Somewhere under 500 words that are worth a thousand

At some point after I began regularly posting photos on the blahg (starting slowly in early 2006 and getting more frequent since then), I got the idea to start a separate site exclusively for pictures. However, I mildly feared that doing so would drive people to that one instead and that there'd be little traffic still reading the text-heavy pieces on the "main" blahg here. I had long suspected the most popular aspects of the web were the pictures and videos (but I wasn't going to do anything with the latter), with people being disinclined to read a lot of words. Oh, certainly there were those who would read, but given the ease with which one could glance at a photo and get one's equivalent of a thousand words, it seemed entirely possible that once that was available people would really have to be in the mood to actually read the thousand words.

Nonetheless, I put up a separate photo-focused site up back in April (announced here).

However, reviewing site metering statistics for both the main blahg and the photo one, the former has retained a much higher amount of visitors than the latter has gained. My concerns proved completely unfounded. People proved willing to continue reading, even when they had other options.

Frankly, I started to wonder: What's wrong with my readers? Are they gluttons for punishment? And the answer is obvious: Of course they are; they keep coming back, don't they?

Then I found myself slightly distraught over how low the visit numbers were for the photo site, despite being regularly updated. I have pretty low expectations (like I have a choice), but the photo site wasn't even pulling in a quarter of the visits the blahg was getting. I didn't expect to get many comments, because looking at pictures doesn't inspire the same sort of reactions as a composition with arguments and bad jokes, but not only were the thousand words more popular, the photos were barely getting acknowledged.

I started to worry that I was far worse as a photographer than even my most neurotic paranoia had feared.

The conclusion, however, was that pictures are all good and well, but they're not that satisfying unless you took them or are in them.

Thus, although my prose is undoubtedly of limited interest (given that the presumed audience for one who has achieved no fame blathering on about whatever the hell pops into his mind is not a significant demographic in the media-saturated world), it is more interesting than what are, all things considered, rather ordinary photographs of trees and clouds and buildings and sunsets.

I suppose I am, by relative strength, a better writer than photographer. Eh, given how much longer I've dabbled at wordsmithery (of sorts) than at snapping pictures, I suppose I would be disappointed if that were not the case.

I'm okay in one way by virtue of not sucking as much as I do in another.