Walking on Water

Walking on Water, originally uploaded by blue_j.

I remember I used to have a "U-day" schedule for this thing: Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday. Maybe I'll get myself back to that.

...

I started this thing to have a showcase for the photos in my own collection that I just positively loved. Photos of mine that I just wanted to share, and passively placing them on my Flickr just wasn't enough.

Then my stream hit 100 pics, which was the limit for free users back then. I was quite frustrated with flickr's 'over the limit policy': Post and store 100 pics for free, forever. Exceed 100, and your oldest photos will be hidden. Not removed, just hidden from you. They're still on the server and you can still see them..... if you copied down the URL beforehand, that is. You didn't? Too bad.

In essence, your photos were held hostage by Flickr, with a ransom of $60 dollars a year. This is still the case, in fact. The limit has been doubled and the price has been halved, but exceeding your limit still results in your first pics being taken from you without so much as a warning.

I quit updating my photoblog soon after i hit the limit. I had already lost a photo of my father and I didn't care to lose any more. Eventually I decided that I didn't need to use -my- own pics to get the joy of sharing photos and moments and memories, and I began watching certain tags for new photos. Tags that I knew would tend to bring up excellent photos. Tags like: love, kiss, silly, lights, blur, penguin, fire, gameboy, unfortunate. And every once in a while, i would share the results of my search here.

Then college became mean and scary. Classes and life, senior projects and fun with soon-to-be-lost friends, all of it took it's toll on my schedule and this blog, flickr, and my photography itself were all rubbed out.


Over the next few months, a lot changed for me: I graduated college. I got a new, full-fledged job and moved to the bay area. I bought a digital camera and started taking photos again. I subscribed to Flickr Pro, and started attending flickr-oriented meetups. I started going to more social events (concerts, parties, conferences and the like) and I found pictures-worth-taking everywhere I went.

I found photography again.


I was once constrained to just 100 pictures. Two days ago, I uploaded my 1,000th photo to flickr. Over a hundred were uploaded that day alone. And while I'm finding myself, once again, in the midst of flickr policy frustrations (in this case, the politics of an acquisition by Yahoo!, the forced migration to Yahoo! IDs, and the implications on the community by both), now more than ever.. I cant deny that my photos, however amature, are important to me, and it's important to me that I embrace them and share the images and moments I've found with others.

So, let's try this again:


Hi.

My name's James.

I've got something you might like to see.