I have been toiling on my Daily Photo project in near total obscurity for almost six years now. About a year ago I started cross posting my Daily shot on Facebook. Now, I had an actual audience. Sometimes with opinions. I am coming to grips with what that means.
I shoot daily for no other reason than that it is a habit I have cultivated, that has a continuing payoff in keeping my eye alert and fresh, and that it is where I can see the trail behind me of what is visually compelling and what photographic issues I am working through.
When you have a cheering section, this can be problematic. Now, most photographers, myself included, crave recognition. As a commercial shooter, I need people to know I'm a good photographer with a particular style and presence. That's why I have a website and portfolios in it. Thousands of people use Flickr as a social network site as much as a photo display venue, and you can detect a lot of pitching for that “Attaboy, good job” response from the group.
It's not that I mean to be contrary to using photography as a personal validation. Sharing photos is a social act, and I do it all the time myself with the albums I post on Facebook. Here's how I saw this event, this place. I think you might like to see it the way I did. And I get lots of feel-good comments.
However. Adulation does not help you grow. It can keep you stuck in a place where you know how to provoke the same, complimentary response. What you learn is how to get very good at doing the same thing. A useful skill in the right circumstances, but it doesn't get you to the next thing you're going to be doing when this one runs its course.
Since I started getting a steady series of comments on my Facebook posts of the Daily Photo, I have caught myself falling into the adulation trap. More than once I've gone, this shot's awfully strange, I'd better not post it. People will like this other one better. I found myself mildly crestfallen when no one commented on an image. Facebook was training me to make a different kind of image.
Which, on a commercial level, is useful. Sometimes I see that an image gets a disproportionate reaction for reasons I don't understand, and I pay attention. But the Daily Photo is a personal photographic venue that I want to start bending back to it's original function—a place for me to tally where my attention is drawn, and to get hints for what is to come next.
But if you like what I'm doing, go ahead and say so. I'll try not to take it personally.
Cool that you noticed that and are re-centering around your purpose with the Daily Photo practice.
I should just say, as an occasional commenter (and ponderer of what does and doesn't get responses on FB and why), anyone with more than x number of FB friends who post at all regularly will only get a selection of what they might see, and the randomness of timing and attention is a huge factor i think. There's so much passive information coming at one in limited time available on FB, and a certain quality of, uh, attention float, that it's unusual to go looking for someone's posts there if they don't show up during the time frame that you're paying attention.
Someone who bookmarks and navigates to your Daily Photo daily is a different story than the FB friend who does or doesn't stumble upon it through the complex algorithm of randomness that is Facebook...and whether the person who will resonate to a particular image is the one who sees it, or isn't in a hurry or focused on something else when it appears to them.
Posted by: Marni | January 21, 2011 at 01:58 PM
I think the Top News algorithm plays a big role. Once people start commenting, it tend to get boosted to that status where more people see it, and the comments thus grow even more. It's addictive to see comments on posts (I should buy more Carhartt garments, apparently), but I'm also noting the unintended consequences.
Posted by: Doug Plummer | January 21, 2011 at 04:05 PM
I don't use Facebook myself, but I've developed a feeling over the years that any praise is unhelpful to growth which is not accompanied by cash and/or offers of employment, Doug.
There is a culture of mutual praise on the web that seems positively harmful. I think of a friend who started a blog as an outlet for his ambition to write poetry but who has now descended into greetings card territory, chasing the praise and encouragement of a community of other poetry bloggers. According to them, he's an unpublished genius. It's a lovely warm bath of mediocrity in there...
Puritan instincts aside ("all praise is bad"), it's pretty evident that the web is very good at encouraging groupthink, very bad at identifying and nurturing originality.
Mike
Posted by: Mike C. | January 31, 2011 at 05:48 AM