by Tom Baril(?), Peony Buds, 1997
Part I:
You never know where the trail might lead . . . During a coffee break this morning, I popped on Pinterest and came across the image above.
But let me back up just a sec when it comes to posting/reposting images (on whatever social media site). As a photographer, I do immensely enjoy sharing my images, but as that same photographer I would want … expect… credit for my image. A while back, a fellow blogger (darn, I really wish I could remember the blogger who enlightened me on this – I’ll give a shout out if and when I do) posted about how so many images are just randomly posted on sites like Pinterest with no links, no credit, no nada. Since reading that post, I’ve made it a practice to check every click, validate the image, to be sure credit is given where credit is due . . . or I move on.
Back to the image. I clicked on it, which lead me to a kinda of strange website (not the one I was expecting as noted on the Pinterest board) It looked to me someone’s website that looks like they “collect” others photos, just a gallery of images, no text to speak of, no real explanation why they were there. Anyway, at least there was a link to the photographer, Tom Baril, the title and date. So off I went. This led to a site called I Photo Central. Now I was at an international site dedicated to photography collecting and collectors (quite different from the site that got me here), curating for galleries, etc. And then I noticed something familiar. The curators for this photographer lived in my little town, in the neighborhood right next door to mine. Small world. This post now has a couple purposes: 1) to note how easy a photograph can lose its association to the photographer and 2) a note to myself regarding this local resource (one just never knows how such a resource can come into play when preparing an upcoming photography club meeting).
Part II:
As I started to put this post together, collecting the links, etc, I could not find the above photo in the actual collection by Tom Baril at I Photo Central. But it did give me a chance to scroll through other images by him. An interesting collection from warm flowery images, like the one above, to hard edge industrial images. It still bugged me though that I was not actually finding a reference to the above image, so I turned to Google. Huh? I’m starting to feel like Alice (in wonderland) things are getting curiouser and couriouser. The flower photographs from the I Photo Central site were there on his website, but no “Peony Buds.” I also saw it in Google images, maybe this would take me to it. Nope, just another selling site but here next to the Peony image it said “Tom Baril: Hibiscus, 1997” that apparently was sold. I am no botanist but I know this is not a photo of a hibiscus. Maybe that is what happened to this image, it was sold and it’s reference with it. So in all honesty, I am still really not 100% sure who this lovely peony photograph belongs to (a simple watermark sure would have saved me a lot of time and effort.) Mr. Baril if you should happen to read this post, I would love to credit you for this lovely image. And if nothing else, I have left a trail to your photos.
And so the trail goes cold as did my cup of coffee.
Til next time,
Maria
