#explorations-sd

This week’s featured blog is @explorations-sd!

“Nature photographer from Pennsylvania, USA”

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Thank you so much for the kind words, and question! I get this fairly often, so I hope you don’t mind if I publish it ;-;’’ Please let me know if you’d like me to delete!

I really like Fine art america. I’ve sold quite a few things on there, but honestly the buyers have all been amazing folk on tumblr. I have a pretty fantastic group of followers and mutuals, and I’m very grateful for that -- I think selling prints would be difficult without a way to advertise and make your prints stand out from the rest. Even with my friends’ help, sales are fairly rare, though I’m incredibly happy when I get any!!

I think there are a bunch of excellent platforms to sell nowadays and I’m not super well versed in them.... I’ve heard that red bubble is better for illustration rather than photography, and fine art america is better for photography rather than illustration, but those are only second-hand accounts from reading internet reviews. I’ve been able to make a bit of extra money for charity with FAA sales, and buy myself some special gluten free baked goods, which are a rare expensive treat for me. It’s been by no means any way to make a living, nor would it supplement my living expenses in any way if I lived on my own. I’ve made more money than I thought I would tbh, but if you’re looking for any sort of payoff, I’m sorry to say that only the most famous photographers can make any reasonable amount of money off photo sales these days. There’s too much photography/photographer saturation in the market to make it much of a specialty trade anymore? I’m sure your photographs are absolutely lovely regardless of whether you use an i-phone or if you used a fancy expensive camera we all dream about, heheh. If you have the extra cash to open a site and feel like going for it, they’re usually not that expensive and it’s not a great loss if you don’t pan out your first year. I read from most other photographers on FAA reviews that they barely broke even their first year on the site, if that -- it normally took multiple years to curate followers/supporters for print sales. It was only $30 for me to open my site, and since I’ve made a nice profit relative to what I put in, I’m keeping my shop open another year. We’ll see how the next year goes!

replied to your

photoset

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just in case you were starting to think there was...

Not sure if it’ll actually do any good since I’m not sure if they get recognition for complements the way employees of some other places do but I made a point of it to go home and write in to McDonald’s feedback section on their website about how well the employees handled the situation when people found out there was no sauce at the location I visited. Might be something to consider if you were there and saw employees being mistreated. Not their fault they got stuck in the middle of this mess.

@explorations-sd

replied to your post

“Who would publish about Richard Brook”

Moriarty also uses the word "pressure point" in the TRF when he describes how he rigged the jury. Could be coincidence but . . .

explorations-sd wrote:

“I think the takeaway here is conflating individuals and governments is extremely unfair. Just because the country a person lives in has certain policies and standpoints does not mean that the citizens living there share them. Even when a country is "democratic" and ideologically governed by the people there are often great divides in opinion and policy does not reflect the views of everyone, and sometimes not even the majority. Nationality is just another group to be stereotyped. “

I usually see “country” as state, region, territory, and “nation” as people. If damnmuse was strictly referring to those who claim that every single Russian is homophobic, I apologize. But I did not understand it that way because a) I did not read “country” as only meaning “nation” and b) that view in absurd and I would have imagined not very common... but I may very well be completely mistaken about that.

I also do think the nation can be held largely responsible for the actions of their democratically elected government. And I am absolutely certain that if a new extremely homophobic legislature was put in place in my country I would be furious at the fact and among the first in line to describe my country as homophobic. My attacks would primarily be against it, not it’s critics.

But does “members of the population are not homophobic” mean “the country is not homophobic”? That would mean there isn’t a single country in the world that wouldn’t be “not homophobic”, not even those that punish homosexuality with death. I’m not comfortable with categorizing Uganda and Sweden in the same place when it comes to homophobia.

damnmuse wrote:

During this whole post I was talking about people – Russians and not the russian government. I didn’t say a thing about laws and arrests because people’s attitude is much more important. You live with people not with laws. Can you give me examples of «countless charges, arrests and acts of censorships», please? I’m not denying that it exists; I just want to know what you’re talking about. If it’s easier for you, send it in inbox. 

Examples of the laws in effect:

Russia: First person to be convicted under anti-gay ‘propaganda’ law arrested by his own parents

First Media Outlet Fined for ‘Gay Propaganda’ in Russia

First tourists arrested for 'gay propaganda' in Russia free to go

It Begins: 4 LGBT Activists Arrested in Russia for Quoting the Olympic Charter

LGBT website founder fined under Russia's gay propaganda laws

LGBT activist found guilty of violating Russia's "gay propaganda" law

Russia: Three Gay Activists Arrested for Propaganda of Homosexuality

Gay couple arrested in Russia after expressing solidarity with Orlando shooting victims

Of course this does not include the self-censorship that is usually the worst aspect of censorship laws, where publishers, educators, etc. avoid forbidden subjects out of fear of getting charged or fired.

But even if we’re not talking about the government or the state and just the people, it still doesn’t look very good for Russia. Here are bits from a study on European attitudes on homosexuality:

“The 2008 results present Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Croatia, Lithuania, and Estonia among the most homophobic countries, while the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark can be found among the least homophobic ones.”

“[I]n 2012, among the 23  examined countries, there were only 2 countries ... Russia and Kosovo ... [where] the majority of respondents disagreed with the statement that gay men should be free to live their own life as they wish ...”

“With a few exceptions, including Russia, the level of social acceptance toward lesbian women and gay men in Europe has increased since 1989.”