Yesterday I was checking the stats for all my sites and I came across a whole bunch of people coming in from Variety.com, of all places. Variety is one of two big entertainment industry trade papers; I used to subscribe to it myself until I stopped caring who ran which studio and what scripts were hot.
When I tracked the referrals back, I found an article with the title, "Picture Postcard," subtitled "Photo blogs provide alternate view." Cool, I thought. My photoblog is mentioned in in a roundup of blogs showing the city.
Not quite. It's a short article, just a paragraph. And it only references one photoblog.
The writer (who has an interesting blog of his own) says, in part, "Take a break from the stereotypical Los Angeles visuals (exploding car chases, tan bikini lines, glitz, sunglasses and palm trees) and look at this daily photo blog of the City of Angels." And goes on to say, "The photographer here, Tamar, takes some marvelous and unconventional pictures of the city."
Nice.
It's a funny thing. Photography is the only creative outlet I have that's purely for me, unrelated to a career, and I like that about it. But it's also unrelated to anything else, and I'm not sure that's such a good thing. I haven't become embedded in the photoblog community, I look at few other sites with any regularity. I do occasionally enter photos in memes like Photofriday (I like Photofriday), but not with any regularity or determination. It's been almost like a secret, my photography site. And yet. Back in July, Coolstop found my site and named it cool stop of the day. (I was too distracted to mention that anywhere, it was a private sort of pleasure.) And now this.
I'm not sure why I've shied away from being more public about it all. Fear that I'm not good enough to play with the big kids with their fancy cameras and professional experience? Does that matter if I enjoy it? This exposure is good for me, I think. I think I need to own this more. I'm not a photographer in the same sense that I'm a writer, but this too is part of me.
Posted by Tamar at January 31, 2004 09:51 PMGirlfriend! Nice meditation on you and photography, but are you really that casual about being the ONE photoblog mentioned by a national publication (even a specialty one)? I used to get points for stuff like that when I worked in PR. Accept the nachas, please!
Posted by: Chris at February 1, 2004 05:45 AMHeh. I didn't read that as so much with the casual, as with the shocked and speechless. It's kinda like having looked for the Holy Grail, given up, gone to make soup and found it in the pantry of all places. I would think it would feel strange to find something so very personal appealing to large groups of people. And also, reassuring, because the novel Tamar's writing is such a unique idea, a viewpoint that isn't popularized by genres or how-to books, and yet I'm betting that it'll have the same effect on people as well -- something very personally envisioned will end up having mass appeal. Not that Chris is saying anything opposite of that -- to be clear, I'm just musing on the effect it would have.
Posted by: toni at February 1, 2004 10:30 AMWell, more like bemused. It's not all that many hits, really. I've gotten more from other bloggers' links. And it's on the online version only. But yes, of course, it does feel very good. And what Toni's saying. Holy Grail in the pantry. I'd always imagined my name in Variety, but in the script sales column. So this was amusing as well as flattering.
Posted by: Tamar at February 4, 2004 11:22 PMAlas and alak -- I write about a photo blog I like, and it goes dark. What happened?
Posted by: Travis Smith at February 20, 2004 05:24 PM