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Northern Voice – Day 2

by Carol Browne on May 8, 2010 · 4 comments

in General, Photos, Vancouver

Woohoo! Justin Bieber faces at the Northern Voice today. Today was another informative day with topics including tips for podcasting – which, I just may use. I have a joke I’m DYING to tell you, but because you have to hear it for maximum benefit, I think I may do a little video with radio tips for top story telling effect.

I also attended a talk about journalism in the social media realm. To be honest, I left that one feeling bummed out for sure. Talk about taking the fun out of blogging – what with all the fact checking and stuff? Forget it. I get it. I’m not a journalist, not even an citizen journalist. I just write what I feel like. So, I’ll just blather on about my opinion (educated or not) and hope for the best, with the added bonus of using my own photos. No one can bug me about fair use of images (which apparently doesn’t even exist in Canada – just the US) and other legalities that can cramp my style.

My favourite panel of the day was the Fiber Arts talk, where there was plenty of talk about Ravelry and yarn bombing and other good creative stuff. That’s the kind of blogging conference I would love to attend – an entire conference about blogging and art. So. Dreamy. I believe most of the people in attendance of this panel were fibre artists of some sort. However, one person did ask a question about yarn bombing. Just in case you don’t know what that is, it’s knitted or crocheted graffiti. You can see some samples of that here.

Anyway, the person who was curious about yarn bombing asked the panel this question:

So, do you like to watch and see what happens to your creations, like an arsonist does?

HA! Great question! Awesome way to phrase it. But, I was surprised that the yarn bomber on the panel doesn’t. However, one person in the audience did say she’d check up on hers from time to time.
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The Northern Voice 2010 – Day 1

by Carol Browne on May 7, 2010 · 2 comments

in Family and Buddies, General, Photos, Vancouver

Day 1 of the Northern Voice blogging conference went swimmingly today. I spent the majority of the day in the big UN room learning all about copyright law (which is different from trademark law) as well as all kinds of technical and non-technical photography-related items. I took plenty of notes. Here are the things that stood out for me today:

1) Every photo you see in magazines is retouched in photoshop – including those Dove ads that promoted “natural women”. True story. They use the “healing” brush a lot for that as well as the “liquefy” tool – not to mention a whole lot of Gaussian blur – all located in Photoshop.

2) Just because something in regards to copyright is legal in the United States, it doesn’t mean it’s legal in Canada. I know. Very confusing. To add to the confusion, the laws are still out of date in relation to the internet so many times the legal answer to questions are still “it depends”.

Please note: this is not legal advice.

Martha Rans was the speaker for this Copyright & Online Expression talk and was very encouraging to artists who share their work on the internet. She told us all to keep sharing our work and not to be afraid, mainly. I think since having the IOC and Olympics experience earlier this year helped my understanding of of the copyright thing. She also mentioned the Artists’ Legal Outreach website. It looks like a good resource. I didn’t even know it existed.

Tomorrow we’re back at the conference for 9:45 for another full day of blogging and shmoozing.

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