Things I've learned in whispers and shouts.

8
Credits: alienmeatsack

I remember when I got my first rolls of Lomography Diana F+ photos back from the lab. It was my first Lomography camera and my first leap back into film.

The learning curve humbled me and excited me. And it took me a while to figure out what I was doing wrong. I slowly added more cameras to my collection, added more shots to my Lomography Home here, and slowly made friends. Along with making friends comes learning and growing as a photographer and learning how to work with the community to be pleasing and polite.

During this process, not everything I’ve learned has been from shooting, or public feedback. Sometimes it’s something someone mentions in passing during a private chat, sometimes it’s a general vibe I get when I am surfing for photos, and sometimes it’s just straight up in your face told to you by a blog post, or a person here.

I learned to steady my camera with my arms against my body, or to lean on something that isn’t moving to get less blurry shots. That I knew myself but had a hard time putting it into practice.

I also learned that I am obsessed with being a good Lomographer both for myself and for everyone here who might see my work or who’s work I might see.

One thing I noticed last year… I feel compelled to like an entire album posted by someone and comment if i see something I like. I think liking and comments are important. But I also found out that how many photos you put into an album here will dramatically change the number of likes you get on a whole.

Example, if I post a roll from my Diana, that is 12-15 photos at most. That is a very easy number to go through and like, comment, etc. And it’s how I see it from my side of things.

If I post a roll of 36 shots from one of my 35mm cameras, overall I get less likes because it’s so many more photos to look at and like. It takes time. And some of us/you don’t have hours to sit and like/comment photos.

I hadn’t really put this idea together that 10-15 and 24-30 was a good top amount of shots for 1 single album until I had 2 different people here mention that they preferred to keep their album counts under a certain number. And then I started noticing that I also tended to stray away from really huge albums with 50-100 or more shots in them when liking/viewing photos from others. In my head, I see all these cool shots and I think “I can’t like all of those, that will take forever” and sadly, sometimes I just skip them. That’s how my brain works I guess.

I started making more of an effort to reduce my album sizes down and to break up sessions or rolls into smaller more likeable albums. I want everyone to like my work and to see all of my work, I don’t want to scare away someone because my album is daunting due to its sheer number of photos. I just want to be liked and to like.

This just one thing I’ve learned since I joined Lomography and got my head back into film photography. One of many.

ams

written by alienmeatsack on 2014-11-25

8 Comments

  1. neanderthalis
    neanderthalis ·

    I have felt the same lately. I try culling the roll to shots that have more significance to what I was trying to express.

  2. alienmeatsack
    alienmeatsack ·

    I've started trying to do that too. I've considered going back through some of my previous works to add some tags and such, and reorganize into folders where the albums are too huge. I know I will have a quieter photo posting time during the cold months. So cleaning, organizing is a good thing.

    I do try to make it through the huge albums, but sometimes I just can't. The site might be slow, my connection might be slow, or I just have to stop looking and get stuff done. If i don't note what album I was looking at, I foroget and then leave it partly liked. Sad face.

  3. smolda
    smolda ·

    You have a really good point here... Nice blog entry! :)

  4. crevans27
    crevans27 ·

    Lovely post. You're right, when I see big albums I tend to pick out the ones that look interesting from the thumbnails to like. Smaller albums I'm more likely to go though the whole album. Good to know for future albums :)

  5. alienmeatsack
    alienmeatsack ·

    @smolda and @crevans27 - Glad you liked it :D I am trying something new, expressing my otherwise unspoken thoughts into words here. I've learned so much from the folks on here, so I need to give back some even if it's not mind blowing, it's still a thing to think about. I know at least a few people found it useful and that is what counts.

  6. smolda
    smolda ·

    I found it useful indeed! @alienmeatsack :)

  7. fartstorm
    fartstorm ·

    I still tend to post roll by roll. Pretty much unabridged. There's always a wall to build :)

  8. gepo1303
    gepo1303 ·

    Less is more...