Photo theft by Wijeya Newspapers Pvt Ltd.

This is related to my previous post titled "Photo theft by The Sunday Times". The scope just got much wider. The theft is not just by the Sunday Times, but by the whole Wijeya Newspapers group.

I just found out they are using the same image for the banner of the 'order online' page selling all print publications produced by Wijeya Newspapers.


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Through this site, they sell print editions all over the world. They also have a rate card with pricing. For example, a 1 year print edition subscription for The Sunday Times to a US address is US$249.

What earlier started out as a case of an editor browsing the net looking to find a photo to illustrate an article have turned out to be a full scale corporate theft where they blatantly use my photo without consent and payment for a clearly commercial purpose.

Photo theft by The Sunday Times

I was shocked and extremely disappointed to find one of my flickr photos on the online edition of the Sunday Times this morning (Sunday 18 May 2008). The photo on flickr is marked as 'All rights reserved' and unlike some naive user, a publishing house such as Wijeya Newspapers should have some understanding and respect for intellectual property. Under these circumstances where I was never contacted, I never gave consent nor have they credited me and they have even done a crappy job at post processing, this amounts to robbery of intellectual property. I am curious to find out if this appears in the print edition as well since they boast that they are 'Sri Lanka's largest selling independent English language Sunday newspaper'.

The offending article titled "Beneath the lanterns: A closer look at the true meaning of Vesak by Madhushala Senaratne and Himal Kotelawala" is here:

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My original photos is:


They even use a cropped version on the main homepage as shown here:

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as well as the 'Mirror' page as shown here:

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It is extremely sad that people do this so blatantly and with impunity. My photo is the first hit on flickr when searching for 'Vesak' and maybe they regularly source (steal) photos off flickr to fill in their pages. I am further saddened by the fact that The Sunday Times and Dailymirror are regularly read by me and I had a certain degree of respect towards these publications but now thats all lost.

The original photo was taken by me at the 'Sri Lanka Buddhist Vihara in Canberra (Australia)' on Vesak day 2007. These lanterns were the smaller 'pataw kudu' of a larger rotating lantern we built in 2005. Its ironic that this article is about the merits of vesak and they use a stolen photo to illustrate it. Extremely disappointed indeed.

Anybody out there who is familiar with intellectual property laws in Sri Lanka?

Edit1: Found out that this photo covers a third of a page (page 7) in the print edition of the 'Mirror magazine' supplement of the Sunday Times of Sunday 18 May 2008.

Print edition:


Edit2:I just found out (Wednesday 21 May) that they are using the same image for the banner of the 'order online' page selling all print publications produced by Wijeya Newspapers.


[Full size image]

Through this site, they sell print editions all over the world. They also have a rate card with pricing. For example, a 1 year print edition subscription for The Sunday Times to a US address is US$249.

What earlier started out as a case of an editor browsing the net looking to find a photo to illustrate an article have turned out to be a full scale corporate theft where they blatantly use my photo without consent and payment for a clearly commercial purpose.

Edit3:As of Friday 23 May, the photo had been removed from the main article page on the online edition. The banner on the 'order online' page and the smaller versions on the main homepage of the Sunday Times and the Mirror magazine online editions remain.

Edit4:As of Sunday 25 May, the smaller sized photos from the main page and the mirror page of the online edition has been removed. The banner on the 'order online' page of Wijeya Newspapers still remains.

Edit5:As of Tuesday 27 May, the banner on the 'order online' page of Wijeya Newspapers has been replaced by a different image.

Photoelasticity: Using a white LCD panel as a backlight

How to do this:

[1] Create completely white jpg/png/tiff or your favoruite image file type with your favourite drawing/photo editing program. It helps if the size at least has the aspect ratio of your LCD display.
[2] View this completely white image using your favourite image viewing program in 'Full Screen' mode. If you have an easier method of making your display completely white, you can skip step [1] :-)
[3] This has to be done with a LCD display. So it really helps if you have a laptop. Laying your normal flat screen LCD flat on the floor might be a bit clumsy, but possible :-)
[4] Place your favourite clear plastic/plexiglass/perspex objects on top of the screen.
[5] Attach your circular polarising filter to your favourite lens and turn the polariser until the white LCD screen turns black in the viewfinder.
[6] Have fun!

These are the results:





The inspiration was seeing AlgenonQ's Psychedelic Petrochemicals

The principle is Photoelasticity

Note: For those who do not use a DSLR or polarising filter, you can use a good pair of polarising sunglasses with your point and shoot cameras. Though I haven't done it personally, I have seen the results of a pair of sunglasses being used as a polarising filter with a point and shoot :-)

How the East was won: Al Jazeera - People and power

Though I am personally disappointed and constantly disillusioned by the quality and content of international reporting on what goes on in Sri Lanka, Al Jazeera seems to be trying to get the balance right. In the absence of even the concept of neutrality/independence/non-bias when it comes to many print and electronic media in Sri Lanka, if a source is labeled 'biased' by both parties to the conflict, thats probably the closest it gets to being 'independent'. Though it is sad, this seems to be the reality as far as present day Sri Lanka is concerned.

