This is it folks. The photo you see above is most likely the last photo I will post to flickr. I say most likely because I hate declarative statements. I hate feeling bound by things I used to think. I used to think flickr was a fun way to share pictures and meet some interesting folks. Now I think it’s just a crutch for me to lean on in absence of any real endpoint for my efforts.

When I started flickr way back in the glory days ( aka long before Yahoo consumed it ) I was overwhelmed by the talent I saw. It pushed me to take my pictures more seriously. It pushed me to learn and grow. Back then there were obvious ways to see the impact of improvement. There was a small community of devoted amateur photographers all interacting with one another, all encouraging and challenging one another. They’ve all moved on in one way or other.

I also learnt a lot over the years about media and media consumption. In part from my own habits, and in part from watching the cycle of people following my stream. I learnt humans are voracious in their capacity for newness. They feel strong connections immediately when they find a photographer that speaks to them, but they also tire very quickly.

I’ve seen this in my own tastes and I’ve seen it in the comings and goings of people who engaged my photos passionately for short periods of time then moved on. I think this tendency echoes a long exhibited tendency in all media. We all know the Hollywood stories of the fickleness of fame and celebrity and we’ve all become enamored by this or that “IT” guy or girl only to wish them dead for putting out 12 movies a year.

You can survive this by commodifying your work. Flickr provides an endless base of users who’ve never seen your particular take on the world and if you can gain access to them you can ride a constant wave of new enthusiasm for your photos almost indefinitely. However, if you cannot gain access to them through prohibitions placed on you through flickr your stream will stagnate and even the most loyal, most fascinated viewer will tire and watch on ambivalently.

It’s my belief—which has no valid explanation or proof—that flickr has an internal system for flagging users that may be dangerous to their shiny happy scrapbook persona. I believe this is applied to anyone who has ever been moderated even if their moderation is removed. My conspiracy theory suggests that such a flag will effectively exclude you from the main source of new viewers. Flickr Explore.
Before I was moderated, 1 of 4 of my images ended up in explore. Since I was moderated, though I no longer am, none of my images has made explore. How is that possible?

I realize this may look like I’m crying foul here that the internet doesn’t love me enough. I realize I’ve called you folks out for being too quiet and too passive in the past and now it will look as though I’m taking my ball and going home. And, to a small extent this is true.

I’m not a commercial photographer. I make no money from this work. I do it because I enjoy making pictures. Objective number one is the experience of making photos. Meeting people, interacting, learning light and being constantly reminded that life and beauty are so much bigger than I think they are. I get that fix every shoot.

However, there comes a time when you must ask yourself some hard questions about how you spend your precious energy. That time is now, and I’ve asked that if I refuse to commercialize my images, and refuse to have exhibits, calendars, books, or do stock photography, what is the logical end point of my work?
Flickr.

If you look objectively at my process you’ll see I am buying gear, arranging shoots, shooting, processing, storing, archiving, and all the other stuff I’m doing and the only real use of the photo is to share it here on flickr. I use them on my websites. Models use them in their portfolios. Every now and then someone wants a print. But on the whole flickr and this community is the “target” for my work. I didn’t plan it to work this way but this is the way it works.

I’ve spend 10s of thousands of dollars on equipment, spent years working studiously on light, pushed myself on almost all fronts and the result is I post work that I think far surpasses my previous work—previous work that was much more successful in terms of views, comments and favorites which I will argue is the only way of measuring the impact of a work that essentially was born for this specific medium—and I will sit patiently waiting for some way of knowing beyond my own judgment if the work is worth the effort. 

I post an image I care about to flickr, and watch as it gets picked over (viewed) by hundreds of silent flickr users who are too lazy to engage. They consume my efforts in their daily quest for eye candy or in the case of nudes, titillation, and move on without so much as a hello.

This is endemic of flickr’s construction. It’s mean to be a way to pass the time. It’s a way to masturbate your eye while you have nothing else to do. There is no reward for the viewer to spend any effort; more over there is a small penalty. The longer they spend on a single image is the less time they have to consume their next.

Flickr users are image sharks. If they stop viewing, they die.

This is not what I signed up for. Flickr has changed. The types of people using it have changed. The end goal has changed. And what was once a place to learn about how my work felt to others has become a daily exercise in frustration

Sour grapes, I know.

But I’m no different than any of you. I want my hard work to amount to something. I’ve chosen to keep my work from being commercialized and so I have to seek payoffs other ways and knowing someone felt something when they saw my work has value to me. If that makes me petty, or small, I can live with that.
Flickr’s lack of offering anything to keep me interested has allowed me to see holes in my own thought process. Made me realize how great an effort I expend, often at the expense of more meaningful work, for virtually nothing.

It’s also allowed me to see how I’ve used flickr to avoid facing the pointlessness of making images that don’t have any commercial application. It reveals how fetishized photography has become for me. How reactive and habitual expressing myself in terms of photography has become. Am I still gaining more than I’m giving by this process? Am I still working from passion or has the score sheet come out?
Making photos is still very satisfying for me. I still feel the thrill and internal joy of discovering a beautiful image. That has not changed. But I can do that on a much smaller scale than I have been and still get what I need from it. I can disengage from this machine and still make enough pictures to fill my needs.

I’m tired of giving daily to the destruction of the power of imagery in the human mind. I’m tired of being part of the flood of sensation consumed for the sake of consuming.

I’m aware I take things too seriously. That I internalize things I shouldn’t, and I can trick myself into living in service of things through habit and routine that no longer have value for me. My defense against these shortcomings is to periodically review parts of my life and cut off limbs that no longer function to the good of me or my life.

Flickr is one of those limbs, and photography as it exists in my life is also one. I’ve got a lot to offer. Many talents and passions and somehow I became a photographer.

I accidentally became a photographer.

I ask myself, given the things I have to share with life, the capacities I have, if this a good use of my time, energy and passion and the answer is a resounding no. It’s esteem masturbation for me. And eye masturbation for you.

I’m taking this moment of clarity of my motivations to act.

Step one is to end flickr.

Step two is taking an extended break from photography.