Clifton & Levine
   
   
 

Today's picture is another from the Dodge poetry festival; this is of Lucille Clifton and Philip Levine sharing a moment,

Quietly, I just hit a milestone with this photolog and domain; one year and 100 posts on the web. Not that I feel like celebrating much ... more like questioning my participation in the photoblogger's niche of the bloggosphere. 'Participating' maybe too strong a word - I'm feeling a little trapped down an unpopulated cu-de-sac of the web.

I went live with the idea of posting one or two images a week, mainly new stuff, and to that end I've been largely sucessful. But like every photoblogger I question how I can measure success of the site. Like all photoblogging newbies I initially measured my success by the number of my peers adding me as a favorite on Photoblogs. That was OK for a while. A few people I really respected even added me to their favorites and I even made the "hot list" once or twice. Then, I'm not sure what happened - I stopped leaving as many comments on the sites of the high profile photo-elite - maybe that's it. The last time I picked up a favorite on photoblogs was more than 3 months ago. Hmm - was it something I said?

Hits have been pretty constant for the last 9 months or so. Looking at referring URL's 75% of my visitors are still confused jazz fans getting to me through google. And I'm considering turning off comments on my site to hide the lack of them.

So, if I can't measure success through numbers of visitors perhaps I can measure success by the quantity or quality of new images the log forces me to produce. For the moment, the four members of my meet-in-person photo salon are the thing that holds me accountable to produce new work. I knew I'd never compete with those sites posting 5+ new images a day; even a new image a day seems daunting. What was it Ansel Adams said? "Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop."

So why do I continue to bother? I guess because if I don't put my photography out there then it's just therapy. That and the fact that I do have a handful of loyal visitors. Let's see if I can make it through another year and 100 more posts.