My desire to organize my life tends to ebb and flow. Lately, I’ve been trying to straighten out the growing collection of photographs that I have, both at home, and that I share online. The methods I’m employing at home are probably of more interest to my Shrink than they are to you, but, you might be curious about what I’m up to in the online world, and, I’d like your opinion regarding what I’ve done.
As I see it, there are several different classifications of photographs. Let’s go over them briefly.
First, there is the collection of my very best work potentially divided into various styles of work and only updated when another rare spectacular image is created. This is often called the “portfolio”.
Secondly, there is the regular display of new images that can highlight unseen images from the past, great images from recent sessions and excursions, or highlight new and experimental techniques and ideas. This is often considered the “photoblog”.
Then, there is the dumping of the good images (usually left raw or mostly unedited) from each days edits. This is more like what you’d get from me if you were to book a session with me, or if I were to create a photo album of my trip to Canada last winter. They aren’t bad images, by any means, but there are certainly a lot more of them and each image hasn’t necessarily been edited to its fullest potential. I call these “session edits”.
Finally, there are those images that, while still done with an artists mind set, have a goal outside of “art”. This may include photographs of wildlife, geographic features, insects, plant life, and sculptures. While these images can often serve double duty with one of the above categories, sometimes, a photograph of two grasshoppers doing it is just a photograph of two grasshoppers doing it. I call these “demonstrative images”.
I’ve experimented with sharing each of these classifications of photography and doing so in varying forums and communities. I just haven’t quite found an equilibrium that I’m happy with yet.
At one point, I only had a “portfolio”. Then I started using my weblog as a every-now-and-then “photoblog”. Eventually, I became a Flickr user and starting using it as a “photoblog”. Then I started Arranging Light and started weaning away from using my weblog as a “photoblog”. For the most part, Arranging Light and my Flickr account had the same content until recently.
Recently, I’ve started uploading “session edits” into Flickr. On the 3rd of this month I uploaded 9 images from a recent excursion to the Forth Worth Nature Center. On the 5th I uploaded 7 images from a recent photo session with Rachelle. Today I uploaded 26 images from an outing to Lake Ray Roberts over a year ago.
I get a lot more visitors to my Flickr account than I do to my photoblog and my weblog combined. I also tend to get a lot more feedback there than I get any place else. Many Flickr users treat it as a photoblog of sorts and use it as their primary means of seeking out new work from other photographers. Therefore, I’m reluctant to place my unpolished images in a forum that is being used by many others for more refined work.
I was once told, in person, by someone who had only seen my photography through the eyes of Flickr that I had some fantastic photography but that another Flickr user, T-Glow, had nothing but amazing images. This observation troubled me. Maybe it shouldn’t have.
I’ll admit that T-Glow has some fantastic photography, and I don’t claim to be better or worse than him in any way. However, our individual uses of Flickr differs quite greatly. T-Glow posts an image every day. One image each day. However, it’s not always a new image. It’s rarely ever anything unique or experimental. It’s not always even an image that’s never been on Flickr before. Sometimes he re-edits an already published image. It is consistently an incredible image and I don’t mean to belittle his work at all because it’s certainly worthy of note. But, to compare my Flickr account and his is like comparing a long standing photo gallery to the string of negatives hanging on the clothesline over my bath tub.
It is the fact that someone would jump to this conclusion that leaves me thinking that maybe I shouldn’t be so candid with what I share there. However, at the same time, using Flickr as a testing ground for the success of certain images seems to work quite well.
What do you think? Do you like seeing the more candid versions of my work? Should I continue posting “session edits” to Flickr, restrict it to only “photoblog” images as I have in the past, or take it one step further and showcase only “portfolio” worthy images there? If I don’t post them to Flickr, should I put them somewhere else?
