When Sub-Evil Boy was a younger lad, a favorite publisher in our household was Dorling Kindersley. Cool concepts, solid information, and excellent graphics and layout made them a hit with both him and his parents. When your 7 year old starts getting metaphysical on you, for example, it’s awfully nice to be able to pick up a copy of “A young person’s guide to philosophy” to lend a hand :-). He’s outgrown a lot of their children’s line now, but they were a definite win at the time and much appreciated.
Imagine my surprise, nay complete shock, when today I received an e-mail via Flickr from that very same DK asking if they could use one of my photographs in an upcoming book! They’re apparently putting together a book entitled Viking in their Eye Wonder series. This series is aimed at ages 5-8, and aims to combine “exciting facts and bold photography” to take children to “the heart of each subject”.
And, in that heady atmosphere, they want to use the photo below that I took in Reykjavik! Wow, that’s pretty darn cool, and I’m quite chuffed. I realize it’ll be one little picture amongst zillions of images in one book amongst even greater zillions, but still, to play a role in the development of the reading skills of children is a pretty excellent thing. All the evidence says that if you can get them reading, most everything will work out, but if you lose that battle early, you’re in serious trouble. Given that I’m unlikely to start cranking out Horrible Histories anytime soon, this is probably as close as I’ll get in the near future to contributing in any broad way to that worthy cause.
The photo itself continues to surprise me. It’s nice enough, but it seems a really “obvious” photograph to take from the bell tower of Hallgrímskirkja, and it doesn’t seem to be blessed with particularly excellent light or a terribly interesting sky. I keep feeling like someone local ought to be able to catch dozens of shots as good or better sometime when the light’s really cool.
Still, people obviously like it. It’s currently my 16th “most interesting” photo (out of 954 posted to date) according to Flickr’s mysterious algorithms. And DK wants to put it in a book.
Ain’t life strange.
Oh, and I also was asked last week if the sundial photo at left could be used in an entirely different book. This is a picture I really like, and which is one spot lower on my list (17th, which is still really good and makes me happy). The book in this instance is, as far as I can tell, an Italian religious text as part of a program aimed at bringing young people (back) into the church there. Not being a big fan of evangelical behavior of any stripe, I’m less excited about this (hence the lack of an earlier post). Still, one of the realities of a Creative Commons license is that you don’t get to (pretend to) control all the possible uses of your work. And, as Mike pointed out, their use of my photo doesn’t imply any sort of support on my part, anymore than their use of something like Firefox would imply any support on the part of the contributors to that project.
Now I just need to get the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to use one of my photos to balance the scales. Maybe this wonderful fellow? I’ve long thought that I see the mighty FSM in this, and wondered if there was a lucrative retirement to be had in promoting pilgrimages (and charging followers a pretty penny for the appropriate paraphenalia and special FSM rose water). Hmmmm…
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