Why I have not posted many photos or videos recently: exploitation?
When I started blogging, I did so with the idea that I should probably include a relevant photo or video with each blog post. I never really adhered to that idea, but it was put into my head because I had read that readers really like photos. And indeed, I personally like to see relevant and original photos accompanying other people’s blog posts. (I do get annoyed by photos that are stock photos, or sensationalist irrelevant photos (of celebrities or such) that seem designed to draw traffic.)
I have not taken many photos or videos recently. Why? I am faced with a kind of moral dilemma I have not quite resolved.
Being present or distracted?
A while ago, a friend of mine (who is into photography) and I were discussing the nature of social media, and said he once had a blog on which he had put up cool photos (in fact, I remembered reading it years ago and enjoying his photos). But he observed that the desire to capture and post cool photos led to the phenomenon of no longer being fully present in his life experiences. And he didn’t like that. He would be in a restaurant or in nature and focus on getting a good photo rather than on enjoying the food or the view.
Social gamesmanship?
Even worse, he would think about how people reading his blog might praise his photos.
I suppose that all of us who deliberately choose have a public presence, through music, writing, or other means, sometimes face the question of why we do what we do. Friedrich Nietzsche famously said:
Poets treat their experiences shamelessly; they exploit them.
We all know that we “exploit” our experiences; we learn from them, we share them. There is nothing wrong with that, and in fact, it is a virtue to share our experiences.
But what if we deliberately have or report an experience just to show off? I don’t like that. I think I do this rarely, but the availability of technology seems to make it much easier to disrupt our “natural” lives, in which we simply have experiences, rather than deliberately capture them at the very moment in high fidelity (through cameras or smartphones or the like).
Go by feel
I can’t codify when I feel “comfortable” about taking a photo or not, but I’ve been going by feel and defaulting to not taking a photo if I have the slightest twinge of uncertainty.
Overall, I think the more I am an unseen observer, the more likely I am to feel OK about taking a photo. The more I am a participant (as in small social gatherings), the less I want to break the flow of my experience and possibly violate the spirit of the moment. So I just don’t take photos any more when going out to eat with other people, for example.
Recently I tried to put my finger on why I feel weird about Pinterest. I think I only realized today, while thinking about photography, that Pinterest represents in its purest form what I want to avoid. Maybe I will change my mind, but for now, I still have not put anything up on Pinterest, nor do I have an interest in doing so.
Conclusion
I’m not sure what the repercussions are, for my blog, of my relative reluctance to take a lot more photos and videos that I could. I suppose I have implicitly effected a compromise between the quality of my personal life and the entertainment value of my blog.
Do you think there is anything to my rambling thoughts? What are your own personal rules or intuitions about when it is appropriate and enjoyable to take photos and upload them to share a story?
I won't read another post until you add a photo.
Ha. Don't worry, I'm hardly over with putting up photos.
I had similar feelings about Facebook, which is one of the main reasons I cut way back on my Facebook usage. When something happened to me during the day, I was often distracted by thoughts about what to post about it.
I feel that many blogs over-use photos, illustrating things that don't need to be illustrated. I often see recipes in which every single step has a photo--I know what
"add the diced onion to the olive oil in a skillet" looks like! Excess
photos are annoying when download speed is slow.
Ironically, you did an over-illustrated post just a week after this one--your post about the buffet at Coriander has many photos but could have gotten by with none; the photo of the exterior of the restaurant could be useful to someone looking for it (although a link to the restaurant's site would give the reader an almost identical photo, plus much more info about the restaurant, with much less effort for you), and the photos of your plate could help readers recognize those foods on buffets, but photos of the buffet line-up don't really add anything.
Personally, I try to make my point with words. In almost 400 posts, I have used photos twice: once because I didn't know what to call this kind of paperclip and once because I was writing about how it's okay to have a recipe binder that doesn't look perfect so I illustrated with photos of my recipe binder.
I have never yet posted a photo of myself, other than my hand holding the paperclip. I realized recently that part of my visceral aversion to it is that I was on the Internet in the era when the only photos on the Internet were pornography, so the idea of putting my picture on the Internet makes me feel dirty! That's kind of silly. Eventually I plan to write an article about my hairstyle, and that will require showing my face.
Your point about failing to be in the moment because you're thinking about what to post applies to writing, too, in my experience. I did this long before blogging was an option, thinking, "This will make a great story to tell my pen pal!" However, thinking about what you'll write is less intrusive in social situations than taking photos.
I think photos and diagrams and animations are very powerful tools, and ever since the Web came to be, I find it much harder now to read paper books that stick to just straight text, but that's the topic of another essay. I strongly believe in the effective use of everything other than written text (which is a very limited, historically bounded medium of communication that omits much).
That said, I admit my Coriander buffet blog post was not very focused. At the same time, it was almost entirely spontaneous. I did not think, "I have a story to tell about today, and plan to take interesting photos." The decision to go was made in the morning, and there was no plan to bring my camera, but I happened to see it near the front door and grabbed it. Then my plan was just to take a photo of the outside and the buffet lineup, just for myself (and not for any blog post at all); my digital photo album is full of stuff I have never posted anywhere. So I put away the camera and ate a plate of food. Then I realized it would be amusing to take a photo of every subsequent plate I ate. And these were just casual photos, not "food review" quality photos. I had no plan to write a restaurant review; that is not my thing at all, and would completely interfere with the spontaneity of just eating out with people and socializing. But I was amused as I ate plate after plate, breaking all my previous records, and decided at home that there was a blog post waiting to be written, whose main point would be something like "fasting and bingeing might be good for you". Given that point, I felt that it was appropriate to show just how much I ate! Therefore, I believe that it was critical to put in all the photos (however blurry) of the food. A blog post in which I just said, "I went to a buffet and ate a lot" would not have the entertainment/concreteness impact, I think.
This topic of posting photos or not has been on my mind a lot. I love to photograph people, places, scenery, life and document things happening. It's because I'm curious about the places I visit or the context in which something is happening. But at the same time I wonder too if I'm too caught up in capturing the moment that I forget to be present. It's just a tradeoff - sometimes I don't bring my camera so I can enjoy wherever I am. But the photos allow me to look back from time to time and compare the reasons/situations that brought me there or led me to take the photo. I think photos with the words can compliment a blog post. When I wrote about my observations during a weekend visit to Las Vegas I felt the photos described or solidified what I was trying to say.
I signed up for Pinterest because my Facebook friends were on there and sent an invite. I find it visually overwhelming - visual clutter. Maybe I'll go back to pinning but in the meantime I'll stick with the blogging which is already a huge time investment. Pinterest feels like one more reason to waste time and/or be less productive.