art directing the dew
We have a few authors at LikeTheDew.com who provide images with their stories. Some that are provided are personal photos. Others stock photos that the author has licensed for us to use. We are also lucky to have a few author-artists and who send beautiful images to add a thousand words.
Most of our writers do not. That’s fine, because I’m pretty picky about how things look on the Dew.
It has been over ten years since our first story. Whether the photo duties fell to Keith, KC, Ron or me, most often we would seek creative commons (many images at flickr.com) or public domain (government photos and many found at Wikimedia.org) images. Other times, we licensed stock photos. Since the Dew has no money other than contributions or my pocket, we are miserly in our use stock photos, but I have paid to licensed more than 1,000 images since 2007.
Often there are no appropriate images to find or license. They just didn’t exist. That is my time. I can’t draw, so I build. That is what this gallery is – images that I have made by combining or altering other licensed images in Photoshop. There are many more than these, but these are my favs.
Oh, yeah, the dew is all volunteer. Other than our writers, currently I am the only volunteer. I also have a day job. So we always need it fast, cheap and great.
One important note: the attribution and/or licensing for the pieces that made these images can be found on the original stories.
Lee Leslie
I’m just a plateaued-out plain person with too much time on his hands fighting the never ending lingual battle with windmills for truth, justice and the American way or something like that. Here are some reader comments on my writing: “Enough with the cynicism. One doesn’t have to be Pollyanna to reject the sky is falling fatalism of Lee Leslie’s posts.” “You moron.” “Again, another example of your simple-minded, scare-mongering, label-baiting method of argumentation that supports the angry left’s position.” “Ah, Lee, you traffic in the most predictable, hackneyed leftist rhetoric that brought us to the current state of political leadership.” “You negative SOB! You destroyed all my hope, aspiration, desperation, even.” “Don’t you LIBERALS realize what this COMMIE is talking about is SOCIALISM?!?!?!” “Thank you for wonderful nasty artful toxic antidote to this stupidity in the name of individual rights.” “I trust you meant “bastard” in the truest father-less sense of the word.” “That’s the first time I ran out of breath just from reading!” “You helped me hold my head a little higher today.” “Makes me cry every time I read it.” “Thanks for the article. I needed something to make me laugh this mourning.” “If it weren’t so sad I would laugh.” "... the man who for fun and personal growth (not to mention rage assuagion) can skin a whale of bullshit and rack all the meat (and rot) in the larder replete with charts and graphs and a kindness..."“Amen, brother.”