Greetings from Siberia

Some years ago, while I was still a university student, I had a bit of a creative phase and made a bunch of stylised Star-Wars-themed posters in Photoshop and put them on my website for anyone to download.

Not too many people noticed, but every once in a while I get an email from somebody thanking me for putting them online, or offering me some strange business deal.

A couple of months ago, I got another one of those emails into my inbox. I almost reflexively deleted it as spam, seeing as it came from a “.ru” domain. I’m glad I didn’t.

The email read:

Hello,

I like your picture “ANH Tatooine Sunset”. I’d like to print it as wallpaper to my daughter’s room. So I need picture in high resolution. Size of the wall is 2,2 x 2,8 meters. Can you sell me this picture in really high resolution? Without text.

I wrote a brief reply thanking this person for their kind words and offer, but refused since I have no larger versions of the pictures than the ones offered for download. I signed my email „Greetings from Germany, Max“.

I almost instantly got a reply:

Thanks for you answer. It’s sad but I don’t give up. I’ll send you photo of the wall if everything goes well. :)

Greetings from Siberia Alex

I did not expect anything to come from this brief exchange. But you guessed it: A little over two months later, I got another email:

Hi, Max.

It’s again Alex from Novosibirsk.

I did it :) I’ve converted your picture to vector format, make it bigger and print as wallpaper. My daughter is happy!

As I promised send you photo of result.

Thanks a lot for your art.

I was absolutely floored. He really did it. This guy from literally the other side of the world put my little image on his literal wallpaper! I’m the one who should thank Alex. He really made my week with this, and I wish him and his family all the best!

So, what’s the moral of this story? The world is a much smaller place than we may think sometimes. And don’t just delete all those “.ru” emails.