First off, let me say a quick and heartfelt THANK YOU! to all three of you who are regular readers of this blog. I say that only half jokingly. I have monitored the stats ever since I started this blog earlier this year. At first, I felt pretty good about the numbers, mostly because I hadn't learned to properly interpret them. Right now, just based on hit count, which was really all I understood at first, nearly four thousand people have at least clicked into a post of mine to see what's up. 4000 people. Small potatoes compared to the total population of the internet, but for someone just starting out with only 207 likes on my FB page I was pretty happy with that number. Then I started looking a little harder. Turns out that almost the second a new post gets blogged, it is picked up by rebloggers and a new form of scam I had not heard of, signified by such wonderful sites we vampirestat. Exactly what it sounds like- it sucks. Apparently the game is to get people who look at their stats to click on the link and wind up with god only knows what, and they also get some financial benefit anytime someone clicks on them. But it definitely bloats the stat count. I have a few regular readers and I get a small but steady stream of hits from various google searches, but nowhere near the massive throng of readership suggested by the initial number.
So that was my first bit of fun with numbers. The second was finally getting the results back from the first photo competition I entered. I entered 4 images, they scored 73-76 (out of 100). According to the scale on the competition web site, this is the "above average" category. So, pretty stoked that 4 out of 4 images I submitted were judged above average. Maybe the lesson I need to learn is to take the initial good news and not dig deeper, but my inquiring mind wanted to know how far I really was above the average, which meant I needed to know what the average score was. So I scanned all the results. The lowest published score was a 71. So unless they only list scores >70 on the results page, above average doesn't mean quite what you would think it means. Which kinda sucks. On the good side, each image had a multimedia critique from one of the judges that went into very specific detail on what they liked and didn't like about my images. This was a mixed bag. They pointed out a lot of things I didn't even know to look for, and some I should have but missed. There was one common implication in all the critiques that made me really happy. Each of the four shots I submitted was something I shot as found- two of them were scenic shots and two of them were images from live festival performances. The judges all treated them, and therefore seemed to think, that these were all posed shots I had taken a great amount of time and care to set up, control the lighting, pose the models, etc. In other words, what I shot on the fly looked good enough to be mistaken for studio work. That part makes me very happy. On the other hand, there was one criticism common to all four images that really pissed me off a bit. I was told that each of my images would have scored higher and possibly merited if I had added a keyline border to the submission. So- if anyone else is reading this that submits to photo contests, is it an understood thing that digital only submissions still basically need to be framed? News to me. If it is required for the competition, maybe that should be outlined in the image submission guidelines somewhere? 4 out of 4 images getting points taken off for not having it sure makes it seem like it's a requirement......
Overall, even though the numbers do not really stack up as well after a deep dive as they do on an initial look, I am pretty happy overall with where I am at. Have been at this for roughly a year now, and while I am not wildly successful and gracing magazine covers the world over, I am learning a lot. I have some good images. Maybe even a few great ones. They are getting better overall, and the percentage of good shots coming out each time I pick up the camera is going up. So I am making progress and learning from mistakes. I still have a couple of years before I really need to worry about making this a full time retirement plan, so I may not be where I want to be, but I am where I need to be and moving steadlily in the right direction.
So again, for those few of you who are actual readers, not just random spam-bots, thanks for playing along with the home game!
No comments:
Post a Comment