Fires happen in one's neighborhood all the time, right? Uh, no...

I never thought I'd see it happen in my neighborhood. But today, it happened. It got me out of the shower, too. (Yes, my schedule is weird, and late. Don't bother me. )

My mother just happened to look out the window. It was really a luck thing; otherwise, I would have missed the beginning part of it. I heard the sirens as I was getting into the shower, but sirens are common enough in this city that it wasn't anything remarkable. The smoke (that I couldn't see), however, was. I quickly cut my shower short and rushed to get dressed, grabbing my camera on the way outside.

Having my camera paid off, too; I got about two hundred shots of the scene, 132 of which I uploaded (after my mother helped de-duplicate and de-crappy-shot the set) a few hours ago. If you're interested, have a look at my fire photos. I went through a battery-and-a-half in the approximately three hours that I was shooting.

As you can see from the photo at right, the middle unit was practically gone. That tangled mass below the center fireman's yellow helmet is the roof, which is covering a burned-out car. (The car's gasoline tank—or it might have just been a tire, I'm not sure—actually exploded.

It was a pretty lucky fire, really. Nobody was home, and the two cats that lived in the fourth unit (I believe, though I'm not entirely clear) were rescued with no injuries.

Anyway, I don't have to re-hash the whole thing; KARE-11 and the Star Tribune both have decent write-ups. It's too soon to know very many details, so there are a lot of unanswered questions—like the cause. I'll watch the news for more information.

What I'm Doing

Above all else, I feel like the fact that I was there taking pictures means I have an obligation to help those involved in any way I can. In the case of the owners, it means I'm offering the use of my photos for insurance claims and such. (Lia Peterson's brother seemed appreciative of my offer, and I'll ask him to pass on the link to his sister's neighbors in my email to him. The cats rescued were Lia's.) I've also emailed the City of Minneapolis offering my photos for use in the investigation that will be taking place.

Obviously I had no place trying to help fight the fire—I wouldn't know what to do, and might end up getting myself or others hurt—so I ran around the three accessible sides of the property photographing all kinds of things, doing my best to stay out of the way of the firefighters and other officials. (Since nobody said anything, I'm guessing I succeeded.)

My mother also engaged a woman from Fire Station 17 in conversation, and I joined in. I gave this firefighter my photo gallery address, and also mentioned her in my missive to the City. She expressed interest in seeing my photos, but couldn't give me her email address, so I'm doing my best to get them to her. (If I don't get any indication that she's gotten them, I'll swing by the station at some point and ask.)

What Others Did

Those who weren't involved with the FD did their best to stay out of the way, as I did. There were one or two instances where I saw neighbors helping out, though. The most shining example was when a new supply hose was being run from a hydrant on the next block. By-standers pitched in to drag the hose up to the engine in front of the building so it could pump water on the fire from above using its ladder. I would have done it in a heartbeat, if I'd been close enough, but it was good to see people helping out.

Where Now?

The fire is out, nobody got hurt, and the cats were rescued. But the work is really just starting. The light-weight construction of this relatively new complex meant that the fire spread a lot faster than it would have in the older buildings that are common in the neighborhood. In turn, that means there are several insurance claims to be filed, rather than one, and a full investigation will be made.

Lots of things need to be done. The residents need to recover what belongings they can and find shelter. The site needs to be cleaned up and (most likely) redeveloped. But the important thing is, nothing truly irreplaceable (such as life) was lost.

All right, it's time to get this issue out there.  I tweeted it a few times before, many months ago, but last night I was just reminded of the issue by an entire Facebook album of photos uploaded by someone I went canoeing with last summer -- but represented as original works.  No credit, no acknowledgment, not even anything about the fact that someone else took the photos!

Fine, I did upload the photos to Picasa Web Albums and set them as public, and I did send everyone on the trip the URL of the gallery page... But still, those are my pictures that have been taken without any attribution and uploaded to a social website that claims a ton of rights to user-submitted content in the fine print of its user agreements:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

In short:

[...] this means you’re giving up copyright control of your material. If you upload a photo to Facebook, they can sell copies of it without paying you a cent. If you write lengthy notes (or import your blog posts!), Facebook can turn them into a book, sell a million copies, and pay you nothing. This deserves careful consideration!

