dexter

To our considerable surprise, Dexter allowed us to take some photos last night.  He’s not normally a very photogenic hedgehog — not because he isn’t terribly handsome, which he certainly is — but because he is both skittish and extremely fast.  I’ve got a lot of very blurry and out of frame photos of him.  So, when he started hamming it up for the camera last night, we had to take advantage.

So I’m now an internationally published photographer … and I didn’t even know it. The Daily Mail used one of my photos in an article on the growing popularity of hedgehogs as pets in the U.K. Imagine my face when one of my coworkers forwarded me a link and I recognized the top photo. I don’t think surprised adequately covers it.

The hedgehog in question is Knarla Pog’s baby brother from a later litter that her parents Scratches and Sweetie had. The photo dates back to January 13, 2001, and it pops up everywhere. I’ve seen it probably two dozen times or more in “cute animal” emails that various people have sent on to me. “Oh look, Heather, a hedgehog!” Yeah, I know. I took the photo. It’s my hand holding the little guy and you can even see my wedding ring on my finger. Chopper uses each instance as an occasion to remind me of the merits of watermarking or meta-tagging my photos, which I have yet to do.

4107

I emailed the newspaper and asked them, very nicely, if it would be possible to credit me for the photo. I hope to hear something back from them. I don’t mind at all that they used it — as a matter of fact, I’m very flattered — but it would be nice to have some acknowledgment.

What does bug me is that it’s not the best photo I took of him from that day. This one is.