Issues

I looked at my Twitter account today. I'm very, very tempted to go over to using True Twit. I get so many people following me then mentioning me in their messages and that all pops up on my phone. I check to find what they're doing and it's always spam. I seem to spend half my Twitter time just reporting spammers.

Now, why am I talking about Twitter on a photography blog? Well, it's not because I can put photos from my cellphone via Twitter into my blog. It's because I use my Twitter account to update and as a form of contact for those that wish to contact me. I have absolutely no other form of contact on my blog/website.

At one time I had a contact form on my website and that got thoroughly abused with no actual, genuine enquiries or contact. I had a phone number on my website that attracted so many junk calls that I had to change my phone number. I had an email address on the site at one time. That got bombarded with so much spam and no genuine contact that I had to abandon the email account. Now I have Twitter on my account as a form of contact. I am again getting bombarded with absolute garbage. As this is a family oriented site, I can't honestly describe what I feel about the garbage I receive. Suffice to say, I don't think a whole lot of it.

What do I do in order to avoid garbage? Must I open a Facebook account to let people contact me that way? On the other hand, from previous experience of Facebook, I'd rather not. There are a few obnoxious characters there that I just don't want to interact with. Similarly, I'd rather not have them see my interactions with others. If they view my blogsite, that's something I can't stop. On the other hand, each time somebody does view the site, some of the adverts carried do pay per page view rather than per advertising click. I like those adverts. They make me the most money.

So, whatever electronic means of communication I give gets abused by people advertising, thinking they're going to get a sale. I was never this aggressive when I was advertising photography as a money-spinner. I tried various things and found they all had exactly the same effect on other people as they did on me. I thus never tried cold calling etc. I did not want to antagonise anybody. It wasn't as though I could actually see any market for photography. It's the age-old problem - how do you sell to a market that does not exist? As I've said before, selling photography is like selling bacon outside a Synagogue.

In these days of the Internet, people with websites can simply hotlink images from other people's websites or simply copy and paste images taken from other sites or from royalty-free websites. Although a lot of it is 100% illegal, copying a photo taken by a photographer in country A and using it in books etc in country B has absolutely no repercussions as the photographer is unlikely to be rich enough to pursue for copyright infringement nor are the rewards likely to be sufficient to offset the cost and inconvenience of pursuing the case. My personal opinion is that the Internet is more like the bad side of town than anything else. I rather suspect photography is also widely seen as being one of the occupations of the people from the bad side of town and that photographers are viewed as generally dishonest and vaguely roguish without the redeeming features of the fictional romance that surrounds rogues.

And now an actual photo from the bad side of town. There's a rock cafe on the bad side of town where I went and took some photos a couple of years back.