moments as a home for my photos
Moments
Recently I found moments, a simple and clean website where you can host your photos as a photo journal. And I absolutely love it, it’s like bearblog but for photos.
So I made setup a moments page for myself and uploaded all the birds (and some other animal) photo’s I’ve been taking for the past weeks/months. I don’t think all of these photos are stunning or really good, but I like having them on moments non the less because they either show an awesome bird, or give a sense of what I saw during a specific trip / birding session. It is a journal after all.
That’s also why I decided NOT to put my photos on Instagram, social media is very much not a journal, instead it puts pressure on the poster to pick the best photos and present them to an algoritmic audience. You get some likes, a few simple comments and that’s it. From my own experience and when I ask people to be honest and think about how long they actually look at a photo on Insta the answer is usually ‘not more than a few seconds’. I think that sucks, and it is mainly because of the swipe to the next and endless nature of these ‘social media’ apps.
Hobbe
My hardworking and very talented friend Hobbe sometimes makes amazing Zines from his work. And they are just such a joy to hold, to look at, to return to, to share with others, to reference. I think printing photo’s is the best way to enjoy the creation of a good photo for longer than an Insta-second. So I’m working on making my first zine out of my first couple of months or bird photography, selecting photo’s that I think are worth printing, deciding on the size, and most importantly: physically making a cover. Hobbe showed me how he writes, cuts, sticks and fold a front cover, very much a hands-on creative thing, and then goes to a copy shop to have that cover scanned in hi-res. Which becomes the printed cover for his zine.
I’ve had a first go at it, and I find the process of physically making a cover much more fun (and easier) than trying to design one on a computer in some sort of app. Now I just have to commit and finnish it instead of thinking about it way too long and way too much and becomming so self-ciritcal that I just abandon the project.
The mantra is: Have fun and perfection is bullshit.
Schiermonnikoog
Here is the last moment album I posted, about my bikepacking trip to Schiermonnikoog. I absolutely loved being there, cycling around, having no plan, watching birds and enjoying nature on that amazing island.
ps: I’m just going to ignore the fact that this is my first blog post in months. I was so busy with going out to watch birds, and encountered a depressing debilitating creative block that stopped all my writing and drawing for a few months. What doesn’t help is the extremely low hb in my blood lately as a side effect of my new meds. Hopefully after stopping the meds and an iron infusion I’ll get back to having more energy soon. These aren’t excuses but more like explanations for what is going on.,