Both of the above quotes were copied from a great post at Legal Andrew on the subject of Facebook.  (See?  Attribution is so easy to give, and yet it's so often left out.)

So there are issues with Facebook's terms of service.  There are also issues with the emotional connection I feel with my own photos, and my desire to be credited for my work, and my wish to be recognized by others for what I've done.  Oh, and let's not forget the horrible feeling that comes from knowing other people think someone else created your work.

I'm not going to mention who copied my photos, not by name.  That doesn't matter; I can handle that person's abuse easily enough, once I decide what course of action to take.  Which brings me to the point of this post.

Using a question as a post title isn't something I do often (despite it being advised).  That means I really want reader feedback on the post, even more than normal.  So, it's a simple question:

How should I handle this unauthorized, unattributed uploading of my content to Facebook?

Should I contact the person through the messaging system (or email)?  Or just send Facebook a DMCA notice for the images and be done with it?

I look forward to any and all opinions on this matter.

Image via Wikipedia

So head on over to "except special people" (not my headline or text, though; just my picture) if you're into grammar. If you like that, I'd suggest subscribing to the site, because that's what Bethany posts. The vast majority of posts are photos from user submissions, so get busy with that camera!

Given that the 2 GB cards I use now are about $30-$40, let's do some math here. It takes eight 2 GB cards to make one 16 GB card. Even taking the cheapest price I've seen for a 2 GB card, $32, eight of those would be $246, an extra $15 over buying the 16 GB card outright. The price will probably drop just as dramatically as other memory cards, too.

Consider, when I got my first three 2 GB cards, they were $140 each, with a $40 mail-in rebate (I only got two of the rebates back). Not long after, they dropped below $100. Now they're at $30-$40, and I wonder if I jumped the gun a little too soon. Perhaps I did, but replacements are a lot cheaper.

So, let's just say I'm looking forward to the days of 32 GB or 64 GB (heck, why not 512 GB?) SD cards, when I'll be able to carry my entire home server with Apache, PHP, and MySQL on the same card with a launcher to let me run it on any computer. Dream not of today, but of the future -- the future looks good!

For example, you keep picture 1343, then take five test pictures and delete them all (1344-1348). By going into the menu, selecting the File Numbering option, and cycling the setting from Continuous to Auto Reset and back, you can make the camera re-use those five numbers. If you previously deleted picture 1245, though, it still stays unused.

This is a good short-term hack, but it can't be used retroactively. You have to do it before you save another picture. If you forget and save picture 1349, in our example, you'll have a five-number gap, and you can't fix that unless you delete photo 1349, as well.

I also discovered a way to get back your numbering if you accidentally reset it by performing this hack on an empty memory card.

I took the memory card out of the camera and put it into my computer's card reader. I opened it in Windows Explorer (any file manager will do) and made a new folder named "100CANON" (the default photo folder name). I went into my photo library and found the latest picture I had taken, a file named "IMG1903.jpg". I loaded it into the new folder and took out the card. I put it back into the camera, cycled the menu option to be safe, and took a picture. Voila! Picture 100-1903 was joined by number 100-1904. I deleted both (a copy of the one I loaded was still on the computer by default). Now the camera's back to where it was.

I don't expect this to be especially useful for a lot of people, but it should work on any Canon camera that uses the same file numbering (is that all of them?). It works because the camera, when numbering files, goes on either the last picture taken (on an empty memory card in Continuous mode) or the highest-numbered file on a non-empty card (in either mode). Copying a file you took with the camera, as far as I can tell, is crucial, because you cannot view photos that have been edited with a computer on the camera. Theoretically, the file could be copied and renamed to "IMG9999.jpg" and set the camera to start over, or "IMG7285.jpg" and set the next picture at 7286. Deceptive numbering like that isn't very good for really determining how many photos you've taken with the camera, but it might be good for playing a prank on someone else's.