Sharing Photographs.

Some positivity for a bright and sunny Sunday morning.

I posted somewhere else a set of pictures of last Sundays trip out, to a Medieval village near my home, in Italy. I got some feedback from an American guy, who had wanted to visit the place I photographed, but did not have time. But he had visited a lot of places in my region during a two week holiday. We have had a nice online chat about Emilia Romagna, and we have both shared some more pictures, and memories. Cool.

I have posted on a weekly picture thread that I discovered on DPR, more than ten years ago. The guy who ran it at the time, was an Australian who lived in Papua New Guinea. I really loved his pictures and stories of everyday life, even if many would class them as snapshots. This thread still runs here, with much the same tone, as on the M43 forum, when in the digital camera heyday it would often run to almost 300 replies.

Over the years the best part of shared photographs, is that I get to see places and things, I will never see in real life. I have had interesting conversations, with people in far flung places all over the world, as well as people who know very well the places I have photographed. I have seen pictures that bring back memoires and maybe some of my pictures have brought back memories to others.

Isn't the wonderful ability, to share our pictures online to a potentially infinite audience, define what photography is all about?

Yes absolutely.

I hadn't seen my favourite dragonfly for ages (apart from his wonderful colours, he's the only one I can consistently get pics of in flight) and today he made an appearance...

It is always nice when sombody has a passion for a certain subject, and makes some good pictures. You have your dragon flies, and Don has his spider shots.

Yes, totally agree.

The introduction of the Internet was a global game-changer for sharing all sorts of information to an "infinite audience", not just photographs.

Thing is, though -- had you asked me back then, pre-internet, how I thought things would change with all this knowledge at your fingertips and global "infinite" communication, I'd have predicted it to have gone somewhat differently than it did. By "somewhat", I mean "not even remotely close". 😁

Yep, the www certainly has its benefits for sharing information and making life easier but it has also created serious problems and nasty side-effects which very few would have predicted at its infancy.

I was trying to be positive, and see the good things that the internet has brought us, and still brings us, if we are minded to be positive and cheerful.

It is really cool, that I can have an interesting and pleasant exchange of memories and experiences, with sombody on another continent, maybe, as I described in my OP. It is up to you if you wish to seek out negativity.

My other passion in life is music, particularly Jazz, an even more niche interest than photography. I post on another forum where people passionate about this music gather. I have discovered tons of brilliant music that I would have otherwise missed. I also have easy access to publications online with reviews and samples. With Bandcamp, I can buy albums digitally. Just the other day I found a brilliant South African trio and bought their album, an album that would be impossible to find in a physical format outside of SA.

For work and day to day problems, I have a huge amount of information at my fingertips, that I can search out.

It is up to us to use the WWW positively or negatively.

I agree with all that and the only thing I would add is that in some circumstances what one person might see as a positive use of the www, another person might see as a negative use.

The Cat Picture

Back to photography. Our cat, like all cats, sometimes does weird things, and I make a picture with my iPhone.

These pictures are pretty bad by all the standards by which photographs are judged by "experts". But when I forward them to my son having a boring day at work, I get a smiley in reply. I have posted some on the cat thread here, resulting in a happy exchange of words.

A photograph does not even have to be good, to give pleasure.

Cat in the Bidet

I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

Here in the US, at least, everyone talks about freedom, but no one talks about responsibility. And even when responsibility is discussed, it's always a case of "Laws for thee, but not for me" which, unironically, I suppose, are written by people who are not acting responsibly.

Ah well, that's how it goes! Like the song says, "we're only human". 😁

i can only hope australia doesnt follow the US, the population intelligence curve is off the scale.