BlueRidgeKitties' photostream  

Photography is fun! I particularly like photographing nature, whether landscapes, plants, animals, or just the moon in the sky. I am fortunate enough to live close to the Blue Ridge Parkway (hence the first part of my screen name) and some truly gorgeous scenery.


Another subject I photograph often are my cats (hence the last part of my screen name) and their antics. I also take pictures of the animals at the High Country Friends for Life pet fairs to put their adoptable cats on the Petfinder site, and at the Watauga Humane Society for their webpage. It can be very rewarding to see cats being adopted because of the photographs you donated to a shelter or rescue.


My camera serves a dual purpose for taking private pictures, but also photographing things for teaching and research. I'm working on Arabidopsis and teaching plant courses among other things, so you'll see quite a bit of greenery and flowery stuff in my photostream as well. Microscope images were taken at the botany lab or microscope facility at the university.


Use of my images
One of the purposes of putting my pictures on Flickr is to make them available to other educators and scientists for use in teaching and research presentations. Limited use (no more than five pictures per photographer or 10% of a collection, whichever is less) for teaching likely qualifies as Fair Use and doesn't require a license or permission.

If you want to use my images beyond the limits of Fair Use, please take note that I put a non-commercial share-alike Creative Commons license on many (but not all) of them to facilitate this. You may use these images freely for teaching purposes provided that you:
- give credit / provide a link back
- don't use them commercially (including ads)
- don't claim "all rights reserved" on modified versions you may create (you can't change the license)

Please also note: If you hotlink Flickr images elsewhere on the net (e.g. your blog), Flickr's terms of use require a link back to the original photo page on Flickr. I consider such a link sufficient attribution.

On some of my images I have "all rights reserved" and I ask that you please respect that. There is usually a reason for it (e.g. the image may have been taken on someone else's private property or show someone else's copyrighted work). If in doubt whether you can use an image, just contact me and ask.

Microscopy images
These pictures were mostly taken of the university's teaching collection of slides using microscopes and camera equipment at the university's microscope facility. They seem to be my most viewed/popular images. Unfortunately, they are not available for stock collections, nor do I have the full rights on them to grant commercial licenses. As an employee of the university, I have a chance to use the equipment for free, but usually there would be a usage fee involved, in particular for any commercial use. If you wish to use them for teaching purposes in your classroom, that's perfectly fine. Attribution should include the name of the university - please contact me for details if needed.

Pictures of people
I only post pictures of people if I am sure there are no privacy concerns. I assume this to be the case for pictures taken at public events where photography was expressly permitted. If however you find yourself in one of my images and feel uncomfortable with having it online, please let me know and I'll be happy to remove them.

My use of favorites
Different people use their favorites for different things. I appreciate comments and favorites on my images, but I mainly use my favorites to mark images that I think may be useful for teaching. So please understand: if I don't reciprocate your faving of my images, it doesn't mean I don't like your images. I love browsing through photos and will frequently comment or bookmark and return to images I like, I just like to reserve my favs page as a convenient repository for pictures I might come back to when prepping for class.

For group admins
Thank you for inviting me or my pictures to your groups! But please take note: I have come to dislike mandatory comment/award groups and won't join such groups any more. I have also grown a dislike of large and/or animated graphics in comments, so I avoid submitting pictures to groups that mandate posting of such comment codes.