flocking together

Yesterday I did a soft launch for the new Facebook Page for The Chronicles of Learning Photography. The move to include Facebook came from a realization that my blog was evolving down a path I hadn’t anticipated when I first began writing and sharing my passion for photography. My hope was to share my learning experiences and images and to engage others in my journey–a bit of a one-way street in hindsight. What I did not anticipate was how much I would learn from and enjoy the sharing by others. The tales about your own learning journeys have really struck a chord with me and I want to provide a place to interact more deeply, as much as one can on the Web. I would like to hear more of your stories, see more of your images, share in your experiences because I believe we can all learn from each other. Learning together with you has not only been a whole lot of fun but it has been a rich and very fulfulling part of my photographic journey.

My blog is my soapbox and so the Facebook page is less about me and more about you. In the beginning I realize you might be a bit shy to share and speak up but I hope you’ll soon find the courage to engage with each other even if it is on the side. Facebook is not without issues but I think we can make it work for us. Here is what I envision for each of the tabs on the Facebook Page.

WALL
This is where I will post links to my blog postings and any other links and stories I feel you might find interesting or useful. Currently I will allow anyone to post to the Wall and I have a combined view where our posts will appear together. I may change this in the future if I feel this isn’t working. Please respect the purpose for this openness which is to learn so while you can share links to your own website or blog, it is not an advertising tool to feather your own nest. You can however promote things that may be of interest to others.

DISCUSSION
Under this tab, you can post a question or a topic for discussion. When I first started learning photography, I had so many questions. I read books, attended classes and workshops, trawled the web for information, found people to interact with and pretty much anything I could think of to find the answers to my questions. In fact, I still do all these things. So I, for one, will be coming to this tab to post my questions and to enter into discussions to learn as much as I can. Let’s keep the language clean and the discourse friendly. We can express different opinions without being disagreeable.

POLL
From time to time I will post a poll to see what people are doing or to ask for your help in determining what you’d like to see on my blog and on the Facebook page. If you have an idea for a poll, please let me know.

PHOTOS
I am most excited about this tab. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to be able to let people include their images with the comments they left on my blog. Sometimes they would leave a link to their blog but it just wasn’t the same. You can post your photographs to this section of the page but please keep in mind that Facebook is a public venue. Post only low resolution images and include your copyright information. Keep in mind that there are unscrupulous people who will use any image on the web they like. If you have second thoughts about posting an image, that probably means you shouldn’t post it here.

FLICKR
One of my readers, Craig Roberts asked me if I had thought about expanding the One Mile Project (OMP) to a community site like Flickr to encourage participation. My good friend Krista Fox who lives half way across the country decided to join me with her own OMP and I was also thinking about how to share her images with you. Comments from fellow photographers like Mark Krajnak helped me make a final decision to give Flickr a try. Under this tab, you will see the images that I have added to the Flickr OMP Group. If you are participating in the OMP by contributing photographs there, I may pull images from the OMP Group to feature under the Photos and Flickr tab or even on my blog. Before I do this, I will contact you for your permission. Again please remember that people also steal images from Flickr for their own profit. If you do not feel comfortable posting a photograph to the OMP, please listen to that small voice inside and don’t upload your image.

That’s the summary of the vision I have for the Facebook page. I hope that it will live up to my utopian ideal. I’d like to thank all the people who have been a part of my photographic journey so far. You know who you are and how important you are to me. Without each and every one of you, I would have never come this far with my passion and never been able to sustain in a way where I feel so supported. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.