The following two part video report by Juliana Ruhfus for the People and power programme is about the aftermath of the military offensive in the East of Sri Lanka.

People & Power - How The East Was Won - 26 Aug 07- Part 1


People & Power - How The East Was Won - 26 Aug 07 - Part 2


Source: Al Jazeera English Programmes - How the East was won - Juliana Ruhfus

Lunar eclipse

It was a nice exercise to take a series of photos of the total lunar eclipse 28 August. I ended up clicking over 250 photos! Well, all of them were exposure bracketed so the actual number of frames are a little less :-)

The sky was clear, the weather was nice and the eclipse started at a more civilized time here in Australia than in some other parts of the world so it was an opportunity not to be missed. The photos in the montage below were taken between 7.00pm - 11.00pm AEST in Canberra, ACT, Australia.

Eclipse montage, originally uploaded by NavindaK.

The start of the series is from the bottom of the right hand side arc going up, which then continues up from the bottom of the left hand side arc.

It was only when I was arranging the photos in this montage did I notice the angle of entry and exit of the shadow. You would notice that the shadow 'enters' the moon almost directly from below and leaves it at an angle leaning left. It is as if the shadow traveled over the moon in a left bound arc. Incidentally, this is the same direction/path in which the moon rose up in the night sky. I have tried to approximately reconstruct the moon travel arc on the photo above.

I had a discussion with a friend of mine about the reason for this and he came up with an explanation which has to do with the plane on which the Moon orbits the Earth. Anybody else have any theories/suggestions as to why this is so?

Oh dear, am I a troll???

I had the most weird online encounter a few days ago and what I found out today makes me feel weirder...

The end result was for the first time ever I got blocked by a flickr user, who earlier threatened to report me to flickr admins as a flicker 'abuser'. Hmm... maybe I have been really really bad.

I don't know her real name but this is the lady's flickr profile and blog and she seems to be really pissed with me. To be fair I was really pissed off by her too :-)

And here's the story: Some weeks back I stumble upon a photo on flickr which seemed to be taken from the top of the Adam's peak (Samanala mountain/Sripada) showing it's unique triangular shaped shadow. In the description of this photo and the subsequent commentary, this lady was stating (not implying mind you) that this was a mystery, i.e. 'no one knows what causes this shadow'. My many years of science education just didn't let me walk away... it was screaming for the sake of sanity and I had to write a comment. My first short comment got a response which prompted me to write a longer response, then an even longer response and I was nowhere nearer in making any sense to this self proclaimed 'research geek', 'buddhist' & 'indologist' from Tennesee, USA who lives in Nepal after coming to India to learn Bharathanatyam 5yrs ago. Since she blocked me and deleted my comments, they no longer appear on her flickr page but I have a copy of that exchange on a discussion thread on the 'Sri Lankan Beauty' flickr group here. Lucky I copied it before things got ugly, otherwise my words of wisdom would have disappeared forever, deleted by a mislead soul :-) The whole assertion by her was absurd, and using Buddhism and Asian beliefs to prop up her view was just not acceptable to me. Light source -> Object -> Shadow... duh!

Though she didn't show any sign of yielding her view, she decided to ignore my final comment on that thread, and I left it at that. In the mean time I found this article about Sri Lanka written by her. For someone who calls herself a 'research geek' I found the factual inaccuracies quite glaring and was most of the time breaking out laughing with a 'lady you got it soooo wrong!', especially about her commentary about riding in buses. I found her views about Sri Lanka to be skewed with prejudice and from a naively arrogant point of view. I am still wondering why she felt it necessary to mention about being able to wear a t-shirt without a bra in Kandy.... hmm can anyone help me out here? Is there a hint of "...ooh these savages are so well house trained that they don't feel the need to grope me anymore..."?

Now comes the final chapter: I feel the urge to leave a brief comment on another photo on her stream. It was a photo with a couple of novice monks (Samaneras) in Kandy and she was referring to them as 'monklets' and 'baby monks'. I wrote a brief comment pointing out that they are not normally referred as such and that they are in fact 'novice monks' and gave a brief description about the ordination process of Theravada Buddhist monks. She responded with a haughty "I know, I am Buddhist". This gave me some insight about how "Buddhist" she was. Buddhism as far as I know is not a 'membership' religion. Though different people have their own views, I personally don't consider it to be a religion in the first place. To me it's a philosophy, and a very insightful one at that. But this wasn't the comment that took the cake :-) In her description of the photo she mentioned the LKR100 admission fee at the temple was steep! I couldn't resist mentioning the exchange rate between a US dollar and a SL rupee and say it was a 'bit pathetic' is American tourists start complaining about a 90c fee. I honestly (at the time of writing) didn't mean to say she was 'pathetic' (it may have come across that way, in hindsight, since she was American!) but was referring to the hoards of tourist that usually flock to these sites. However, she retorted with vengeance (very Buddhist...) :-) . First she claimed it was racist to have two different admission fees for foreigners and locals. She just doesn't seem to grasp the economical disparity between the 'West' and developing countries such as SL. My view was more along the lines that the higher admission fee is the 'normal' fee but the locals are allowed a heavily subsidized entry fee because they just can't afford anything more and not the other way around where the foreigners are overcharged. Second part of her comment threatened reporting me to flickr admins for abuse! Her response sans my comments (which were deleted by her) can be seen here .

