Untitled (Entanglements series, #9515-4) copyright 2023 Douglas Stockdale –
With 2023 coming to a close, I need to post a shout-out that I have been writing about art and photography here since 2007, which has been an interesting 15 years of publishing my random thoughts on art and photography. I am not sure that this is much of a big-deal in terms of artistic accomplishments, but hopefully this provides some interesting trivia.
Most of the art/photo bloggers that I started out in 2007 with have eventually morphed their blogging site into some version of an on-line magazine, similar to how I transitioned my photo/art book review site The PhotoBook into the PhotoBook Journal. Even this site made a subtle transition to a type of virtual magazine layout and a non-blogging name. Most notable was the blogger transition of Lenscratch by Aline Smithson into an on-line go-to virtual magazine. One thing that I noted is when blogs feature other artist and photographer, the readership of that site really bloomed, as it did for PhotoBook Journal.
Nevertheless, this blog has remained more a personal art/photo journal, a public posting of ideas, concepts, and thoughts sprinkled with some various how-to articles, such as my recent series on cyanotype printing and subsequently hand-sewing these cyanotype prints. Early on I did feature others as did Aline and Lenscratch, but with the launch of The PhotoBook/PhotoBook Journal, I have had ample opportunity to support the larger art/photo community.
My art concept process seems to benefit from personal journaling, which I use this blog as a public sounding board. Not that I obtain much feedback as I did 10+ years ago with blogs were the social media wonder that has since been supplanted by Facebook and Instagram. Thus, I will also share this article on other social media sites and probably obtain much more affirming feedback.
So why to continue to blog (publish articles) in today’s rapidly changing social media world?
One big difference is long term visibility. Looking at my statistics for this blog, I have individuals reading articles that I published 14 and 15 years ago. One remarkable change over the years is that I am a bit more articulate in what I write about.
The other social media channels, such as Instagram, have become a quick image scroll-through and as a result these have a really short term visibility (shelf-life). Visibility is also complicated by the (owners) complex algorithms, such as the Facebook experience. Additionally, the other social media channels do not have any real visibility for web-searches. Maybe these are thought of as silo social media channels, where as I am sometimes amazed at the range and scope of the international audience that occurs from web-search engines for my articles on here.
One related downside is that to access a blog you need to actually select it (type in its related url) or if supported by email, click on it and blogs are not scrolling friendly (yet, who know what might pop-up to make that happen). Similar to other magazine articles with a blog I can go into more depth on my subject here. There are no real limits on the length of the article or the amount of photographs I can include. A personal choice as to what I want to include, which I hope my readers find interesting if not valuable. Fingers crossed.
Thanks for the last fifteen years of sharing this journey with me.
Untitled (Entanglements series, #9515-4) copyright 2023, hand-sewn cyanotype image is 9 x 9″ on a 11 x 14″ sheet of Revere Platinum hot press cotton rag. Unique print.
Make every day an Earth Day
Doug
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Book development workshop:
Update!: Developing a Creative Photo Book, on Zoom with SouthEast Center for Photography (SEC4P), January 20 & 21st and 27th, & 28th, 2024, from 10 AM – 1 PM, Eastern Standard Time (EST). (SOLD OUT, waiting list started!)
Book Making with Douglas Stockdale, on Zoom with Medium Photo, March 16-17 & 23-24th (4 sessions, two consecutive weekends), 2024, from 9am-12pm (Pacific time).
Artist book available:
The Flow of Light Brushes the Shadow, an artist book from Singular Images Press, 2022, $60.00 (CA sales tax for those residing in the USA) plus shipping expenses. Message me douglas.stockdale.artist@gmail.com
Singular Images 