I’m always amazed at what I see if I just look.

Since I’ve moved into a new series of things, I see stuff everywhere. Not only for the junk (not junk) series, but for images in general. I suppose by letting my sort of photographic malaise roll around in my head I was able to open up other ways of seeing.

This picture might not be what you think it is. For the most part, that’s one of the visions of this series. What do you think it is?

Give up? Already? Oh, all right.

New cars have a couple of headlight bulbs contained behind a plastic case. When car is really new, the case casts off a lot of reflected light even in broad daylight. If you stick your camera right up  against the plastic or plexiglass case, this is what you get. Then, you just have to tone it way down in post production. You might not even have to add color because it’s hiding in the glare.

Back to the future. In yesterday’s post I wrote about how some people build followers. How some social media planning software encourages it. I received a number of comments on my various social media platforms about that.

Make no mistake, pumping out a bunch or words and unrelated pictures seems counter productive to me. It’s all noise and no signal. Some people do it in an attempt to make money using various systems. Other people seemingly just have the need to be noticed. I can’t speak to that. I don’t know those people.

But…

Two things came up for me.

The web, interwebs or internet — whatever you want to call it — is just a pipeline. It can be used for good or bad. Or, everything in between. There is also the dark web, which — for a while — became kind of fashionable to talk about. You can buy or find anything there. Drugs. Big weapons. Even people who do dirty deeds. It’s not so easy to access. It’s even hard to navigate. On the other hand, because it take some skill to navigate it’s fairly secure.

Me? I’m fairly simple. I want to see the web as something for good. As long as… I understand it’s potential for bad.

Finally, a fellow blogger and online friend who lives in the north of the state (think of it as we do – like North and South Korea…. I’m kidding. Or not. :)) who said that she got a request to reblog her site from someone within the WordPress family of blogs. She later found out that blogger only reblogs.  She was bothered by that.

That’s a little different. Reblogging — at least sparingly — is part and parcel to growing your own readership. That’s how WordPress works. I see that as unpaid advertising. If a reblogger has a good following some of their followers might become mine. I have no idea why somebody would create a WordPress blog only to repost other blogs, but so be it. I think they fancy themselves as creating fort of an online newspaper covering things that interest them. They actually aren’t hurting anybody.

And, some of the people who asked to reblog one of my posts or use a picture have become friends in real life. That’s a good thing, right?