Outer Crossing 

The 3rd Book in the Crossing Series

by Robert3 Carlson

I've made OUTER CROSSING, the 3rd Book in the Crossing Series, available for pre-order on Amazon. 

 

These books are a grand tour of Sci-fi in the quantum universe genre.

 

The publishing date is Oct 31, 2022. Go to the following to link to pre-order.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGQHBSVZ?ref_=pe_3052080_276849420

 

For those of you who have not yet read the first two parts, Internal Crossing and External Crossing are both available on my Author page. I think you will be intrigued with the characters and story line.

 

 

 

"Robert Corbin continues to meet versions of himself in this 3rd part of the Crossing Series. He has learned what is happening to the Past and that there are people and entities which seek to control the process. Nothing you can know is for certain any longer."

 

About the Author:

 

Robert Carlson, aka Me, has been writing from a very early age. Somewhere around age 13 I started recording the thoughts I had and the experiences I went through. Granted most of that is not the kind of fare that anyone would be interested in reading, but over the years I have honed that narrative style that does provide for a consistent level of interest by the reader. 

My first attempts at publishing resulted in nothing published but then eBooks and the Internets came along and some of that here-to-fore unpublished material found a new outlet.

My books cover existential fiction blended with a lot of true story. The first three volumes represent just the beginning. The backlog of material extends back in time 50 years. Readers will be spared most of that early "stuff" except as accents and punctuation in a larger more contemporary writing.

Along with my Left Brain language dominant thinking I also have a Right Brain image dominant thinking that is expressed in a prolific photography legacy. I hope to be able to properly format an eBook of some of the photographic themes that I have covered since 1971.

Along with the flights of fancy in the fiction, I also have a penchant for observation and the connecting of dots that reveal "The Principle of Imminent Collapse" and "It's All Tuna!" Both are books that are yet to be made ready for publishing.

Meanwhile... enjoy the books that are available.

1st Book in the Series  Internal Crossing

 

 

2nd Book in the Series  External Crossing

 

 

Follow Those NFT Collection Links

 

Like tens of thousands of Twitter users who have an interest in Photography and NFTs in particular, I love scrolling through all the great images the earnest photographers and digital artist post in hopes of exposure to the people who will buy one.

Therein lies the problem. I don't know what other photographers experience. I don't see the exposure of seeing one posted image being translated into visits to my collections in the NFT repositories, my website or other places.

For example, I will mint an NFT of one of my photographs to my OpenSea.io collection. I then Tweet a link to it so the Twitter-verse can see and ostensibly enjoy it. There will be a number of Impressions, Engagements, Detail expands and Link clicks. It feels good to see the little heart statistic with a high number. Having the Retweet number grow and the Comments indicates additional exposure. The most important number is in the Analytics of the Tweet. In there is the "Link clicks" number.

Compare your Link clicks to mine and you will see if you have the same issue as do I. Mine are few and far between. They sometimes reach 3-4 out of 100-200 Impressions. If your number is high: Congratulations. When you include a link to your NFT collection such as to OpenSea and that Link clicks number is low it means very few people went to see what else you have to offer.

They may love your posted image, but they did not reciprocate by increasing your standing with the platform on which your work is listed. And if they did go see your other work but did not favorite any of them, your standing with the platform was not improved either.

The minting platforms and Twitter itself are algorithm-driven. Engagement breeds engagement, engagement makes exposure, exposure gets your content out to those precious few people who will actually buy your work.

It is disheartening to make a collection, polish it and put it out there for the world to see and have only the "Cover" image ever seen.

The bottom line is you should click the links to the collections the poster included. Once there leave a modicum of encouragement by Favoriting something. When I see a picture I like, I go to the included link and if I see something I like, I favorite it. Then I go back to the Tweet and tell the artist/photographer I was there and favored something. Sure this is time consuming, but I want them to do this for me, too.

The overall Twitter Analytics demonstrate most people who Live, RT or comment on something I post do not ever see the collections. Good; if you have a different experience.

 

What is a Small World?

How does one break out and benefit from more exposure?

“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.” ~ Rick Blaine referring to Ilsa Lund, Casablanca.

Rick ruminates about how the beautiful woman, Ilsa Lund, happened to walk into his life when she walked into Rick’s Café Américain. Rick’s place is a small world. While there may by thousands of gin joints in all the towns and in this world, there would be only two or three such places in the town of Casablanca, Morocco. Her chances would be quite great especially since she needed to escape and he was noted as the person who could make it happen.

Sunrise in California

The concept of a small world is equally applied to the exposure a single person gets in a crowd of similar people. In the attendance crowd at a venue such as the historic gathering at Woodstock where upwards of 500,000 gathered for three days or the 80K crowd at Coachella there will be those who came for one particular reason or performance or another. All together they comprise a population of music lovers who have the time, money and inclination to venture out to the venues and experience the festivities. On one hand, the crowd seems to be highly similar but as opposed to the whole US population. On the other, within the crowd there are smaller pockets of interest in specific performers. The larger venue is the driving factor in getting all the diverse interests together.

The people there are members of groups who arrived together and constitute a pod of concert goers. Each of these pods can be thought of as a small world with similar interests. Collectively, they make up the Universe.

How this all applied to Twitter and product marketing is this. If each pods of attendees were the only ones to arrive, the concert would be a bust. If they did not communicate one pod to others there would be far less exposure to the venue. In the small world of NFT photographers and artists, we each are all disconnected pods. What is needed is: connection.

A shill-account on Twitter can promise to Tweet a person’s content to their randomly accumulated followers and the artist will make sales. The question is just how many of those followers they claim to have are really interested in what you as a photographer have to offer? Those accounts specialize in accumulating followers to make themselves look good and ostensibly effective. However, they don’t provide any guarantees of outcome for their fees.

