Further, you can create a Flickr Group (I recently did ths as part of my research here for this piece) and created a group called Almost Nude: the Best of Flickr. I invited only select people of my choosing ~ those whom I felt had appropriate taste and would not make the group pornographic. Two, each member had to have a Public Profile, meaning they could not “hide” and not reveal who they were. Three, when I wrote “almost nude” that meant, and this I do realize is up for interpretation but as Judge Black says, I know it when I see it, no pornography, no genitalia, no absolute or frank nudity, and no nudity that is explicity sexual. This group is intended as a group of what I would call art nudes, but with clothing on. An example: a woman with a shirt on and perhaps a bra showing and her stomach would be a good shot. A man’s back as he removes his t-shirt another excellent example, and so forth.
You get the idea and you can picture it, or I hope you can.
We now have almost two hundred and seventy members at last count and I would not be surprised to see that number increase to three hundred very soon or more. It would certainly be more had I made the group Public, but I specifically chose Private so that 1. only those in the group can see the photos for safety reasons, thereby making women and men feel safe about exposing photographs that they may otherwise, despite the tastefulness of the photos, be hassled about, and 2. creating an outside and blog for the best photos of each week. This gives members the impetus to not just post some half-assed (no pun intended) photograph of themselves in their panties, which frankly, is really dull and I’m so over it, but to push the envelope and come up with something truly beautiful along the lines of, dare I say, Weston, Gibson, Newton (all these “on” names – how odd, I never noticed before), Sally Mann, and so on. You get the picture, so to speak.
The experiment has worked out well and I think that some deals have or will be struck between members who will either introduce each other to their various galleries for there are certainly some gallery owners involved. For certain, there are serious artists involved who have real agents and have had shows who may form friendships and offer advice and perhaps connections to real agents to those floating in a sea on their own ~ this is highly valuable and the sort of thing I think Blogcritics can provide if people are willing to cooperate (and I’ve certainly been willing to put my money where my mouth is for someone whose work I feel is good, because if I’m going to recommend them, or you are, lets say, remember that it is your or my name who will take this reflection at the end of the day and we hope it is a good one.
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
I addressed this, partly and not quite so extensively several months back.
Basically there are a lot more consumers than creators.
There are even fewer .....
Well, I was going to say there are even fewer quality creators but I guess the market would ultimately judge that. Sort of. Kind of.
There's a lot of people who think they have something interesting to say, and fewer who do.
Still, in the meantime, the good is drowned by the junk. Still further in the meantime, the need for paid content is logarithmically diminished. And the freelance compensation goes down.
There are reasons - often to do with livelihood - why the idea of prestige is one best kept around. The quality of work demanded in print is also a factor.
[typos fixed - to terrible even for me to swallow]
2 - Eric Olsen
HI Sadi, very nice, persuasive post and I appreciate the special dispensation and spectacularly kind words for us!!
Yes, this is certainly an issue of concern and even alarm for real writers.
I was just talking to Natalie Davis about this yesterday, who is an excellent, experienced writer and editor who is having a very difficult time making a living in the new writers' economy, largely created by the Internet.
Temple is correct about the devaluation and it's hard to say exactly how the problem will be rectified beyond the boring, underpaying advertising-and-affiliate model. Something is missing - there is some way to make all of this work that no one has come up with yet.
3 - sadi
i think this will ultimately pay out by allowing writers several things instead of instant compensation:
1. write good stuff and think toward compiling those articles for a book project or an antholgy that is taking submissions.
2. use these writings as tear sheets when applying for new jobs or a promotion etc, as this kind of exposure and number of web hits lends you a legitimacy and authority that you may not otherwise have.
3. develop an expertise, as i sort of fell into, and b ecome THE authority on that subject on the Web and then start to try to get radio bookings or make it clear to television programs, new media and paying outlets that you are available to write about this issue for them,
&
4. if you do become an expert and a primary reference (your site, for example, gets thousands of hits per day), then you have a legitmacy right there that will help you get a real literary agent.
so there is compensation at the end, i believe. you just have to think about how you are going to apply the work that you are doing now in the future.
and too, not all of this work IS for free. Some is paid, but for the work that is free, remember that in the final account, you can make it pay off...
just my opinion and thanks to RJ for a real interesting conversation about this topic as well... it helped me to think about my own views on the topic and get going on this piece as i said i would and ~ ta dah! ~ did.
Eric, of course ~~` not special dispensation, per se, just a logical statement to me that follows from what you do and our many discussions about that as well... speaking of...... ring me sometime...
cheers all, and thanks for reading my absurdly long works.
sade