safety

Today I was perusing my flickr account, checking out some of my stats, etc. And I realized something. People are finding my pictures on google and yahoo searches. I'm a little surprised. When I clicked the link to yahoo the search I discovered that "our little girls" brings up at least a dozen of MY pictures.

Wow. Like. Seriously. Holy shit. It didn't really occur to me that people would google and come look at my pictures. I just figured it was going to be a few random flickr members viewing them. I'm not really an exceptional photographer, I don't expect much attention.

And, OMG, another blogger has a SLIDE SHOW of the pictures I took when I was making a strawberry pie. What's the etiquette on that? Do I message and say thanks? Do you want the recipe? Ignore it? After discovering what appears to be a glasses fetishist site linking to one of my pictures I am beefing up my privacy settings a bit. Shutting down 3rd party searches, I'm still leaving things open to flickr users but not allowing downloads for people who don't have accounts. I genuinely appreciate feedback from other flickr photographers (even if its critical or they tell me my toes are weird), I just don't really like people taking liberties with my stuff. I guess it's to be expected, but I don't have to play along.