Creative Commons photographs: messages in digital bottles
When I was about five or six, my Grandad helped me write a note, seal it in a bottle, and throw it into a nearby stream.
He explained how it would float off to a river, find its way to the ocean, and ultimately might end up in America or Africa.
The idea that my childish scrawlings might land on a beach in a far off country felt magical. I might create a tiny moment of fun in the life of someone I’d never meet! It was like sending part of myself off on an adventure.
That excitement at throwing something out into the world with an unknown destination is what first motivated me to share my photographs online under a Creative Commons license. This “some rights reserved” approach to copyright lets people freely re-use my pictures however they’d like.
I’m no more than an enthusiastic iPhone snapper, but some of my photographic messages in digital bottles have washed up on unexpected shores. An Australian news site’s write up of California’s Desert Trip festival. A Dutch academic’s book on the anti-austerity movement. A wonky Belgian political blog. A French climate change journal.
With the wisdom of adulthood I know that, for the benefit of a child’s wonderment, my loving Grandad was being somewhat optimistic about the bottle’s probable destination. Similarly, not all of my photos drift very far. But it’s fun to send them off into the world and see what comes back.
