Note: the title should be read to the beat of that Buffalo Springfield song…
I’m at a point now where I can choose a subject, make a picture or 5, experiment with the various sliders in Aperture to achieve something pretty and/or artistic and/or suggestive and or ______, and be done with the 365 for the day (less the time it takes to write something and post it) in less than 15 minutes, and with a picture that I’m happy to use as wallpaper on the computer for awhile.
This is one such picture: shot—with quite a bit of playing around with the subject—edited, and prepared for posting in less than 15 minutes, and I pretty much knew I had it when I clicked the shutter. I took a couple of pictures after that, and I didn’t chimp, but I already knew this would be the one, even though it didn’t look like much straight out of the RAW conversion in Aperture.
I think this means that I need to make this my life-long passion and strive to create a body of abstract pictures worthy of a MoMA retrospective or some such, or start trying to branch out into other subjects, try other techniques, add in some rules or breakpoints or benchmarks to strive for, &c., because I’ve pretty much nailed this macro/abstract thing for myself even if nobody else likes or ‘gets’ or cares to even look at the pictures (and given the number of +1s, comments, and reshares I get, I’m pretty much making these in a vacuum).*
Actually, I chalk it up to time. I know I tend to spend about 30 minutes to 1 hour per day scrolling the G+ feed, and I expect many of the people who have me in their circles are the same.
Also, I know that I have a couple of circles with people who only reshare stuff, or who tend to post lots of links to SEO optimization and male enhancement supplements and whatnot, that I rarely look at, and I bet other people have a circles with ‘really good’ (read:_famous_-ish) photographers in, and I’m likely—and with good reason—relegated to a circle appropriate to my skill level and relative renown.
It’s also likely due to the number of +1s and comments and reshares I toss out. I make every attempt to post one, comment on two, and ‘like’ three every day, but I also refuse to +1 something that I don’t genuinely appreciate, and I rarely comment unless I have something specific and constructive to say. And so the people who +1 everything they see, or leave comments like ‘gr8 captur’ or ‘soooooo pretty!!!!1!’ are unlikely to have me on their radar, since I so rarely see anything that I genuinely appreciate.
These are clearly failures on my part, and I fully recognize and am attempting to come to some sort of terms with these failures, and I in know way lay any blame or expectation on any viewer or circle-buddy for my invisibility.
Anyway, I think I am getting better, despite the dearth of external validation, so GoGo, I guess.
D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO100, 1/3rd (APmode), f/3.5, -1EV. 6 minutes of slider play in Aperture, plus 4 minutes of playing with other images, and checking to verify that this one is the one. (I feel this is a more appropriate measure, rather than the nebulous mild/medium/heavy scale I’ve used up until now, and I’ll be using this method, or something more descriptive, in the future).
*this is not to suggest that I don’t fully appreciate every +1 and comment and reshare that I receive… I am, however, very glad that I’m doing this for myself, for my own personal enjoyment and growth and creative expression, rather than for any recognition or approval from others, otherwise I should’ve walked away and reclaimed the 30-180 minutes/day for some other more productive activity—napping, perhaps, or eating chocolate while staring mindlessly at the tele, for example—many months ago, and most definitely long before I hit the 2/3rds mark.
and apologies for the WoT. Much of this rant applies only to the Google+ universe, since I know (thanks to Google Analytics) that I have roughly 50 visitors per week to this website of mine, a number that actually surprises me somewhat, and I’m even more surprised that over half of these are new visitors, which means it’s not just Mom (Hi!) that looks at this…
So Hello, everyone! I expect that at least some of you are actual humans, as opposed to zombie users searching for something to hack. Thank you so much for your support!
