Kara's Reliquary » Photography

Salty Rat is Famouse

Kara — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 18:52:17 +0000

Salty is ready for his close-up.

Apparently I decided that 5 am this morning would be a good time to decide what 2011 calendar to buy. As I browsed through the options with bleary eyes, I came upon Brown Trout‘s rat calendar. I checked out the back cover, and was clearly not awake enough to comprehend what I saw. My own Mr. Salty Rat was pictured sitting on a piece of red wrapping paper (I am assuming he is Mr. December). At first, I thought someone had taken a nearly identical picture, but quickly realized it was indeed my own Salty. It goes without saying that he was the handsomest rat on the calendar.

I would have missed Salty Rat’s calendar debut had I been able to get the calendar I intended to get. Lately I’ve been buying the pit bull puppies calendar, because the calendars with the adult pit bulls depict some dogs with cropped ears, which I can’t stand. But for 2011, even a couple of the dogs on the puppy calendar have cropped ears. I can’t stand to look at those pictures, so I pass on those calendars altogether. So this year, I came back to the rat calendar and got a surprise.

I suppose you are wondering why we didn’t know that Salty would be appearing in a calendar this year, but there’s a good reason. Stephen licensed the image through Alamy. Alamy doesn’t tell the photographers who is buying the pictures – the price for the photo is based on the size the client needs. So when Stephen licensed the photo many months ago, he didn’t think any more about it. I’m so glad I happened across it.

And yes, I know how to spell famous, but I love a bad pun!

Stephen has a New Etsy Shop for His Fine Art Photography

Kara — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 04:22:26 +0000

Stephen has opened a shop on Etsy for his fine art photography. He already sells photos on his own website, Bay Images, but Etsy will likely expose a different audience to his work. I’m really interested in seeing how the Etsy shop works out. I haven’t used mine for anything other than getting rid of old art magazines and supplies, so I haven’t done any marketing at all. If anyone has some great Etsy marketing ideas, I’d love to hear about them.

Adorable Rats Doing Funny Stuff

Kara — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 05:51:15 +0000

Froppy - © Ellen van Deelen

I know that LOTS of people think rats are creepy and scary. I am not one of those people. I have a lot of trouble understanding why they feel that way. I feel the same way about spiders, though, so I can relate. Don’t expect to see pictures of adorable spiders doing funny stuff on my blog any time soon.

My friend Luba sent me a link to these pictures of rats playing musical instruments. I loved them, so I just had to email photographer Ellen van Deelen to ask if I could share a couple with you. Her photos do such a great job of capturing ratty personalities. They are funny, curious and smart, and her photos really bring that out AND they made me laugh. Apparently, van Deelen had the idea for these photos when she saw some tiny instruments in a store window. Rats are insatiably curious about everything, so they cooperated by thoroughly investigating the instruments, providing her with some wonderful models. If you click on any of the pictures, it will take you to larger versions of the images on photo.net.

The Musician - © Ellen van Deelen

If you’ve checked out my About page, you’ve seen a picture of me with a rat, Salty, on my shoulder. Stephen and I used to have rats and they were fantastic pets. I usually describe them as being like little dogs that don’t bark. Rats are extremely social and each has a unique personality.

Our alpha rat was Kat, who was hilarious. She was a little bully. If I was sitting on the couch, and she wanted to get from one side of me to the other, she wouldn’t simply climb over my lap. Instead, she would try to go behind my back by using her tiny hands to try and push me out of the way. And it usually worked too because I didn’t want to accidentally squish her. When we gave the rats treats, Kat would steal the treats from her sisters and go hide them. It wasn’t that she particularly wanted the treats. She just wanted to show them who was boss. She was usually too busy to eat the treats and when she forgot about them later, her chubby siblings would gobble them up. Kat was a skinny little thing, and she lived the longest of all our rats, which was still far too short.

My favorite Kat story illustrates her personality perfectly. When we were in the room, the rats were allowed to come out of their cage and run around as much as they wanted. During one such play time, Kat’s sister Dill was sitting on the floor right in the middle of the room. Kat was walking from one side of the room to the other and found Dill in her path. Rather than walking around her, Kat chose to climb right over her, taking care to elbow her as much as possible. Once she was on the other side, she looked back at Dill and gave her a karate kick in the side. Stephen and I could barely stop laughing. It was such a Kat thing to do. For her part, Dill just sat there complacently through the whole thing.

Another one of our personality plus rats was Spazimodo, or Spazi for short. There was never a more aptly named creature. He had a limitless supply of energy, which he used to create all sorts of fun games for himself, sometimes involving other rats or humans. Spazi’s best game was one I like to call Smash Your Face. I would lie on the floor on my side and Spazi would sit quietly by my feet – I swear he was trying to look nonchalant. Suddenly, he would take off running at high speed along the length of my body and launch himself into my face. Before you express any horror, know that Spazi never caused any harm by doing this. I was never once struck by a stray claw. He was quite careful and seemed to just want to involve me in his fun. I am sure he thought it was just as much fun for me as it was for him. And I guess it was, because he always had me laughing.

I highly recommend that you check out Ellen van Deelen‘s other rat pictures – they are truly wonderful. Please do not use these photos without permission from the photographer. She deserves the credit for her work.

Bhutan Pictures Posted

Kara — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:55:28 +0000

Stephen just posted his pictures from our recent trip to Bhutan. They are absolutely beautiful, please take a look if you have a chance. You can also read my Bhutan travelogue on my travel blog.