I came here to start another thread, but this one was at the top, and I think piggybacking on it is relevant. >
re: posting "random crap", as Paul Luscher has just mentioned: I just spent a little bit of time flipping through yet another RFF member's Flickr page. I do that quite often, sometimes to see where someone comes from relative to a comment they made, and sometimes just because I see a link in their signature and want to learn about who's at the party.
I think of my Flickr page as sort of a casual portfolio, and work my way through it regularly making things private or exposing them, to tune what people see (which, of course, doesn't subtract at all from what I see), but I see that perhaps a majority of RFF members' pages are virtual shoeboxes. They often have thousands of images, most of them bad, sometimes [what appears to be] everything from, for instance, a street shoot, unedited--so many that they can't even give them titles, just file numbers. I can cruise for pages before picking one that I would want people to see--not a great shot, just not crap. It's like being given a box of someone's proof sheets when the only conclusion one could draw from them is "Wow, this guy is totally incompetent!"
What's that about, anyway? It's easy enough to make shots private, and show only things that are good. People provide links, which makes me think they want me to go see their pictures, so the excuse that it's just a fun, private collection doesn't wash: by giving the link they're actively promoting the idea of people going to check out their work. The "take it or leave it" idea that Nikon Bob just put forward doesn't even begin to deal with the question of why someone would WANT to stand up holding a sign that says "LOOK AT ME!" and look totally inept in public.
One thing I have learned is that if I see more than three photos of camera equipment sitting on a table, it's time to move on to another person. I think I'd better stop now. . .
