I belong to an online art and photography community called Red Bubble. I joined this winter, and it has been a great place to see some interesting photos and share some of my work with others. I keep the photos in my Red Bubble gallery sorted by number of views. When I add new photos, I give them a few days at the top of the page to be seen before sorting them. I figure that this way, the "cream" will rise to the top. This is probably an oversimplification. I'm using the number of views as a surrogate marker for how much people like the photo. In reality, there are other variables at play. Some photos just look more compelling as thumbnails. A more interesting thumbnail might generate a click, even if the photo itself is mediocre. The converse is also true. I think the hummingbird photo I posted on Red Bubble is among the best I've taken. The bird can't be distinguished from the green background in the thumbnail, and I think that's why it has been relegated to second-page obscurity. Some photos fit nicely into all sorts of groups and challenges and develop a greater presence on the site. Others aren't so easily pigeonholed, and rely solely on random visits to my profile for their views.
I have decided to keep my Red Bubble profile pared down to only 60 photos (or 3 pages) and eliminate the ones with the fewest number of views. I decided this after looking through a few profiles of people who have thousands of photos in their galleries. It's rare for me to go beyond the first page when I view someone's profile, let alone scroll through 200+ pages. I want my profile to maintain some sort of meaning.
One of the reasons I started this blog is that Red Bubble on its own is not the ideal forum for displaying my photography. For one thing, it's a site geared toward selling art, and this creates certain biases. The photos most appropriate and appreciated on Red Bubble are polished works, designed to sell and appeal to the masses. I want a forum to display some photos that maybe aren't technically brilliant, but are personal favorites of mine. some of these photos have interesting stories behind them. Others just highlight quirky tidbits and personal fascinations of mine (old machinery, wood macros, flower petals, etc).
The first photos I pruned from my Red Bubble gallery were taken when I was just starting out. Some of these old pictures are gems, but there's a steep learning cure in photography, and I take a very different photo now than I did a year ago. A lot of these older pictures no longer represent my "best" work, and I have let them fade unceremoniously into the ether. It was inevitable, though, that some of my favorites would fall off the Red Bubble site. I've decided to give those a permanent place on this blog. Without further ado, I present you with the first Red Bubble Reject: Rusty.
I got my new camera on December 30, 2008. Despite the fact that the temperature was between -15 degrees and -40 degrees Celsius most days, I was desperate to try it out. Every time I had a weekend off, Graem and I would bundle up and jump in the car with the camera and tripod. We investigated a lot of abandoned farms and houses. After a few hours of photography, I was exhausted from tramping through fields of snow up to my waist. My pants and long underwear were soaked right through, and I felt ready to drop dead from fatigue and hypothermia. Nonetheless, these are among my best winter memories. This is a picture of an old rusty piece of farm machinery taken in February 2009.
I have decided to keep my Red Bubble profile pared down to only 60 photos (or 3 pages) and eliminate the ones with the fewest number of views. I decided this after looking through a few profiles of people who have thousands of photos in their galleries. It's rare for me to go beyond the first page when I view someone's profile, let alone scroll through 200+ pages. I want my profile to maintain some sort of meaning.
One of the reasons I started this blog is that Red Bubble on its own is not the ideal forum for displaying my photography. For one thing, it's a site geared toward selling art, and this creates certain biases. The photos most appropriate and appreciated on Red Bubble are polished works, designed to sell and appeal to the masses. I want a forum to display some photos that maybe aren't technically brilliant, but are personal favorites of mine. some of these photos have interesting stories behind them. Others just highlight quirky tidbits and personal fascinations of mine (old machinery, wood macros, flower petals, etc).
The first photos I pruned from my Red Bubble gallery were taken when I was just starting out. Some of these old pictures are gems, but there's a steep learning cure in photography, and I take a very different photo now than I did a year ago. A lot of these older pictures no longer represent my "best" work, and I have let them fade unceremoniously into the ether. It was inevitable, though, that some of my favorites would fall off the Red Bubble site. I've decided to give those a permanent place on this blog. Without further ado, I present you with the first Red Bubble Reject: Rusty.
I got my new camera on December 30, 2008. Despite the fact that the temperature was between -15 degrees and -40 degrees Celsius most days, I was desperate to try it out. Every time I had a weekend off, Graem and I would bundle up and jump in the car with the camera and tripod. We investigated a lot of abandoned farms and houses. After a few hours of photography, I was exhausted from tramping through fields of snow up to my waist. My pants and long underwear were soaked right through, and I felt ready to drop dead from fatigue and hypothermia. Nonetheless, these are among my best winter memories. This is a picture of an old rusty piece of farm machinery taken in February 2009.
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