Heebeejeebees

*No knitting content, so skip it if that's what you're looking for*

I'll let you all in on a little secret: I'm a photo hound. Meaning I take photographs of just about anything that will stay still long enough for me to get my camera out. And it's not just because of my portrait work....I've always been a visual person who learns best by seeing and doing. So photography was a natural hobby for me.

BC (Before Children), I had so many pictures of my dogs, my house, cars, and random objects that there were easily 10 or 12 boxes of photos and negatives stored up under my desk. The clerks at the local Costco photo center knew me by name. I was also a total film snob.

"You ain't gonna get me to go with one of them new-fangled digital cameras, no way no how. Yous gonna have to pry my film SLR out of my cold, dead hands!"

Then Little Man came along and I took so many photos of him in the first month that we were going broke with developing costs. The Dearest being a techno geek and all, he brought home a new point and shoot digicam for me to use. I must have shot over a thousand images with that little camera before the Dearest surprised me with a *real* digital SLR. It only took a few weeks of shooting with my new camera and realizing how much power I had over my images with Photoshop before I was listing my trusty old film camera on eBay. And I haven't looked back. I'm purely digital now....all my professional sessions are shot with a dSLR, all the post processing is done by yours truly, and the digital files are uploaded to my lab for printing.

Another little secret? The only thing I like better than taking photos is sharing them. I love me my Flickr! It's so cool that I can upload pics of the boys and everyone in my family can see them. What I'd forgotten is that *everyone* on the wide world of the 'net can see them too.

The other day I got a message from Flickr that I'd been added as someone's new contact. Meaning someone saw my images and added me to their list of people to watch for. So I go over to this new person's profile and start taking a peek at their photo sets. I recognize a couple of my photos- all of socks or Little Man's feet in socks....then I notice that *all* of the shots are of feet or socks.

Ummm...ok. I'm not skeeved yet. Some photogs I know will pick a certain item (body part, flower, fender) and explore it visually by taking as many different photos of it as they can. I'm thinking: maybe that's what this guy is doing.

Then I go down further on his/her (profile lists them as "other") photo set and more and more of the images are fetish-ish in nature. As in: feet tucked under a naked bum. As in: f33t being licked. As in: f33t wrapped in rope.

Oh. My. Gawd.

I have *nothing* against this person's fetish. In fact, as far as I'm concerned whatever consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home is their business. Lick each other's f33t? Fine. Rub each other in salsa? No problem. Tie each other up and use up a whole Costco brick of D batteries up? Go to it!

But I really get my Momma Bear instincts up in a big way when images of my child's feet are two photos over from an image of a woman's peds being licked. Now, to be fair, this person may have had absolutely no sexual interest in children's feet....there were plenty of old feet, young feet, baby feet and shapely women's feet in the photo set. I actually didn't block this person from my Flickr account right off, partially because I thought I might be over-reacting. I know several bloggers who never show their kids' faces in pictures on the 'net because they are worried about pediphiles, sexual predators, etc. And I've always thought that was over-reacting because your kid gets seen by probably a 100 people a day....unless you want to wrap them up like MJ, there's no protecting them from strangers' eyes.

So I let the whole situtation ferment for a day or so. I thought on it now & again....and finally decided that I just wasn't comfortable with the whole idea. I blocked this person from my Flickr account and have actually placed most of my photos of the boys into a pool that is only available to friends and family. Momma Bear instinct was just too strong to do otherwise, and sometimes it's best to listen to instinct.

I'll still post pics of the boys here on my blog, along with plenty of knitting. Cuz after all, I'm a photo hound!