TAKE OUR PICTURE!

On a recent morning walk about town I took a photo outside of this barbershop, and Keith (on the right) shouted “hey, come take our picture!”

Mind you, I’ve been walking around town the last few months still trying to figure out this camera. It’s a Nikon ZFC with full manual controls, so I’m always dialing in the shutter speed, aperture, and all that fun stuff.

All that noodling around paid off I guess, as I was able to get this photo in two takes, with some minor editing in Adobe Lightroom.

Here’s some more recent shots:

VIDEOS FROM THE WOODS

I love being in the woods. Usually I just take a bunch of photos with my iPhone and send them to a friends afterwards, but now I’m enjoying making some chill-vibes videos like this.

I’m hauling a real camera (Nikon Z30), a tripod, and a Zoom H6 audio recorder with me to capture these moments. I mean, to be able to capture the sounds of the birds? The movement of the creek? Oh my, I love it so much.

I’ve made a few so far and got more to learn, of course, but I’m enjoying the process.

RETURN TO THE WEB

The only thing holding us back from having the internet experience is ourselves.

“Nothing about the web has changed that prevents us from going back. If anything, it’s become a lot easier. We can return.“

This from Molly White, in a piece called ‘We can have a different web.’

We can set up websites for cheap, using a multitude of tools. We can create directories, or field guides, or fan pages for anything we want.

We can link to each others things from our websites, our newsletters, our DMs, our Discords or forums.

It might feel slower, since techbros at social media giants have been feeding you the Kool-Aid that without them you’ll turn to dust, but that just ain’t true.

EARLY TWITTER USER

I’ve been going through so many old photos and images since ditching Apple Photos, and found this from 2013, a screen shot of Twitter, with my Twitter user number as evidence of being one of the first 3,000 to sign up for the service. Un freaking real that I used that service for 17 years.

I THOUGHT YOU WERE CRAZY

I got a DM today from a reader of Social Media Escape Club:

“When I first started reading your posts I thought you were crazy. Honestly.”

They went on to tell me how they’ve been ignoring social media for any sort of promoting for their project, and – SHOCKER – it had no effect.

I’ve talked to a lot of artists about all this social media / “having a newsletter” thing, and I’m telling you, people have been beating their heads against a wall with this stuff, but also suffering from a bit of Stockholm Syndrome.

“A proposed condition or theory that tries to explain why hostages sometimes develop a psychological bond with their captors.”

Yes, there are folks who have a positive or neutral relationship with social media. If that’s you, fantastic.

Just because you don’t have a problem with social media, does not mean people experience the platform in the same way.

For some, social media is dreadful, which is then made worse by the idea that without it you’re doomed. And that’s a horrible place to be.

USE YOUR VOICE

Thinking about a section of Austin Kleon’s “Show Your Work,” which is “You Can’t Fing Your Voice is You Don’t Uset it.”

We find it by using it. We find out photographic style by taking more photos, we find out guitar style by playing guitar, we find out our artist style by… by being ourselves and being present in the world, sharing what we do.

The chapter talks about the movie writer Roger Ebert, and how he lost his voice so he then found his voice through writing online.

For any lone artist in a small town, whos prime disadvantage is that they live in a small town, well, here was a movie critic who lost his voice – such a loss! Such a “disadvantage.”

Write, post, talk, discuss. Do it online, do it often, seek out your weirdos, and make sure you have a website where all your weirdness resides (like this blog).

RELYING ON GREY BOXES

Cal Newport makes a great point about artists and creative people being on social media.

If our work is on social media, we leave the chance of “being discovered” to a grey box. An algorithm.

But the “old way” of finding and discovering things on the Internet was through blogs and directories.

Posts and link dumps curated by real humans. DJs on live radio stations. Writers that reviewed music in magazines.

It was slower, sure, but I don’t think we need any more “36 new songs released today” posts, do we?

I think it’s time to get back to directories again. DIY style. Curated links to resources to duplicate tapes, make zines, and lists of art galleries by city and state.