Respect The Walmart Photo Police Authority

By Eric

I learned a valuable lesson yesterday. If you are a somewhat competent photographer make sure you sign a release letter before attempting to make prints at Walmart. I took this very basic photo of my niece for her dance recital program. I then gave the photo to my parents on a thumb drive because they wanted a print of it. To Walmart they went. All was well until they tried to check out. Then the Walmart photo police refused to give them the print. Furthermore, instead of politely telling them that the photo looked professionally made and asking them to procure a signed letter of release they accused my parents of trying to steal the photo and make illegal prints of copyrighted material. After harassing my parents for 10 minutes about it my father said to just cut up the photo, he no longer wanted it. Instead of doing that the manager of the Walmart photo center then calls me personally and asks me how I took the photo. Then asks me if I can fax them a release on my letterhead. After explaining to them that I am not a professional photographer, nor do I have stationary, and that I took that photo in my parents living room with a white quilt and two strobes they finally begrudgingly gave in and let my parents have the print.

Long story short, carry a copy of this photo release form with you whenever making prints at Walmart.

Why Am I Here?

By Eric

I’m sitting here watching the wrap-up of Obama’s inauguration, but for some reason I’m once again thinking about space and time. Why am I here right now? The universe is over 13 billion years old. The chance of me being alive during any natural era of human history on earth is so small that I can’t wrap my brain around it. It makes more sense to me to believe that I was really born billions of years ago and this current reality is nothing but a simulation of a normal human life at the zenith of our natural evolution. The real me is simply sitting somewhere in a galaxy far, far away plugged in to a simulator living out a normal life to pass time.

I am 31 years old. That means I am a member of the last generation to spend their entire adolescence in a pre-internet world. 31 years from now we will have designer babies, cloned organs, and regenerative medicine. Beyond that we will have robotic bodies that in-theory will have unlimited lifespans. Beyond that we should be able to develop a way to transcend our physical bodies all together and upload our consciousness to a secure location. From that location we could choose to live out virtual lives any time, any way, and during any era we choose. All of that should take no longer that 300 years, and some such as Ray Kurzweil feel as though it will take much less time than that. Long story short, this era of human history has had to of already happened.

Of course this is probably just my feeling of self importance getting the better of me. The Obama’s of the world are the real humans; you and I are just neural net bots programmed to fill that simulated world for them. Sleep tight.

EricParks.com is mine, all mine

By Eric

I have been waiting almost a decade for the ericparks.com domain to free up. It finally happened, and I pounced all over it. I have now separated my personal site and my “professional” site: otola.com.

Otola will continue to be the home for my portfolio and design blog, and this site will be the home of my photoblog, daily ramblings, and general thoughts on the world around me. Yep, exactly like every other personal site on the interwebs. What can I say, I’m creative like that.