It's important to me to get a critical sense of my photography outside of the world of "It's so cute! She's so cute, that's so cute" doll land. Not that I don't take that photography just as seriously but I need more serious feedback in order to challenge myself.
At first my "The Wandering Eye" account felt a little lonely. My Zanalee account is securely established in a gigantic and probably growing community of well established doll collectors, craftswomen, photographers and just really cool people who pay attention to my work, constantly comment, respond to questions in group pools and are very supportive and fun, full of humor and creativity. In turn I love looking at their stuff and commenting on their amazing pictures. I have almost a hundred, if not more contacts, people whose work I look forward to seeing, whose clothes I love to look at and buy and people whose photographic aesthetic always blow me away. But in the world of Blythe, it all really comes down to her, not you. That's cool, but I also really just want to have a space for non- Blythe pictures where I can start to explore and expand my photographic voice again.
Early in my Zanalee flickr career I became a huge fan of a Baltimore photographer named "boyghost". I was incredibly inspired by his stuff. Personally, I'd just never seen anything like it and I was constantly moved by the composition and subtle unforced details of his work. He's one of the main reasons I wanted to get my Nikon D60.
Almost immediately upon opening my T.W.E. account, I discovered a photographer named "setsuna" who takes just some of them most amazing nature photos I have ever seen. It's not that she just takes a picture of something beautiful in nature which is relatively easy enough to do, but she shapes a way of seeing in that is incredibly intuitive and ethereal without being overly reverent or imitative.
View from Belvedere's Castle
This week she left a nice comment on the picture I took shown above which is great. I harassed her a little bit about her technique and printing so I'm glad I haven't scared her off. I also got a few other comments/criticisms from others this week, so I'm really happy about that. I need it and it's really wonderful to be able to do that on flickr, especially given how difficult it is to get people together to do this sort of thing in real time. Although at some point I would love to do that as well. Flickr just allows you to access work and present your work in such a diverse and freeing way. You're really traveling all over the world when you look at pictures, and not just geographic or proximal worlds, but inner, emotional and sensory worlds. Familiarity with strangers. Not so strange really.
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