I know every single person reading this blog has done a Google search, but have you ever done a google Image search? You go look up the thing you’re curious about but instead of looking at the pages that come up you click on the tab that says “images” about three choices over.
It’s actually a nice way to look for exactly what you want and not be bothered by all those WORDS folk like me clutter the internet with. It’s how I’ve found some really great beaver images over the years, and even how I find artists to approach for a donation to the silent auction.
Obviously there aren’t as many classified images as there are words on the internet. So it’s faster. (Especially if you are specific with your search terms.) It was about 2009 when I started to notice that our photos were showing up in every google image search for beavers. And now I see the photos of our friends (Hi Rusty!) or particular artists we featured over the years. I was approached last week by a Pennsylvania text book company asking about the beaver pond Amy Hall designed for the street art project at the festival and wondering whether it could be included in their secondary school printed materials.
It’s always a little terrifying to find an image I made on image search. But terrifying in a good way most of the time, I guess. Sometimes I will make a graphic just to be sarcastic and there it remains, hallowed in the halls of Google images until someone boots it out. Accuracy is not required. I can’t tell you how many capybara or nutria images are missclassified as beaver. I don’t even try to count any more.
Lately I’ve been looking especially for images that show an “over/under” look at a beaver pond, to help our artists get ideas and to work on the kids activity for our festival. Nothing is really perfectly beaver-centric of course, which I guess is why the publisher contacted me about Amy’s image. But this is very nice.
Maybe you have a favorite?
