Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Fotolog combines the community-creation powers of the Internet with the ease of digital photography. The result: Everyone's an artist.
Apr 22, 2003 | On April 15, Jimwich's Fotolog featured a remarkable close-up of a full moon, milky-gray with muddy craters against a deep black sky. Because the focus was less crystalline than his usual work, Jimwich explained in a comment below the picture that he shot it through binoculars, "a somewhat unwieldly setup." But a long ribbon of additional comments from visitors registered no complaints: "amazing shot," "unbelievably pretty."
Thumbnails running down the left of this Web page link to Jimwich's other recent photos: bright mosaics against a brick wall in Mountain View, Calif.; a lowering watertower; a bee descending toward a flower, every pollen crumb in its fur caught with hallucinatory sharpness.
To the right, more thumbnails link to other Fotolog pages -- Jimwich's "Friends/Favorites" list. These are updated constantly as the pages they link to change; on this day, they include a blossoming fruit tree in central France, rusty New York City buildings in a limpid dawn, and an unusually crisp phonecam self-portrait taken in Berkeley, Calif.
A click on any of those links leads one deeper into a Net-enabled nexus of a newly-invigorated arts scene. With the advent of the digital camera, the life of an amateur photographer has been made easier than ever before; now, with the help of community sites like Fotolog, photography is experiencing a full-fledged grass-roots renaissance.
Founded less than a year ago by Web entrepreneur Scott Heiferman, now managed by software consultant Adam Seifer and a "tech whiz" who prefers to be known only as "Spike," Fotolog is a network of blog-like visual journals. As its FAQ states, Fotolog is not an Ofoto-style online album, where you upload all 40 shots of your family reunion so your cousins can order prints. Instead, at Fotolog, users have created an intriguing international community of photographers, mostly amateur, who post one or two photos to visual blogs every day or every week, allowing friends, family, and random visitors a brief glimpse into their worlds.
Something about this concept resonates, because the site is experiencing crazy growth. In less than a year, Fotolog has gone from 50 new users a month to 50 per day, and the rate is increasing,
Seifer believes that one of Fotolog's strengths is that "anybody with a camera can take a great photo." If you have suffered through one too many vacation albums, you know that's overly optimistic. And yet besides the inevitable blurry, red-eyed picnic shots, Fotolog abounds with beautiful and extraordinary images like those on Jimwich's page. Why is that?
In part it's because digital cameras have made not just photography, but photographic art, much more widely available. When novice photographers can see their pictures immediately, it sharply accelerates the learning process. But more than that, digital cameras eliminate the expense of film and development. You can shoot and re-shoot, experiment and play, for no more than it costs to recharge a few batteries. This luxury was previously available to few besides professional photographers. Digital cameras have liberated infinite fertile mistakes.
At the same time, the act of keeping a photographic record of your daily life teaches you to see with a different eye. "Once you start carrying a camera around with you, you see the world in a new way," says Seifer. "You start noticing everything around you. Walking to the subway is no longer about the time you're 'losing' on your way there -- it's an opportunity to see thousands of potential photo subjects."
What Fotolog specifically adds to the mix is feedback. The Friends/Favorites lists and the comment feature allow users to share their work with others to a much greater extent than a lonely, disconnected Web page with personal photos could. The community provides ongoing feedback and constant exposure to the work of others. And that changes the way people make their photos. Seifer says, "We find that a lot of our users start off posting pics from their vacations and birthday parties, since that's all they've ever done, and little by little, as they see which other photos on Fotolog tend to get the most enthusiastic attention, it inspires them to start being more thoughtful and experimental with their own photos. It's a very satisfying dynamic to observe."
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