I am in love with all things apiary. I have been for quite a while--and have been thinking about the bees, their lives and how they build their hives, the job they do with pollination, their clannishness as a swarm, and now their sudden departure. I am so in love with bees, I am looking into getting a hive with Kitty and seeing if we can do this sort of thing. There are some wonderful sites--with the starter set from Bee Commerce to "packaged bees"and Queens (love it that queens have a price list...>). Virgin Queens or Breeder Queens? or packaged Queens? Just the language is rich and funny. Here is a beekeepers blog>>Maybe that lovely man from the Tburg farmers market can advise? Remember him? He told me about how he rents his bees for around $70 a day to pollinate people's fields. He packages them up and drives them carefully over to the new field...and takes them home at night. Plus, he must get more than the money with what the bees bring home at night..Look at this>we have a fingerlakes bee keeping club! More to learn.
I am also going to get Digimarc for the studio. Digimarc is the copyright service that is part of the pulldown in Photoshop under filters. They have several levels of service and will give me a bit more peace of mind surrounding the ownership thing that is snowballing with the Orphan Rights Act being out there, looming on the horizon--and also just the cherrypickers who take from websites for their own websites etc. This is what Digimarc says:
COMMUNICATE OWNERSHIP
Content (images, audio, and video) often circulates anonymously, without the ability to communicate who owns it or how contact them to obtain the right to use it. Digital watermarking provides a persistent digital identity for all forms of media content and enables copyright holders to reliably communicate their ownership while also providing links to related details and purchase information. This helps to promote licensing and protect copyrighted content from unauthorized use or becoming an "orphaned work."
Digimarc embeds code into the image/illustration versus the fugly circle C and a name over the image which is repulsive and seems so amateur hour. There are shows to enter soon...and having this tool in tandem with that is probably a good idea.
Chad is coming this Saturday with his children to do the Ithaca Paint Off. Jime will be there too. I don't/didn't want to do it as I don't really paint. If they had an Ink Off...I might have had a crack at it. But as the tribe is gathering for this, I was musing that this would be the opportunity next year to get all the local illustrators I know from Rochester/Syracuse, down to below Sayre/ Binghampton to participate--and I could have an early dinner here for them prior to the even. Combine networking with fundraising--and let people show off a bit. Need to think a bit more on this.
I am choking a bit with the illustration--getting a bit caught up in the time it is taking to finish things...but still in a positive motion. Got a very encouraging note via Facebook with people I should contact specifically as it relates to the portrait work I have done (Corning Museum of Glass and the Burkas) as this person thought this work has traction. Am a bit panic-y about that and will talk it through with the mentor in SF. Gotta get to work...times a wasting.