Simon J Byrne's photostream  

Peveril Point, Swanage, Dorset

Had a bit of trouble with this due to the 10-stop filter giving it a strange colour cast. I can't seem to fix it properly so just opted for the slightly strange colour balance.

www.simonbyrnephotograpy.com

Swanage sunrise, Dorset

Beech Avenue, Kingston Lacy, Dorset

Same road, different angle

Corfe Castle, Dorset

Misty sunrise over the castle.

www.simonbyrnephotography.com

www.simonbyrnephotography.com/articles_215188.html

So about 10 days ago I received an e-mail from someone called Alice at www.mymodernmet.com. She had seen a few photos I took in Arizona last Summer at a place called the Wave, a sandstone formation that has lines flowing round it (see it in the World landscapes gallery), and she wanted to do a small feature on the shots.

They had been on Flickr for several months by this point without attracting a whole lot of interest on there, so it was a bit surprising. Anyway, I obliged and sent her some photos and info and a few days later a very nice article appeared on the website.

Within a few days I received several e-mails from photo agencies asking to promote the images, for which I would be paid. This was pretty great obviously, but I didn't really expect much. I sent the photos to one of the agencies and thought no more of it.

Two days later the agency sent me an e-mail saying I should go and buy a copy of the Guardian. That day the photos had been published in 3 national and 1 international newspaper, with the Guardian running one of my photos as a double page centre spread. This was a complete surprise, but obviously I was ludicrously happy. There were also features on the photos with accompanying stories on the Daily Mail and Mirror websites, as well as the photo appearing on a bunch of other similar news sites such as Yahoo. It was the first time I had been paid to have a photo published, which was pretty amazing. The broadsheet features focussed on the photo, whereas the tabloids unsurprisingly picked a few words out of the accompanying text I had provided to the image agency and sensationalised it massively. The stories made me sound like Capt. Scott, which is completely untrue of course.

Over the following few days the photos/story have spread, so now if you type "simon byrne the wave" or something similar into google there are 6 pages worth of sites featuring them.

This is great for publicity, but surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, some idiots have internet access.

Some people are going to like the shots, some people aren't. No problem. What I didn't expect is that several people took issue with the tabloid stories, and with it, me. One idiot even decided to go to the trouble of hunting me down so he could send me a message and tell me I was shit. Great, thanks. Good use of time there. The interesting thing is that not a single piece of any of the criticism was constructive, which makes it useless really.

The strange thing is that I don't even think the photos are that great. They're nice enough, but I plan to go back in the future and return with much better shots. Search flickr, you'll find similar shots in no short supply. I didn't promote them anywhere, didn't shop them around, and won't do. I just sent them to an agency who did it all off their own back.

For anyone who reads the story, please understand the following:

1. The Wave is in the Arizona desert, and there is no path there. You just have to walk across the rock/sand/bush with some guidelines provided by the BLM rangers

2. It's about 3 miles there and back, 6 miles round trip. It takes a while due to the heat, but is by no means a great feat of exploration on my part

3. Visitors are limited to 20 a day, to preserve the Wave. This is great in my eyes, as it gives those who do make the effort to get a permit a chance to enjoy it in its prime

4. The location is not that secret. Unfortunately some chumps have published directions on how to get there on the internet, meaning people will go there regardless. The BLM try to keep its location off the radar, but in the internet age they're never going to succeed

5. Idiots have internet access

To those who liked the photos, thanks for your comments.