Words, a thousand of them: one year later
What is a picture or photograph truly worth?
A thousand words or more?
A few cents or dollars from a microstock website? Or far more for commissioned work?
For years, I’ve been trained to write as precisely and concisely as possible. The “currency” in professional science is the publishing of research and results as accepted papers in peer-reviewed journals. One pays or collects this “currency” (it’s sometimes unclear which) to secure gainful employment in research science.
My approach to this blog has been more about visuals and less about prose. Photographs can provide perspective far better than a ton of words I might write. Forms, feelings, and opinions are delivered in a package, and all of that gets unwrapped in your heads. I think it’s even better if people make up their own stories when they see my photographs.
I’ve made the following choices:
- the ability to show galleries with photos each almost 1000 pixels wide,
- a dark background to emphasize the photos,
- keeping each photo’s description to a short blurb,
- where appropriate, a map from Google Maps is provided for the interest of readers,
- and a minimum of distractions along the top and sidebar.
And now that I’ve more than 200 words in this post, I’d like to end with the following thought. The timing of this post marks the one year mark when I announced my intention to travel this entire year: from La Serena, Chile then to Hong Kong now.
I made the photo above on 23 Nov 2007 on board the Norfolk Line ferry across the English Channel from Dover, England to Dunkerque, France. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress (fotoeins.com).
Fotoeins Fotografie 
6 Responses to “Words, a thousand of them: one year later”
I agree – a picture is worth a thousand words! Love your work – looking forward to seeing more!
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Thanks, Anita! 🙂
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I think you have the right approach 🙂 And mazel tov on the anniversary! 😀
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Thanks, Jen! I’m trying to find my own way, doing things a little differently, and then seeing what happens. It’s been a fun and interesting process so far.
To rebalance the words vs. photos balance again, I’ve got an upcoming post with less yapping and more pretties.
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Yea, I was able to comment!
It was a strange transition to start writing a blog, as before that I was a grad student and wrote long academic essays on theory. I have to say, I love the creativity and freedom of expression offered by blogging a lot more! 🙂 And I agree, sometimes photos say it best.
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Yay! That problem is so very weird. Where the blog is concerned, I completely agree: there’s a certain freedom to blogging that allows me “freer expression” than any publishing research. I’ve published articles in peer-reviewed journals, but I’m more proud of having actually carried through with this blog than any article I’ve ever written. It’s interesting now that I’m writing a little more about food, I’m thinking about creating a second blog. I must give people full credit for maintaining multiple blogs; the obsessive-compulsive side of me goes to great pains just making *one* blog look right. 😉 I’m glad you were able to leave a comment; thank you, Christy!
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