Since it looked as if she had taken offense in my 'pathetic' comment, I deleted it myself and wrote her a flickr mail (that's what she refers to as private mail) apologizing if I caused offense, which was not meant. However my second half of the e-mail was a bit caustic (yes I've been a bad boy). I told her in no uncertain terms what I think about her prejudiced and skewed view of Sri Lanka and it's culture. In response she had blocked me from her flickr account :-) Serves me right...

I've been called many things in my life, some I am proud of, some not so but I've never been called a "angry young man" before :-D. Well of course, to stay in character I banned her and kicked out her photos from the flickr group I administer when I found that she had blocked me :-D

So now does all this mean I am an internet troll?

Edit: After the initial adrenaline rush subsided I unblocked her from the flickr group mentioned above... :-)

The follow up...

This is the follow up after the response to my earlier comment...

:-) with all due respect, if one thinks that adjusting levels and rotating/cropping is not part of photography, then they don't know much about photography to start with. As I tried to explain in my earlier post, in film era photography, all these cropping/rotating/adjusting levels at the print processing stage was considered the bread and butter of pro, semi-pro, and enthusiast photographers. But I can understand someone who has no clue about how the chemical era photography worked, coming to the conclusion that adjusting levels/rotating/cropping is 'not photography' :-)

I don't even consider these as 'post production' but as an integral part of the photography production. If you want to draw parallels with the chemical/film photography, then it would be as follows:

If you want to be in the same level as a person using a point and shoot 35mm camera who gets his prints through some colour lab (btw I won't call this level as photography) then calling whatever that comes out of your digital camera as the final photograph is justifiable.

But if you want to be compared to a chemical film 'photographer' who does his/her own developing in a darkroom or developing kit and process his/her own prints, then in the digital era, doing level adjustments, crop/rotating just comes naturally.

For me 'post production' is something done beyond level tweaking crop/rotating (while these are considered part of the 'production' not 'post production') . For example, an artwork on a magazine cover would be 'post produced'.

And I am sorry to say, the 75% you mentioned, either doesn't know how to do it or are too lazy :-)

Sorry if I am sounding harsh... but I am having a bad day...

'Purist' photography

I thought of publishing the following rant I made on Chicanelk's photo on flickr...

With all due respect, the whole 'purist' talk in digital photography is a (imho) fool's premise. Discussing about that the camera actually 'sees' when taking the shot would lead us in to a completely different direction ... so lets not try to go in to CMOS/CCD sensors and different manufacturer's specs.. :-) In short, once the photo is imprinted on the sensor, to call it 'reality' would be a fallacy to start with.

I also disagree with the parallels drawn between raw unprocessed digital photos and the 'good old days' of chemical processing. I think I am qualified to comment on this because I have done it my self. ie I have developed my own negatives in a dark room and also done the photo processing myself as well. Well true, if you are not serious about photography you just naively give the film roll to the studio/processing house and the next day you come and collect the prints and be blissfully ignorant about what happened to your film roll canister while you were away. Actual 'photographers' do things a bit differently :-) With chemical film, you don't have too many options when developing the film roll (there are a number of different 'standard' processes defined by the likes of Kodak, Fuji etc) . You have already preselected the ISO of the film roll so cannot tweak anything there. This is quite similar to the RAW image or JPEG that comes out of your digital camera. But actually making prints out of the negative is a very creative process. The old school way of processing colour prints is to have an enlarger and exposing your photo paper under the three different primary colours and giving a chemical bath to process each of the primary colours separately, then you finally seal of the print with finisher. The amount of time you expose each colour, the intensity of the lamp etc are all in the total control of the person processing the prints. This is exactly equivalent to manipulating the curves or levels in photoshop for digital prints. Apart from this, there are many other dodge/burn masking effects you could do and is and was done with chemical processing. Photoshop provides many of these 'chemical print processing' effect plus a few more options.

I hope I have explained enough why I consider the 'if you touch your digital print with photoshop, thats not reality' argument a bit silly :-)

Photography is an art (even documentary photography, mind you!) and it's totally at the discretion of the photographer how he/she wants to represent a scene/subject/event, this is true regardless of whether you shoot digital or film. In the pre-digital era, everyone didn't have the financing and/or technical know how to process/print your own photos chemically. In that sense nearly all of us did depend on the guy at the processing lab and his big processing machine (Even the processing machines needs a parameter set to control the exposure settings) to come up with a good result. But nowadays with digital photography and so many tools (Photoshop/Lightroom - even Picasa for that matter) all of us have the chance to play 'professional photographer processing your own prints' :-) It's a pity that most of us don't realize that and live in a 'purist ' cave...:-)