Getting my ducks in a row...

Please forgive the pun.   I've been thinking alot of late of the balance between two of the prevailing philosophies of social network shared photography-types.     One school of thought is that you gain followers by frequent, interesting posts rounded out with a recognizable brand, possibly a home blog for easy search and reference.

I've done this; or at least tried to.

I believe on Flickr that I have about 20 people who check my stuff once a month.  On twitter, G+, Facebook, the numbers and interaction really aren't there as well.  I'm pretty sure my wife doesn't even know this domain name.  This is after a couple years of photo-a-day following this school of thought, often at the expense of quality.

Onto the other prevailing school of thought...

The other day, I was reading other comments from one of my favorite photographers' daily post where people were asking approximately how long he took processing and massaging photos for public consumption.

That particular guy is a bad reference, since he's a super-human photographer with exceptional skills all around. He processed several photos in a sitting and staggered the results for later posts to his blog. (AND can keep amazing quality)

Another photographer that I really respect is Eden Brackstone. http://edenbrackstone.com

Eden's contribution to the comment stream was that instead of doing a few photos a day, he would often work on one photo for multiple days, leaving and coming back to it.

That attention to detail really shows in HIS contributions as well.

That is another school of thought.   Take your time, do good work, post something meaningful and don't dilute your "stream" with crap.

This got me thinking.   My prevailing philosophy for life has always been to keep my own pace regardless of others.  That puts me faster than some, slower than others, better than some but worse than others.   Yet, keeps me happy.  

The result of allowing an arbitrary deadline, like a Daily post requirement, dictate when you are going to post a photo really does dilute the experience doesn't it?  Moving forward I've decided to apply my philosophy in life in my approach to photography sharing.   I'm going to take the time so that I'm satisfied with the result of a post instead of pushing to "get something out."

At the end of the day, if that means I don't get a billion Google+ followers or Flickr visits, who cares? I'm happy to have made some new friends thus far and in the end, I do this for me, not the social networking mob.