I took a couple of recent blog posts down. Nobody seems to be responding to them anyway and the number of people accessing and interacting with content about actually using cameras, actually working on paying jobs, etc. has been dropping over time. I get it. Interest in actual, current photography is dying out.
You'd really think so if you read photo blogs on the web. But really?
I'm having a blast working on advertising projects. Actual projects done in collaboration with contemporary advertising agencies. Campaigns. Work with young art directors. Real photo work. But I think my readers here are tired of hearing about how we do our jobs. About our plans about which cameras and lenses to use. And maybe I just don't write it all very well.
It seems that everyone is drawn instead to photo blogs that are the online analogy of a book club at which everyone sits around, drinks wine and gossips and pontificates in the comments while only a handful of the participants have actually read this month's book. It's the group vibe and the socializing that's important to them. Online friends? Is that still a concept? Does it actually work for anyone?
I'm not blind to the fact that most of my readers and the readers of other photo blogs know as much important stuff about photography was we do. As the writers do. Some knowledge we hold on to is arcane and only useful in the service of engaging nostalgia for a time well past. I could bore the crap out of most of you with spirited essays about reciprocity failure or the Scheimpflug Principle but why would I want to? Only a tiny percentage of you are interested in shooting film in the dark and even fewer are operating view cameras with front and rear standard movements.... why dredge up trivia and make it sound important and useful? Photo trivia bragging rights?
I took the posts down because, like a series on Netflix, we weren't making our numbers and so we "cancelled" the posts. We're not making money with this blog so I measure the value to me by engagement and I measure that by page views and comments. Something is stuck in the lawn mower blades and I fear I might have to turn it off, look underneath and see what's causing the slow down.
I won't be competing in the writing world by blogging outside my own interests in photography. If you want to read it that's great. If you'd rather not that's great too.
At the moment it feels like photography, both commercial and artistic, is thriving. Energized and vibrant. But at the same time it's been so much examined, picked over and dissected by the armchair teams that interest and actual engagement by those not in the thick of it is no more entertaining to them than a cooking show or a nostalgia for carburetors in cars or a vivid discussion about trans fats.
And that's how it looks from this side of the keyboard.
Me?
Not sick. No starving. Not poor. Not lonely. Not disengaged. Not sore. Not bored.
Just feeling the gap between what I want to write and what you all seem to want to read. Taking a walk instead and, for a change, not planning to post any images from the same.
Hope your day is interesting...
