time to change my journal

i'm sitting in my room now, looking at all the mess around me.. off to catch a flight for Paris at 6 a.m. and i'm still not even half done with packing
i didn't mean to write anything about it (laziness again), but now i'm just looking for any excuse to delay packing because i really hate it, and well.. it's really the time to change my journal
why am i going to France? well, my friend and colleague Josip Bota and myself made it to the finals of Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 ( [link] ) in the photography invitational and we're looking at a week of great time in Paris, starting from tomorrow... i'm really excited about all of this, mostly because only six teams where chosen for the finals from 1200 team entries from all around the world
so, i hope you'll keep your fingers crossed that we rock it out there

i've also been getting a lot of questions about the situation with Lee, and all i can tell you now is that it's going in a good direction.. but not to put a curse on myself, i'll tell you everything when it's all over, soon i hope

hugs and kisses,
Jelena

p.s. about this mood, i tried ten times to make it "excited", but dA won't listen to me, so just ignore this angry smiley ))

okey, i've been too lazy to write a journal about this here but maybe it's time, and maybe this is a good place to get some new information from people out of Croatia which are not accessible to me...
so here is the story... two months ago i accidentaly found out that my photo titled "the sound and the fury" ( [link] ) was printed out as a part of Lee campaign in the i-D magazine over two pages... you can guess my shock when i heard about it. i went out to get that issue, and there it was ( [link] , [link] ), streched from a resolution of 800x600 px over two pages, interpoled, cropped, and signed by a certain "faust89" from Burgas as his own, as one of six best photos from the "makehistory" competition (www.makehistory.eu) made by Lee company for their new campaign. i surfed around and found that entry in the competition on their online pages ( [link] ), where it was also written that the best picture stories will be published in the most prominent international fashion magazines for the Lee campaign, and also installed in Lee's flagship stores all around the world. this is exactly what happened with my photo... soon after seeing it in i-D magazine, i got a call that it was also published in Dazed and Confused magazine, and Italian Vogue. few weeks ago i also got mailed by a man who form Atena, Greece, who saw this photo on the internet and remembered that it was mine. and then he sent me photos taken in Atena showing my photo on very large posters and billboards ( [link] , [link] , [link] ) . i was shocked again!
i hired an attorney and now the suit is in the process, but it's a really complicated situtation.
i still can't believe that a company that big and well established as Lee would do something stupid as this... all they asked for the competition was a photo of a size of 800x600 px and anyone who has access to internet could have downloaded one and sent is as theirs... and by their stupidity now one of my favorite photos is distributed all around the world in the function of their campaign, it's even destroyed and someone called faust is signed for it, not me!
argh!
things like this happen all the time, and it's really time to make something to stop this stealing all around! you can't protect your photo with a watermark because they're so easily taken off, and you can't protect it by small size because you see that even the most prominent magazines published the 800x600 px photo over two pages!!!
now i'm wondering what to do.. this situation really pisses me off, specially because i don't get the people who steal one's work and take their credits as they didn't do anything wrong.
well, faust89, who ever you are, i hope you saw how far "your" photo got and that you're burning of remorse somewhere, because you're looking into a hell of a suit, if not by me, then definitely by Lee.

oh, i got taken away by my feelings, i just wanted to ask all of you who read this to (please!) notify me by note or mail or smt like that if you see it somewhere else because it could be on the billlboards anywhere in the world at this moment and that i'm not aware of it.
so thank you in advance and keep your fingers crossed that something good comes out of this..

__________________________________________________________________
inače, u Globusu i Večernjem su ovih dana izašli članci o ovoj priči, pa ako kog zanima -
[link]
[link]


poz!

