The gallery of pictures from the Golden Trout backcountry trip are posted to the gallery section. There's far too many pictures, but I guarantee hope you'll like at least a third of them.
A couple years ago, I took a backpacking trip to the French Canyon, in the John Muir Wilderness. The terrain is ruggedly beautiful, and the given that it’s neither easy to access, nor adjacent to the John Muir Trail, it offers great solitude… and Trout, Golden Trout. The many lakes and streams in the area are all teeming with Golden Trout, generally very modest sized Goldens of 5-10".
One afternoon, we descended to the canyon floor, and fished all day for the smallish, but wildly plentiful Goldens, which attackedThe Golden Trout dry flies with reckless abandon. I captured a few dozen pictures with my digital camera, to relive the moments later. When I returned from the trip, I found a couple of the photos I had taken seemed to document with perfect clarity, the defining characteristics of the Golden Trout. I chose one of those photos, and uploaded it to Wikipedia, making it part of the article about Golden Trout. It has since been added to the articles for the Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery, and the Golden Trout Wilderness, by other Wikipedians.
It’s not the first time I've added pictures of my own to Wikipedia. I had an image I really liked of a group of Meerkats, taken at the London Zoo, which used to be featured on the Meerkat page, before the page was edited to remove a bunch of pictures (admittedly, Meerkats are particularly photogenic, and the Wikipedia entry was a glut of photos). Also from the London Zoo, my image of a Striated Caracara is still part of the Wikipedia entry for that interesting bird of prey.
What was different, however, with the Golden Trout picture, was the license I applied to it when I uploaded it. When I uploaded it, I made the decision that I would release the image into the public domain: The image can be used by anyone, at any time, for any reason. It’s not a remarkably beautiful image, neither well framed nor particularly artistic. It’s simply an excellent documentation of the Golden Trout appearance.
The image has been used in several interesting places, often on fishing websites and forums, which seem to come and go, but a few, seemingly more permanent sites have cropped up.
One is Target Global Warming, where my image is featured as part of an article about habitat loss due to climate change. The website as a whole is focused on the impacts of climate change on fisheries.
The second, more bizarre site, is BellaOnline's article about the State Fish of California. BellaOnline is "The Voice of Women" and is basically a site that has many contributors who write half-informed articles. Basically, its purpose, as far as I can tell, is to generate ad revenue.
The final destination for this humble picture, my personal favorite, is a USGS site covering Nonindigenous Aquatic Species, and talks about the non-native introductions of Golden Trout, and my image is used (even credited!) as the identification image.
It’s a fun ride really, to see an image (and not even a particularly artistic one) that I made while fishing become widespread on the internet.
A story of the Public Domain.
A couple years ago, I took a backpacking trip to the French Canyon, in the John Muir Wilderness. The terrain is ruggedly beautiful, and the given that it’s neither easy to access, nor adjacent to the John Muir Trail, it offers great solitude… and Trout, Golden Trout. The many lakes and streams in the area are all teeming with Golden Trout, generally very modest sized Goldens of 5-10".
One afternoon, we descended to the canyon floor, and fished all day for the smallish, but wildly plentiful Goldens, which attacked dry flies with reckless abandon. I captured a few dozen pictures with my digital camera, to relive the moments later. When I returned from the trip, I found a couple of the photos I had taken seemed to document with perfect clarity, the defining characteristics of the Golden Trout. I chose one of those photos, and uploaded it to Wikipedia, making it part of the article about Golden Trout. It has since been added to the articles for the Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery, and the Golden Trout Wilderness, by other Wikipedians.
It’s not the first time I've added pictures of my own to Wikipedia. I had an image I really liked of a group of Meerkats, taken at the London Zoo, which used to be featured on the Meerkat page, before the page was edited to remove a bunch of pictures (admittedly, Meerkats are particularly photogenic, and the Wikipedia entry was a glut of photos). Also from the London Zoo, my image of a Striated Caracara is still part of the Wikipedia entry for that interesting bird of prey.
What was different, however, with the Golden Trout picture, was the license I applied to it when I uploaded it. When I uploaded it, I made the decision that I would release the image into the public domain: The image can be used by anyone, at any time, for any reason. It’s not a remarkably beautiful image, neither well framed nor particularly artistic. It’s simply an excellent documentation of the Golden Trout appearance.
The image has been used in several interesting places, often on fishing websites and forums, which seem to come and go, but a few, seemingly more permanent sites have cropped up.
One is Target Global Warming, where my image is featured as part of an article about habitat loss due to climate change. The website as a whole is focused on the impacts of climate change on fisheries.
The second, more bizarre site, is BellaOnline's article about the State Fish of California. BellaOnline is "The Voice of Women" and is basically a site that has many contributors who write half-informed articles. Basically, its purpose, as far as I can tell, is to generate ad revenue.
The final destination for this humble picture, my personal favorite, is a USGS site covering Nonindigenous Aquatic Species, and talks about the non-native introductions of Golden Trout, and my image is used (even credited!) as the identification image.
It’s a fun ride really, to see an image (and not even a particularly artistic one) that I made while fishing become widespread on the internet. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why A Wonderful Life is always on TV at Christmas. Public Domain means free!
Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 10:08PM 
Most of them are not this good. 
;)
