Freedom from Popularity

4 min read

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alberich's avatar
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or Understanding that the Consensus of the Majority does not Constitute Truth

Every few months I come back over to this rather busy corner of the web to see if they have straightened out the licensing issues. As long as the controlling agreement remains somewhat vague, I don't feel comfortable risking the rights of my entire output, so I'll probably just rotate a few images through at a time. Sooner or later, someone is going to offer a lot of money to absorb DA and I don't want my own work marketed in competition with me. So the low res can come here, while the high res goes to the physical gallery ...

When I put up a few images a couple of days ago, one of them moved very close to the "Top of the Pops" for a while. Now since Popularity on DA is determined by absolute counts of favs, rather than the ratio of votes to views, its more controlled by exposure than anything else. So popular People see their works climb to the top even if a smaller fraction of their viewers vote for each work ...

So I go by the ratios, and I'm most interested in the competition between my own works, because I have a business case need-to-know which of them I should invest in, i.e. print up on large canvases and frame. Sometimes people don't really care for the stuff I'm happiest with and it's important to know that ahead of time. If the people who demonstrably like my work consistently pass over something, I'll know it's not up to par.

But while comparing the ratios on my stuff to the other images in the same category, and watching which of them were shooting up quickly, I noticed the obvious: Big Boobs Win! Almost always, it seems. I'm not saying they're not extraordinarily good pictures, but all other considerations being equal, the images with the most shapely large breasts pick up votes and views the fastest.

Instead of being annoyed, I found it very freeing.

The realization that artistry and composition won't push anyone's work to the top of the Popular list (unless big boobs are present) allows me to go back to what I was really interested in, namely collecting useful feedback on the images I sell.

(I once had a picture here that was both the most Popular and the top selling print in it's category. But I made more off of selling one print on canvas directly than the total for everything for two years ... maybe it was because she didn't have Big Boobs!)

So next Monday, I just happen to have a model flying up from L.A. who has an enormous rack (and also incredibly well formed) so we'll see what they do in the water. But I'm actually more eagerly anticipating Wednesday when I'm going to finally going to shoot my own doctor who's almost exactly the same age I am. I'm not sure I trust this place enough to expose her to the kind of sniping that seems to be motivated by something akin to jealousy.

Oddly enough, over on the free-for-all that is Flickr, people are more generally polite. Probably due to the fact you can delete their comments and block them effortlessly - and when enough people block someone the admins will boot them (as happens every day.)

This is by far the more artistic site, and one of the few where copyrights are rigorously respected (at least by the staff.) But when people leave a note just to sneer at something I wonder at their motivations. I also wonder if they really imagine that anything in these pictures is accidental ... when I present something with odd lighting it isn't because I didn't notice - usually that's the whole point of the image.

I can't believe you're still reading this. I'll probably rip it down as soon as someone gets all hot and bothered about my obviously invalid opinions! :D

© 2007 - 2024 alberich
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ShootT0Kill's avatar
Thank you.
So it's not just me who is wondering why I stick around here.....
I'm glad you said these things.