Evo da ne bude da nisam rekla, pozivam vas sve na otvorenje izložbe Envy Room u galeriji Kulturno-informativnog centra u Zagrebu (Cvjetni trg) sutra (četvrtak 18. listopada) u 20h. Izložba je nastala kao suradnja fotografkinja Tanje Bjelić, Snježane Josipović i moje malenkosti te 3 bečka modela Berivanom S., Flo i Stefanom T., u kreacijama dizajnerskog dvojca Envy Room (Nikica Ivančević i Vjeko Franetović ). mislim da sam sada sve popisala

pa ono...ako ste za neko pićence uz koji pogled na fotke, svratite

time to change my journal and since there's nothing so interesting to talk about, let me just put the lyrics of my one and only favorite song.. i'm the type of person who doesn't have anything classified as favorite (for example favorite movie, band, singer, photographer, etc.), it's a pretty strong word to me and there are always to many choices on my mind.. and i'm just happy about having one thing, a song which i can classify as my favorite one from milions of them...and that's Bernadette Seacrest's Sweet Salvation... one day i'm going to make a whole series about different impacts i get from listening to it. and oh my God, how many of them were there

and now i'm just talking rubbish, but really...it's time to change my journal.
so here it is, my sweet salvation...

[link]
________________________________________ ___________
Bottles of liquor and these smoky bars
Lifelong companions when seen from afar
Cigarette cherry, my lone guiding star
Shining light on my salvation
Shining light on my salvation

Signs in the window flicker and start
The diligent barkeep is playing his part
The sweet smell of bourbon, so dear to my heart
Shows the way to my salvation
Shows the way to my salvation

Liquor and cigarettes, desires and dreams
Brings light to the troubled, forgives and redeems
More often than not, it s not as bad as it seems
When I’m here with my salvation

Liquor and cigarettes, desires and dreams
Brings light to the troubled, forgives and redeems
More often than not, it s not as bad as it seems
When I’m here with my salvation

Chairs on the tables, sweep up the floor
Piano sits silent, entertaining no more
The kitchen's been closed, the cook's out the door
On the road to sweet salvation
On the road to sweet salvation
On the road to sweet salvation
On the road...
________________________________________ ___________


hugs and kisses to ya all!

Juhuu evo i mene doma napokon.. ali ne znam koliko zapravo to "napokon" dobro stoji u rečenici budući da sam se jučer vratila iz Tuheljskih Toplica sa Fotosofie i evo još sam nostalgična prema svim predivnim ljudima od kojih sam se morala rastaviti...
pišem ovaj journal da potaknem one koji nisu bili ove ili prošle godine, a vole fotografiju, da nipošto ne propuste poslati prijavu za sljedeću godinu. ja stvarno nisam ni u snovima mogla zamislit da će onako dobro bit... smještaj prekomfortan, hrana odlična, svi u hotelu na usluzi nama i našim bolesnim idejama 24/7, bazeni, saune, a na kraju najvžnije - doslovno nam je plaćeno da radimo ono šta volimo i najljepši način omogućeno da to radimo.. ljude sam ostavila kao šlag za kraj jer je ovo bila jedna stvarno savršena ekipa ljudi među kojima sam s nekima ostvarila i jako dobra prijateljstva... cijeli dan rad, navečer okupljanje kod nekog, pijanka, zezancija i svega 3-4 sata spavanja i sutra opet sve ponovo..i sve je funkcioniralo. na kraju smo svi bili generalno zadovoljni i fotografijama i cijelim boravkom tamo.. normalno akd je tu u igri 20 ljudi i novac od sponzora i još tona ljudi sa strane koji omogućavaju da se sve to dogodi kako treba d će biti i nekih propusta...no oni su ovdje bili svedeni doslovno na minimum tako da ja seminaru mogu dati čistu peticu i već se polako izjedati u ljubomori na one koji idu sljedeće godine

a za kraj, ništa od ovog ne bi bilo moguće da nije bilo Damira Hoyke. još jednom jedno veliko hvala tom čovjeku koji mi se jako dopao svojim ponašanjem prema nama, profesionalnom dok se radi, ležernom dok se zeza.
faaaalaaaaaaaaaaa!

i cmoka svim mojim fotosofima, leti letimo čim se vratim u zg