On a more upbeat note

[pecunium]

Explore, at flickr, is a sport of delayed gratification. Some while after one posts something, it rises out of the crowd (how the thing is determined, I've no idea) and enters the ranks of Explore.

Some keep rising, some fall. Today the second of my picutres to make it appeared. For a few hours this photo was ranked in the top 500 for August 14th, 2008.



In the few hours since it appeared, it's fallen off, but the other photo of mine which made explore



Fell off, and is now back on, so who knows. It may even, somehow, make it up to number one.

What amuses me is that I care. I've never said, "Oh, well I don't care if I never get, "explored,", because that would be a lie. Who doesn't want external validation (for those who feel so inclined, imitation isn't the sincerest form of flattery, money is. When someone parts with hard earned cash to get a copy of something you've made... there are better things in life, but they are no easier to come by).

But this one popping up, and then down again so quickly.... it's funny. I think it's a more dramatic picture, but it's not better than the baseball. The baseball shot, though, is an photographer's picture. I know how hard it was to get the one, and how fortuitous (even in the realm of fortune favoring the prepared mind) the other.

And yet... I am still slightly atwitter that this arcane thing, which is Explore, has pulled a couple of my pictures up and said, "these are good".

Comments

[shunra.livejournal.com]

To everything there is a time and a purpose. A time to laugh, a time to cry - and when it is the time to cry, upbeat notes are not owed to oneself.

Which does not mean that it's always the time to cry. But the apology for not being upbeat - as though that were all you ought to be - sounded an alarm for me.

Which may just be my clumsy way of saying: "I like you just the way you are, even if you're sad, or boring, or angry or whatever" - I keep coming to the blog because I like hearing your thoughts and their process.

I apologize for the clumsiness in expressing the above.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I seem to have been clumsy too. I took it as read. All in all, this is a tricky thing to write about, because I bring baggage to it, and the reader brings baggage, and rarely are then in any agreement better than counterpoint.

btw... I posted a variant photo on the grape tendril because you said you liked the one, not owed, just 'cause.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Thank you - I think I saw it, and will go back and double check.

Text - even for those of us who do it every day, all day - is such a data-poor medium. Nothing has persuaded me more of this than the realization of how very clumsily I end up putting things that matter.

I'll go look at tendrils. Photography's compression is less lossy.