I've started thinking, lately, about what effect participating in blipfoto has on the pictures I take.

The site itself, the clean design, one or two strict rules and the encouragement to keep shooting and produce something every day are all definitely good, positive things for me. I have little doubt of that.

For most of the time I've used blipfoto, I haven't really participated in the blipfoto community - I haven't left my share of comments, or created any connections (a few people have contacted me, and I've appreciated it, but haven't followed up).

So in December I decided to skip having a theme and remedy that, commenting, letting people know that I appreciate their work, and being a part of the community.

But I've found that the effect hasn't been all positive. In part, it's been great - I've been forced to articulate what I like about others' blip streams, and have started thinking more critically and less gut-ly about them. (Gut-ly, too, though)

But along with this participation, I've started caring more about my own stream, and (the bad part) what other people think of it. This isn't connected to the good aspects, as such, but it's happened. It's probably been aggravated by credibility concerns - "sure this guy says these things, but why should I listen to a guy who takes pictures of dishtowels?"

The last thing I want is to start taking/posting pictures to please others or meet some sort of aggregate blipfoto aesthetic standard (the thought of posting lately has been scratching at my shutter finger...not something I had ever felt before. "will people like this?" ... I really don't want to care about the answer to that). Not that I don't respect all your opinions - you're all awesome, but the process for me is all about answering to myself.

What I've realized (realized largely last night while I was leaving a comment on one of waitingforgodot's pics) is that I have, sort of, been participating. Every night when I come here and look at my new subscribed blips, and the next day when everyone sees mine, we are participating, and acting as a community. We share these 60ths of a second with each other and enjoy them, and for a loner like me, that is probably enough of a community involvement.

In the end, once I finish making up for lost time on comments and participation, I hope to let blipfoto (the site, the community) fade about 3/4 of the way back into the background and keep blipping (the seeing, the process) forward. For me, this is probably the sustainable way.

But for this month, I will continue to participate and try to tell all of my subscribed (and anyone else who comes along) why I think you're all so awesome - and all of you are, 23 after I weeded out everyone who hasn't posted since November 1. If I don't manage to tell you, assume I couldn't think of a good way to say it.

But here, for all of you, is a picture of my dishtowel! Ha!

edit: One reject for today, which wins the award for "most whitespace in any picture I have ever taken".

edit2: I should have been a little more clear...there's a real reason why I don't want to care about what people think of my pictures. I am very much in the learning stage of the aesthetics of images, and sometimes I take pictures (to paraphrase) to see what the pictures will look like. I experiment, and I don't want to feel like I need to prepare every picture to be "judged" as representative of what I think is good. If what I did today was take pictures of garbage covered in snow (yesterdays rejects) because I wanted to see what the snow crystals would like like melting and covering the garbage, I shouldn't be afraid to post it! Ha!