You can create an elaborate alternate identity. "Rhodedendro", they will call you, and your spandex costume will feature a logo of a blossom crossed with a DSLR.

My niece, Rebecca (who's thirty with four children of her own now), used to love that word when she was a baby. My mom (her grandmother) had huge purple rhododendron bushes in the front of the house. My mom (my adopted mom, that is) and I would look out the dining room window in the winter to see how curled the leaves were; the more curled the leaves on the rhododendron, the colder it was. Rho-do-den-dron... I'd say it again and again, and my niece would giggle. My prom dress matched the color, too. Huckleberry, they called it. We took photos in front of the rhododendron.

(Congrats on your "new career," by the by. : )

My grandma had prize winning rhododendrons. The only time I ever got spanked as a young kid was when I went into her garden and pulled all the blooms off.

Oops.

(they are poisonous too, but it was the ruining of the flower that they were upset about)

wOOt! Grats, agro!

I'm not sure I'm ready for fame. Maybe I can be an ultra-mysterious recluse celebrity whose stunningly beautiful rhododendron photographs unite the world.

I'm fond of the word "hydrangea", but I think that's 50% for its own value, and 50% because of its use in a very bizarre Robyn Hitchcock song.

Excellent, agro!

From this and a few other comments I've seen around and about, it seems like publications (some, at least - and more, once the rest catch on) are in the habit of looking for images on flickr to possibly use in lieu of hiring/buying from a photographer. So - good and bad news for photography; excellent for amateur photogs who get the chance to be exposed and published... but also kind of bad for professionals, who were never exactly racking in the dough (with a few exceptions) to begin with.

This is going to be a significant change, I think, to the (still mostly) current paradigm, and most professional photographers will be even more specialized: portrait; wedding; live action; news; underwater (or, name your difficult environment); fashion; food... and (probably) a lot fewer professional photographers who do a bit of this and a bit of that, with a cache of stock photos that fill in the hungry spots.

Or... could be I'm full of pookakke, and don't really get it at all.

But, nah - I'm always right, who am I kidding?

Great shot, Rhododendro!

Gorgeouse picture, agropyron!

Oops, I mean Gorgeous!!!!

:dang it, I hit spell check and Change!: