on Google+ and I like the results there because I can make an overlay that is relatively transparent, and so doesn’t take away from the image itself. But, that process is slow, with each image handled individually.

Of course, once you put something on the internet there’s nothing stopping people from taking it. The watermark is one step in the direction toward protecting your intellectual property, artwork, images you own, etc., as well as driving traffic back to your site. (I can’t deny I like it when I see I am getting traffic coming from Pinterest.) If you are reading this and thinking of Pinning something (I don’t mind, I have a Pin It button down there) please always try to cite the origin of the image. It’s the least amount of internet courtesy and it’s very nice. It’s like saying “hey, this site has a lot of really interesting stuff, check it out!” :-)

For more photos of hats, picnics, happy groups of people and probably some actual discussion thereof, click over to Sepia Saturday. You will be happy you did!