I’ll continue to roll out Northern Lights photos from time to time, but hopefully I’ll be able to acquire even more in the near future! We’re approaching the peak of the solar maximum, so I expect this to be a very interesting summer. With any luck we’ll have plenty of opportunities for photos like these!
Some things just never line up quite the way you’d like, and in my case I think this event is one of them. I’d like to be able to get a distant shot of the capitol with the planets beside it while their alignment is as close as possible, but available vantages and prevailing sky conditions have conspired against me. Oh well, I think I got a couple of decent shots. It’s time to move on to another challenge.
I’m a firm believer in applying enough bandwidth to make the video look decent in detail. I’d love to put it on YouTube or Vimeo, but there are problems with that. As a result, I’m hosting it myself in Flash Video (FLV) format. This will display on pretty much every device out there EXCEPT my beloved Apple devices – iPod, iPhone, iPad… bummer, but at least I maintain ownership of my content.
What’s that, you say? YouTube and Vimeo assume ownership of your content? Not exactly…but what they DO assume is a perpetual license to keep, use, distribute, and make new videos from your content. Once you upload to them, you’re without any rights whatsoever.
Here’s how you sign your rights away by uploading to YouTube, according to their Terms of Service page:
“However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in video Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your videos from the Service. You understand and agree, however, that YouTube may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of your videos that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in user comments you submit are perpetual and irrevocable.“ (YouTube Terms of Service page)
Vimeo’s policies are equally disturbing:
“By submitting a video, you grant Vimeo and its affiliates a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license and right to copy, transmit, distribute, publicly perform and display (through all media now known or hereafter created), and make derivative works from your video for the purpose of (i) displaying the video within the Vimeo Service; (ii) displaying the video on third party websites and applications through a video embed or Vimeo’s API subject to your video privacy choices; (iii) allowing other users to play, download, and embed on third party websites the video, subject to your video privacy choices; (iii) promoting the Vimeo Service, provided that you have made the video publicly available; and (iv) archiving or preserving the video for disputes, legal proceedings, or investigations.” (Vimeo Terms of Service Page)
So…have you uploaded something containing yourself, your kids, your friends, or anything else personal to you? Congratulations; you just signed away your rights to it. But it gets even worse; check out these two clauses:
“To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless YouTube, its parent corporation, officers, directors, employees and agents, from and against any and all claims, damages, obligations, losses, liabilities, costs or debt, and expenses (including but not limited to attorney’s fees) arising from: (i) your use of and access to the Service; (ii) your violation of any term of these Terms of Service; (iii) your violation of any third party right, including without limitation any copyright, property, or privacy right; or (iv) any claim that your Content caused damage to a third party. This defense and indemnification obligation will survive these Terms of Service and your use of the Service.”
and,
“You will indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Vimeo and its affiliates, directors, officers, employees, and agents, from and against all third party actions that: (i) arise from your activities on the Vimeo Service; (ii) assert a violation by you of any term of this Agreement; or (iii) assert that any content you submitted to Vimeo violates any law or infringes any third party right, including any intellectual property or privacy right.”
“Indemnify” means that if you post a video and someone decides to sue you for some reason – that could be that you used an Enya track without license, you showed someone in the video who did not give you permission to post their likeness on the Internet, or somehow otherwise prompted someone else to legal action – not only do you hold YouTube and Vimeo unaccountable, but you also agree to pay their legal expenses if they get sued for hosting your content. Do you have the money to pay for YouTube’s (ie, Google’s) or Vimeo’s legal team?
In the case of the video above, I take it (as with all my photography) very personally. That’s why I typically put those annoying watermarks on my photos; I got tired of seeing them pop up on people’s website or MySpace pages. I have no desire to give Google, Vimeo, or anyone else a legal license to do whatever they want with it. And, although I’m using the music under license, I don’t want to possibly expose myself to some huge corporation’s legal expenses.
By the way, Facebook has similar language but within different parameters (ie, subject to your Privacy settings). When it comes to Pages, which is how my blog operates there, it appears that Facebook makes no such assertions. Otherwise no other corporation would open up a Page there on Facebook because they’re not willing to relinquish their intellectual property rights either. However, if your personal Facebook account is public, so is your data – photos, posts, whatever – and you give them the rights to use them accordingly.
I have posted stuff to YouTube in the past, but not stuff that’s personally important to me. The exception to that would be my tribute to Sergeant Steve Kenner of the Bismarck PD, a video that I wanted to share with the community. When it comes to things like this though, where I want to reserve all rights of ownership and use, I’ve got to host it myself and suffer some compatibility issues. It doesn’t work the best across all platforms, but it remains mine.
To add to the fun, the auroras really turned it up a notch just as I set up to photograph this old windmill. I took advantage of the whole evening and morning. Trust me…I’ve still got plenty more where this came from. 🙂
Things REALLY got hopping, even enough to overcome the light of the full moon directly overhead. I had multiple cameras going to shoot the event, shooting stills and a time-lapse video I hope to work on over the weekend.
You can expect a lot more of these photos in the near future!
Winter didn’t exactly go as planned, but my little guys did eventually get to build a couple of little snowmen this week. They’re both old enough to ride little bikes now, and are expressing a desire to go stargazing so I anticipate big things this summer! I can’t wait to get started.
I have a link on my Northern Lights page (link in the upper right column) for each of the many sites I use to “throw in the hopper” and make the call on whether I figure chasing after Northern Lights is worthwhile. It’s a soft science at best. In this case, one particular model was accurate and another was not. In other cases, a different model will make the correct prediction. It really ends up coming down to gut instinct: trying to determine which numbers to trust. Yesterday’s solar wind blast was expected, but it was not expected to cause any auroras. One blip on one set of data is what made me suspicious, and it turned out to be the right call.
Since I’m a husband and Daddy these days, I can’t be bolting out of town every night in the hopes of getting a lucky encounter with the auroras, so I’m trying to see if I can get a better sense of when such a trip is worthwhile. Last night my instincts proved correct.
The terminator is not Arnold “GIT TO DA CHOPPA” Schwarzenegger when we’re talking astronomy; rather, it’s the line between day and night, light and dark, the illuminated and non-illuminated part of a moon or planet. Notice the nice, gentle gradient of the terminator’s edge…and how it’s boldly interrupted by the rim of the crater. Cool, huh?
I took this photo in the late afternoon, some might say early evening. It’s the best time to photograph the moon because the sky behind it isn’t dark. While properly exposing for the detail in the moon, you still get some color in the sky surrounding it. At night all you get is a bold white or gold disk in a sea of black. I suppose that’s fine if that’s what you’re going for, but I prefer to show a little bit of blue.
This photo is from the last time Northern Lights abounded in North Dakota: 2005. It’s partially responsible for me getting a digital camera in the first place. I spent the previous solar maximum in the 1980s hanging out at Double Ditch with friends while breathtaking displays filled the sky overhead, and I wanted to capture the moment. Then, as if my purchase had single-handedly extinguished the sun, the solar activity period waned and I’ve waited ever since. I only got a handful of Aurora Borealis photos before things quieted down. Needless to say, I’ve been waiting as anxiously as all those scientists who’ve been scratching their heads and wondering why the solar maximum has taken so long to return!
Hopefully, now that I’ve almost totally ditched this head cold and managed to bring down the swelling of my brand new shiner, I’ll be able to hit some of my favorite spots and put to use some of the best tricks I’ve learned in astrophotography over the past six years. Naturally I’ll be treating you to the results as soon as they manifest – I hate posting recycled content!
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