Tongue Tied

The internet's a funny thing. I have a very, extremely small, minuscule really voice here on the vast ocean that is the world wide web. To be honest, I like it that way. I like that mostly, only people I know in real life (and a very small percentage at that) ever even glance my blog's way. Being introverted means I don't really write here for strangers. I write because it's one of the ways I learn and process. A few times in the last eight or so years of blogging here, I've had strangers comment. And nearly every single time, anonymous comments meant disagreement--often angry or condescending disagreement. And almost every time, they've been deleted. Perhaps that's selfish of me, but whatevs. That's the perk of having a blog. Total control. Mwahaha. If the disagreement came from a person I knew in real life, I allowed the comments and often there was a spirited, yet respectful debate. And while I obsess over things like that, they can be very ...

When I started out in digital photography five years ago, I had a sour feeling about editing. It rankled a bit that there seemed to be less skill needed for photography these days, because all ya had to do was put the camera on automatic and then add the pretty on the computer. Art could be contrived and mass produced, and it made it ten times harder to stand out. I still feel like photography is almost a little too  accessible these days, and not because I don't think the masses should be able to photograph. I appreciate that cameras capture moments in our lives that fifty years from now we might not remember otherwise. That is valuable. My grandmother shot hundreds of Poloroid photos, not for the sake of art, but for the sake of memory. Everyone should have access to that. But the age of digital photography has definitely convinced a lot of people that they could totally make a career out of this picture thing just because they have some fancy equipment and programs. I don...