One of the biggest pleasures is the memory reinforcement that results from making and organizing notes; taking, sorting and editing photographs and then writing and posting photos to the blog itself.
Another pleasure is the heightened sense of perception I seem to have when I look at a scene trying to decide how it would look as a photo posted to a narrative instead of just clicking away taking photographs. Looking for subject matter and nice angles I often see things that I would have overlooked before.
As an example of looking for possible posting material, here's a photo taken in the early evening while in Japan. I like to watch the moon when it's viewable so was observing that when I saw some Tombi (translates as Black Kite, but it is a fairly large raptor, smaller than our Bald Eagles but larger than most hawks) riding the air currents. The thought entered my mind that if I waited I might be able to catch one of the Tombi watching the moon also. Most of them had given up soaring for the day when this one lone bird sailed toward the moon and into my camera frame. It's not a great photo but I was happy that it worked out as I envisioned. Thank you Mrs. Tombi.
Another interesting thing about blogging is the audience. Even though there is software available to track the unique computers of viewers I don't do that but I do have access to where in the world viewers are clicking on my blog and how many there are.
This week, for instance, there were pageviews from the US and Japan, of course, but also from Russia, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Ukraine. I'm sure some of these viewers are regulars but many are probably one-time passersby who were tempted to click by something, I don't know what; but it is rewarding when I see the number of pageviews peak after a certain post.
Then there are the tribulations.
Number one is the time required to organize thoughts and notes, sort through photographs and get it all down in a readable form.
The second and sometimes more frustrating problem is balky software. I sometimes post from my phone, sometimes (especially lately) from my tablet and sometimes from my laptop. The phone software was just updated yesterday allowing photos to be inserted where the cursor is. That's a big step toward ease of use but there are other problems with the phone. There is one large advantage though. It is ultra portable and allowed posts from the back of a motorcycle in Vietnam earlier this year.
The tablet is a little better but still frustrating in some respects as that software doesn't read my mind as I think it should. When I want a photo enlarged or a caption attached it sometimes takes ten or twelve tries and even then the results are less than satisfactory.
The laptop is easiest but I'm having problems with my old laptop (unrelated to blogging) and until I get a replacement I'm reluctant to use it because it might do a final crash before I can get all my goodies transferred to a new one.
Sometimes I feel like it is a waste of time but then I get feedback from a viewer who appreciated a particular aspect of a post and that combined with the pleasures, above, make it all worth while.
Guess I'll continue blogging, at least for now. If nothing else, it encourages travel so I have fresh fodder for my camera and fresh thoughts for a slowing mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment