At That Rate...

An inherent problem with being an internet-famous photographer is the rate at which you have to churn out new work. This is always one of the more daunting obstacles to my occasional plans to go scam the plebes on Flickr or wherever.

If you're internet-famous, or want to be, you've gotta have a feed. Whether you're posting on Flickr or Instagram, or on some forums, or on your own blog, new content is king. If you're just putting out a new portfolio of six pictures every few months, it doesn't matter how many people you follow. You have to generate, at a minimum, a couple new pictures a week. Better if you can do a little group of three or four about every two days.

The is absolutely opposed to being serious. Nobody has new ideas at that rate. Therefore you are pumping out more or less the same ideas, or no ideas at all.

The best you could do, in terms of being serious, is to continuously share out work in progress. Ideas as they evolve, half finished, half baked work, tossed out there at the most vulnerable moment. This is the time when you're groping for the final form, trying to find the ultimate expression, or at any rate your best try at it. This is probably not the best time to let the masses start helping out, unless you're after some crazy internet/collaboration thing.

Commercial and retail people do a lot better here, by there way. They're grinding out the same ideas over and over, but that's kind of the job. And then they can talk about the gear they're using, and the new gear they're gonna buy, and so on. It totally works, there.