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Blinking

Posted by
MadScientist (Düsseldorf, Germany) on 10 March 2013 in Art & Design and Portfolio.

Dedicated photo blogs are dead. Social networks are the future. Interaction is everything. Contacts and networking are the currency of the web. Be there or be squared -

A lot of things were happening last year. More than the 17.000 followers I've gained in Google+ wouldn't be possible at AM3, but at some point you realize that your stream has become a big image machine, eating your photos and the photos of the people you're following. There are mass phenomena, elitist circles, there's coterie. And there's the opposite: real people you would love to meet in real life and drink a beer with. To become known is rather easy, but to stay known is an art. Social nets are constantly growing, and to stay in people's focus is hard work. In the blink of an eye people start loving you or they're flooding your stream with hatred. I will summarize some of my insights in future postings.

Japanalia from Yokohama, Japan

Beautifully seen diagonal girdle decorated with a touch of gold! Like your angle, intelligently used!

10 Mar 2013 8:22am

@Japanalia: Thank you! After an age of dark, grey skies I was really thankful for these rare sunrays.

Ted from South Wales, United Kingdom

excellent dof and simplicity MS!

Is the moral of the story then...stay away from hungry monsters?):-

10 Mar 2013 7:45pm

@Ted: It's a matter of condition, I think. For more than a year I was networking on steroids, a.k.a. curating one of the more popular weekly themes. It brought me a lot of people to follow, even more followers, many lovable friends and a few not so lovable folks. But you have to keep pace, day by day. That was a bit much after several months, even if you distribute work among four or five people, and it took many hours of spare time. In the end it's a cost-benefit calculation, but I'm not sure what this kind of popularity in a large social network really means.

Curly from South Shields, United Kingdom

Good to see you back here Manfred, I just wish I had the time and patience to delve deeper into the social networking thing, but time is VERY precious to me right now (my wife is terminally ill with dreadful cancers and I have two young children to look after and care for. In better times I once ventured into Facebook but even found that it was far too time consuming. Perhaps I'm happy just to find an outlet to show off my pictures and describe my life and environment here in AM3.
I hope you carry on posting here because I've always enjoyed wour work, particularly your exceptional pictures of exceptional churches.

10 Mar 2013 11:41pm

@Curly: Oh, Curly, this is horrible! My prayers are with you and your family.
It's indeed time consuming: I've spent a big part of my Sundays in curating a populare theme at Google+, it brought me many friends and lots of popularity, but you also realize the not so beautiful side effects and the monotony of commenting on images, no matter how good they are. In the meantime I've returned to a slower pace and spend more time on other things, like taking photos.
(And yes, I've seen a lot of beautiful churches, too.)

Abena from Illinois, United States

Thought provoking post and very much of it true. I read the comments above and pretty much agree with all of it; the spending lots of free time on commenting on things, the monotony no matter how good they are and about social networking etc. The list goes on but the biggest factor I think is that it munches up valuable time! Excellent image, the dof, the patterns and I took a look in your archive, you've got some great stuff in there.

20 Apr 2013 5:26pm

@Abena: Thanks so much, Abena! It's not that I don't like these giant networks, but they are real image eating machines. At the end it was just too much, all filtering mechanismus aside. I'm pausing a bit at the moment.