[Leica] Are you on Twitter? Should you be?

[imagist3 at mac.com (George Lottermoser)]

twitter space
can be
a strangely informative place
when and if
one finds the time

in one's time space continuum

<http://twitter.com/imagist>

Regards,
George Lottermoser
george at imagist.com
http://www.imagist.com
http://www.imagist.com/blog
http://www.linkedin.com/in/imagist

On Dec 5, 2009, at 9:01 PM, Kyle Cassidy wrote:

> Over the years I have been known to bark, at random times, "What do  
> you think Bob Denver is doing RIGHT NOW?" -- and not because I had  
> some personal curiosity about the star of Gilligans Island and  
> Dobie Gillis but because it was a synecdoche for something I _was_  
> curious about -- what do famous people DO when they're not being  
> famous?
>
> Fast forward 20 or 30 years and now we have Twitter.
>
> For those of you who don't know, twitter.com is a service that  
> rebroadcasts text messages to subscribers. Nothing more than that  
> really. You pull out your cell phone, type "I'm standing in line at  
> the DMV" and send it to anybody who cares to listen. And who cares  
> to listen? It could be your family, old college buddies, your  
> Mahjong club.... Or, if you happen to have achieved some level of  
> notoriety ... thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of  
> people.
>
> And what does this mean for photographers?
>
> I've wondered this myself for a long time and resisted twitter --  
> after all, you're limited to 140 characters, it seems to be the  
> sort of thing that destroys our conversational skills, promotes  
> ADHD, and removes meaning from our lives. And ... it can be. But it  
> doesn't have to. While photographing a celebrity who shall remain  
> nameless, I watched him twitter several times, remarked that I  
> found it useless "I write in the long form," I said (albeit not  
> exactly that pretentiously). "You still can," he replied, "I do as  
> well, I just send out a note to twitter saying "I have a new blog  
> post up. And people go and read it."
>
> And I realized then that twitter has a use for photographers. A  
> good one.
>
> People who are following you on twitter are people who are  
> _predisposed to like the things that you do_. Which means if you  
> have a gallery show, a fine art print go on sale, an image in a  
> magazine, or even a new image posted to your web page, the people  
> who follow you are much more likely to buy it, see it, or talk  
> about it than any selection of people walking past a Barns and  
> Nobel window on any street. The life of an artist is one about  
> building community and as such, I've found twitter to be useful.
>
> In the grand scheme of things, Twitter is a Good Thing in two ways:  
> one, if you have a lot of people following your "tweets" it's  
> useful for nearly everything, from finding a developing tank and  
> Dektol at 1 a.m. in Burnt Church Michigan, to getting people out to  
> your gallery show, but also it's good for keeping like minded  
> groups of people in contact -- like this mailing list but from  
> moment to moment. The use of keywords (called "hash tags") allows  
> people to search for posts they're interested in. You could, for  
> example, post a photograph and add the hash tag #leica, allowing  
> people who are interested in Leica to find you. (Checking twitter  
> right now for people using the hash tag #leica, I find this  
> interesting message: "ianjindal Celebspotting: stood in front of  
> Rowan Atkinson in RG Lewis, #leica shop today. He didn't recognise  
> me." -- we find out that Rowan Atkinson is shopping for Leica's. Oh  
> the magic of the Internet.)
>
> I know LUGger Chris Williams (who can be found on twiiter here:  
> http://twitter.com/zoeica) posts photos from his shoots. But who else?
>
> If you're talking about Leicas on twitter, you can find me here:  
> http://twitter.com/kylecassidy
>
> & I'd love to hear why people like, dislike, or are ambivalent to  
> this, or how people are using other parts of the Internet to move  
> their photography forward.
>
> Kyle
>
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