The first is of a dread-locked cricketer going out in the rain to bat in a losing game on the remote island nation of St Helena. This was sold for publication in that bible for cricket connoiseurs: Wisden. Those familiar with this publication know that it has very few photographs in its 1,500 pages devoted lovingly to the statistics of all first-class cricket throughout the world. It ws therefore a considerable compliment from them to request this image:
and here it is with Simon Green's accompanying article:
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| thanks to Wisden/Bloomsbury Publishing for use of page proof |
My other example is based not so much around the quirky image, but a quirky name. A few years ago a botanist named Michael Heads erected the genus Hebejeebie for some, mainly alpine, plant species in New Zealand. This name was a play on combining the previous name for Hebe (the group of plants that used to include these species) and the presumed reaction from other botanists. BBC Wildlife Magazine liked this name and the only image they could find was mine of Hebejeebie trifida:
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Botanists, being botanists, have since played around with the names for these plants and some now call this plant Veronica trifida and some call it Parahebe trifida while others still prefer Hebejeebie trifida!
How did the editors of these publications find these images? James Coyne from Wisden Googled "St Helena cricket" and my blog article (here) came up.
Wanda Sowry from BBC Wildlife Magazine also used Google searching for "Hebejeebie" and my image on the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network's website http://www.nzpcn.org.nz came up
