Picture Perfect and Ready for Vegas

We're just finishing up the packing and all that jazz to leave for Vegas and DevConnections. As is my tradition, I'll be snapping 1.65 billion photos (1 for every dollar Google paid for YouTube) of people there, silly conferences, concealed lizards, logging chains, and various keynotes with Bil generally making a fool out of himself as he pretends to know what he's doing. All while exposing myself on the wub-wub-web. Watch for 2-3 entries a day over the next week wtih lots of pictures of Elvis, Mort, and Celine (and maybe a few Guthries and Hanselmans thrown in for good measure).

Its funny as I don't consider myself a good photographer at all. Yeah, I think I have some idea of what constitutes good design (otherwise all those years in Art College was a waste) and I did take some photography courses back in my day so I can drop a few f-stops of my own in a conversation. Yet I don't consider my pictures that good, compared to ones that take my breath away from most people on Flickr.

In any case, twice now my pics have been gobbled up by a group called Schmap. Schmap makes interactive guides that let you virtually move around cities, looking at attractions and sites. They grab pictures from lunks like me who offer them up via a Creative Commons license. That's what CC is all about, sharing for sharing sake and not for profit. They don't charge for the guides (but I'm sure they might make money from advertising) and they don't pay the people for their photographs, but I don't care. It's fun to see my pics published and I'm glad it might help people so they can see what I thought was interesting wherever I went. The previous time they included a picture of mine was for their Calgary guide so now it's the Orlando one. Sure, Schmap isn't National Geographic but hey, it's fun and free. You can see my pics from Orlando and the last DevConnections that are being included in their Florida guide here (sorry, just touristy pictures as I guess they didn't consider images of geeks to be Schmap-worthy).

So it's off to Vegas tommorow and snapshots galore. Who knows, maybe I'll see a note from them when they publish a Vegas guide.