Maybe I’m Just Tired

This was originally published in my Prime Lenses Newsletter. You can sign-up for a weekly update to your inbox here.

This week 2 new things have made me question whether I even want new things. We’ll start with social media and a trip back in time. It’s 2007. A fresh faced account executive named Iain is at Oyster Partners, Naoroji Street, London. He has just bounded up the stairs of the old school building to visit a project team he works with. Imran meets him as he crosses the office.

“Have you joined Twitter yet?”

I hadn’t. I was skeptical of signing up. What was the point? Who would use it? Remember, this is before Facebook had launched in the UK and the “benefits” of social media were unknown to us, we didn’t even know to call it social media yet. I had a Flickr account for photos, a neglected blog on my own website and that was about it. Twitter’s founders talked in excited abstract terms about “ambient intimacy”, Web 2.0 was something we were starting to say in relation to richer software on the web and Twitter had yet to blow up at SXSW, it would again with the arrival of the iPhone in late 2007. With the growing sense that this was something I caved, made an account that was private at first and then was swept along with it all just like everyone else. It was a lot of fun the way that you could suddenly reach folks with common interests all over the world, truly the gift of this age of the internet. Many of the wonderful people I get to speak to on the show are contacts and friends I’ve made using direct messaging tools on social platforms, a feature that become mainstream thanks to Twitter and later social networks that riffed on those ideas.

18 years later and if you’re a photo person online this week you’ve probably seen a growing number of posts encouraging you to once again move to a new photo-centric social network. The Foto App promises to become the best place to post pictures online. Chronological posts free of ads allowing me to “Reclaim” my feed, something I probably haven’t been able to do since Google Reader shut down in 2013. The fediverse, activitypub and other standards are probably the way to go but the bigger barrier facing me is the very real fatigue with social websites and the pressure they place on us to post, be active and generally “join the conversation”.

Ali of One Month Two Cameras fame recently finished a month off social media and has come back both refreshed and with gusto. I, on the other hand, am coming up on a year of Prime Lenses and could probably do with a break and a bit of a confidence boost. I’m going to be at the London Photography Show in March, if you’re going let me know, I’ll be the guy in the yellow Prime Lenses t-shirt :D

As far as Foto goes, I’m not sure I can do it again. I know that’s probably the wrong approach to take for someone making a podcast about photography. Someone who hopes to attract more listeners over time. But honestly, who has the time?! It’s not March 2020. I’m not going to be at home that much! xD

I’m on Mastodon, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, I have a website, a job, a weekly podcast and newsletter to write. It’s a lot already. Can I really add to that? Should I? Who even are these guys? I’m wary now of who gets my data, what they might do with it, who buys it, all that stuff.

So I stand at a crossroads. Or maybe on the outside looking in.

BFF?

The other thing I have mixed feelings about is the new Sigma BF. I feel like Cartman in the episode of South Park where people assume he likes Family Guy.

On paper this camera is very me. A future focused, unapologetically modern camera. No SD card slot, no pretence at paying homage to roots in film. An imaging device that can only exist because of modern advancements in technology. A minimal design, matching series of lenses. This should be my jam, and yet I just dunno. I think it looks hard to hold and like no one said no to any of the ideas curated during its development. A strap lug on one side, a body that looks too small to hold comfortably. I will wait for the reviews rather than the first impressions of folks flown to Japan by Sigma but as it stands I’m far more excited by the Pixii or VWFNDR.

I admire what they’re doing but maybe not what they’ve made.

Photographic Literacy