Published!

SUMMARY: Wikipedia does it again.

For a couple of years, I enthusiastically took photos of any different breed of dog I encountered for wikipedia. (Which wasn't that many, given that mostly I saw dogs in agility, and mostly there aren't that many different breeds doing USDAA or CPE agility.)

That photo enthusiasm was because, when WP hooked me, it had very little dog info of any kind. At one point, I had created, expanded, seriously edited, and/or added photos and infoboxes to every breed page on the entire site, and every other dog-related page, too. (Before I got unhooked. But eventually there were billions and billions of dog-related pages, and billions and billions of people making less than helpful edits, and I just got tired of keeping up.)

Anyway, many of my breed photos are still used in articles, even though many are nothing to write home about (leashes very visible, etc.). And they are all still ON wikipedia even if not being used.

Photos from wikipedia are quite popular. By publishing them there, I allow other people to use the photos (basically for noncommercial purposes) if they give credit to me and a link back to where the photo exists on wikipedia. People don't all seem to bother with that, so my photos are all over the web now, sometimes even with other people's copyrights watermarked on them. I got tired of chasing those down and asking them to fix them, too.

For example, if you go to google images and search for any of the following, you'll see these photos over and over:

• "smooth collie" or "collie dumbbell", a smooth tricolored collie with a dumbbell in his mouth, on a field of grass, facing left (sometimes right, when they've reversed the photo). That's my photo of my agility friend Rowan.
• "rat terrier", there's an angled full body shot of a rat terrier looking up, with a purple leash coming out to the foreground. My photo.
• "australian kelpie", red and tan guy, side view, with him looking out at you, leash going off to the side. Mine.
• "boston terrier", side view with him looking slightly at you, brindle and white, grass background. Mine.
• "cavalier king charles spaniel." Sitting on a wood surface (actually it's a picnic table). Mine.
• "clicker training." A hand holder a clicker, looking down at the hand and at a sitting dog who looks remarkably like Tika. Oh--wait--it IS tika!  Surprise, another photo of mine.
• And on and on.

I'm no longer bothering to check whether these are legally copied.

You can see all my wikipedia dog photos here.

I've made three or four sales of  photos based on ones that people found on Wikipedia.

So now, last week, I just received a mysterious package, from someone i'd never heard of, containing a book I'd never heard of, on a topic I'd never pick up a book about on my own.  But, leafing through it, it occurred to me to check the photo credits: Oh, yeah, a couple of years back, this guy actually emailed me about using one of my photos. So, in this book, on page 44, next to an image of a dachshund from a hundred years ago, is my photo of this miniature dachshund.

To be polite, I started reading the book, The Origin Then and Now, by David N. Reznick, from Princeton Press.  I'm only about 3 or 4 chapters in, including intro and background and such, and it is in fact readable and interesting. I'm not sure whether I'll make it all the way through, but so far, so good (I just don't have patience or time for dull or badly written material). I'm proud to be part of this project and to have my name listed in the photo credits.

My Photos In Ebook

SUMMARY: Dog-breed book available online

Once upon a time, I wanted to create my own book, or maybe web site, about dog breeds. I had actually started it, but then I discovered Wikipedia and devoted 2 years to that project, expanding what was at that time an extremely sparse collection of articles about dog breeds. I also photographed various breeds (and mixes) at agility trials and uploaded the photos to Wikipedia.

You can view my photos on Wikipedia here.

Read Wikipedia's article on dog agility, which I originally largely wrote (but which has been expanded & edited over time). I think it's a pretty darned good article. Lots of things are missing from the separate history article and separate "agility worldwide" article, though. Help if you can! Anyone can edit.

Check out WP's list of dog breeds; you can go to each article from there. I can't claim to be the primary author on any of them any more, as they've changed so much. Sometimes individual pet owners add text that doesn't apply to the breed as a whole (my favorite: "Shelties generally do not like to fetch"). I used to spend a lot of time cleaning that up, but now I blog instead. (grin) Help if you can! Anyone can edit.

The big problem is that the info is across so many different pages. If you want to search for some breed or feature within only the dog articles, you can't. Wouldn't it be nice to have an electronic book that you could search?

Alex Harris (not someone I know--found me on Wikipedia) has created an ebook of dog breeds, Dogs of the World, for $9.95. He created his own text from several sources. His primary source for photos was Wikipedia, and he used several of mine (with permission). Here's a partial sample page with one of my photos; this is Honey, who just died suddenly last month of hemangiosarcoma, the same thing that killed my Remington.



It's a work of love, privately published, so it won't have the polish of breed books found at the book store. But it is electronic, so you can have it on your computer. And it has my photos in it (and you can search my name once you've got it open). I receive no payment for purchases of this book. I'm just happy to pass the info along. And, since this is an agility blog, here's the first of two pages about the Border Collie, as a sample (not my photo).