Rocky Terrain

There are a lot of photographers, videographers, and artists out here. On the interwebs. Way before I ever picked up a camera I'm sure it was way more difficult to get your photographs seen by the public eye. The internet is a direct lifeline to everyone, anywhere, and at any time. That means without doing any math to bore you more photos are uploaded in one day than they were taken before the internet was around. I'm sure these stats are actually even more ridiculous. Everyone has a camera phone. And everyone takes photos. 

With as little as I've actually stated in this post there are plenty of photographers who value quantity over quality. And surprisingly at times quantity trumps quality because of high web presence. Lightly speaking of course, I'm talking about the abundance of photographers that publish images daily to those who publish monthly or when the photo feels right. 

See, the internet doesn't care if you're actually good at taking photos. It doesn't care if you're good at editing. The internet, for majority, cares about communication between one another. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours type of shit. The guy on Instagram that has over 500 hearts may be a great photographer or he may be just some bloke who takes his time to tediously like other Instagram accounts in exchange for likes on his own posts. It happens on every platform for sharing work not just Instagram. 

I know that not all my images are great. Shit, some of my images made Flickr explore, and while exciting for any photographer, it was a complete waste of my sense of accomplishment. I did not accomplish anything in real time. For a day I might have been popular on Flickr. But I didn't and I cannot stress this enough; I did not accomplish anything. It only made things worse. It inflated my ego. It made me feel like I've done really good. But as I'm strolling through explore I see photos of Legos with over 100 favorites. Don't get me wrong I love a good Lego, but come the fuck on. You've looked through explore and other "popular" photo pages and wondered the same shit, don't judge me. Even the photos that made explore for me had me scratching my head. Like why these photos and not these ones? 

What I'm saying is that if you want real criticism you have to be your own critic. Be harsh. Don't listen to your mom telling you that you're really good. Ask another photographer for an honest opinion and don't take offense. You asked for it.