I am sure I have mentioned before how I am a little conflicted about having this photoblog especially in how I can measure its success or failure. Before I can even begin with that kind of accounting I have to honestly assess why I put up this photoblog in the first place.
It's all to easy to fall back on the cliche of this site being my creative outlet but photography itself is the creative outlet. In which case, that makes this site nothing more than ego. I'm fine with that but would also argue that photography without exhibition is mastabatory. To me it's like the question if a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound? The photographic equivalent would be if a picture stays in a portfolio, hidden and never seen in a closet, how can it be art?
But getting lots of hits and tricking people into seeing my pictures doesn't make my work art. Last year I did a little investigation into how to get better placed in the search results for my name in google. For a couple of weeks I even made it to number three on the first page but then google changed their algorithms and I slipped back to obscurity. I found a new resource and could spend a lot of time working out how to get myself well placed in google again but I am sort of relieved that I am no longer tricking Jazz enthusiasts into visiting me so I am letting my site stay obscure in the gospel according to Saint Google.
I thought a more honest way to get visitors who counted (other photographers) would be to rise up the photoblogs.org charts. I thought the most honest way of all to do this would be, not to court votes, but to just put my site out there and see what happened. This strategy was stressful as I would visit my profile every day to see if anyone had added me to their favorites only to be disappointed as my site found very few new fans a month. Once I did make the hot list for a few days and began to imagine my surge to the top 100 before, like my earlier google experience, I slipped back where I belong, with the other photoblog minions. I do admit to going through something of a crisis at that point; if my site has ten times less favorites than the leaders do, does that make my pictures ten time worse than theirs? But I stopped being so self-indulgent when I stopped visiting photoblogs daily to measure my "success" and I was reminded that art is not a popularity contest.
I happily went back to my original mission of using the site to post a couple of pictures a week and reveled in my obscurity. Today, I was reminded why I have this site when I found this comment in doc.weblogs.com about my review of Diane Arbus exhibit I put something up because I wanted to, google then catalogued it, and someone found it and appreciated it for what it was. Hmm, I think I know why I have this site after all. |