Let’s look at Twitter users who have several hundred followers. I’m going to use the number 300 as an average. Because we all have been marketing ourselves in the same space, a significant number of them will be duplicated among the crowd. I will use a 50% unduplicated name uniqueness factor. So on the average we all each have about 150 unique followers. Now if a selection of 50 photographers agree to Retweet each other’s content, those RTs could be reaching 7,500 followers. This dynamic is powerful in reaching far beyond what any one account can do.

It is important to keep in mind that the marketing strategy is not to try to sell to other photographers/artists. Peppered in each user’s follower list is the few buyers and collectors who are the ultimate audience for our marketing efforts. More importantly, those buyers/collectors are highly qualified and have shown interest in buying for some of us. They are not random Twitter handles in a farmed list. They are watching what is presented. They are not asking for product to be shown to them like the Hollywood “cattle call” which gets hundreds of wannabee actors and actresses to show up.

My actions are not to RT everything which crosses my feed but I do RT the images which closely match my style and interests. If we all do the same, our content will get highly qualified targeted exposure.

Unless we do some activity like I described above we all remain isolated in our own small bubble world where we can’t break out and others cannot see in.

Post Script,
A small world encounter.

I chose the Casablanca example above as a good example of how one experiences the small world. Well…

I took a break before publishing this article and put the DVD in the player which arrive only today. It was the first disk of Season 2 of The Orville by Seth MacFarlane and in the opening of the first episode they were playing a vinyl recording of “As Time Goes By.” WHAT are the chances? Two Casablanca reference within hours of each other.

So there you have it. We exist in tiny universes and must do our best to break out of them into the larger space.

The Twitter-verse is a Small World

Shouting into the wind.

If a Twitter account has a million or more followers it is probably because its owner is some celebrity level persona who get followers merely be existing.

These people started out well known and famous and the followers materialize as soon as the account went live.

It is important to understand that there is little similarity among the demographic other than their propensity for following celebrity accounts.

The content of the tweets are basic and convey little more than a visual sound bite like “today I sneezed” and 34,565 people will LIKE it, 4,764 people will RT it and 6,351 will comment on it. In part the allure is being the first person in one’s small circle to be the one to mention it.

The connectivity dynamics of Twitter is if I Like your tweet, I get your attention. If you Like mine, you get my attention. Mostly it stops there. If either of us comments on the others tweet, there is a limited spread of our identities across the platform.

The real influence is when a RT takes place.

You and I are operating in the same mini-twitterverse. Let’s say I have 193 followers and you have 53k. If you grew that following organically, as opposed to buying 52k random handles, then there is a high probability that your list contains most if not all of the ones in my following. It’s just statistics. We have been marketing ourselves in the same neighborhood. It is only natural there would be a significant overlap.

What this means is my RT of your content generates negligible exposure for you. On the other hand when you with 53k organic followers RT my content, I can get a huge bump in my exposure. Unfortunately, if your followers don’t re-engage with my content shown to them by your RT then I get next to nothing. This is why purchased random accounts only make an account “look good” but do not perform.

When looking at who one should follow and engage with it is important to attempt to weed out the bots which respond to everything.

The annoying bots can be in your face and obvious. This is one of the “Lovely Content” bots that reply to every new post a person makes that contains an image.

I tested the nature of the silly bugger by posting an image complaining about the bots. This bot auto replied with a “Lovely Content” message.

These accounts proliferate by the hundreds, if not thousands, and are impossible to avoid. They can be identifies by their Zero to maybe 20 followers rating. Yes a new and earnest account would start out that way, but bot s have bot-behaviors. For a while I was blocking the Lovely Content bots but that became a wasted effort. New one popped up as fast as I would block them. Now I just ignore them.

Other bot-like accounts post messages they are buying NFT today and you should shill your items and they will buy a few from their Followers or will RT them if you RT the offer. No self-respecting shill-bot would have any number fewer than a 5-figure Follower count. Typically they have 30k to 50k or more Followers. Their bio usually touts their expertise at promoting your material. Have you ever seen one of these accounts follow up with what they purchased? I didn’t think so. If you did, I’d like to see the tweet they posted that you saw.

The Bots are a waste of time. I shilled some of my NFT long enough to be experienced enough with them to write about them. The best action is to interact with other photographers in your Followers bracket (100 to 2–3K). Comment, share, follow and RT among ourselves. If the “big guys” with 102.5K followers really wants to see our NFT and buy them, they will peruse the field and make offers.

My experience with Opensea.io is that if I mint new items in the evening (8–9 EDT) I will get 1 to 3 Favors on some items even as I am completing the next one. I usually do 3 0r 4 at a time. This means there are people watching a “live feed” of new content being created. One night I minted 5 images and got 4,3,3,1 and 0 Favorites on them. While the people representing the 3s could all be the same three people and be included in the 4, there were at least 4 people watching and possibly as many as 11. Probable more like the 4 count.

a Street Coin from my listings.

OpenSea.io has what is called the API which allows app developers to access the databases and pull such data. This is good. What it also means is the serious collectors are invisible and not out asking hopeful artists such as us to hand them the picture. Besides, then one of these shill-bots gets 1,000 or more replies, no one ever sees most of them. Just use your own scroll-down experiences to see how quickly you stop looking.

 

Pictorial History Frame by Frame

I started my photographic journey in the early 1970s. My camera was a Minolta SLR with no electronics other than the flash meter. Focusing was accomplished via the split mirror circle at the center of the viewfinder. One had to know the facts of optics in order to get the right results. There was a lot of playing around with the f/stop, focus, ISO films, etc. Most of the photos were shot on Panchromatic B&W negatives. As a young man my budget was quite limited and the cost of travel dominated the day.

Film processing and photo-finishing was expensive for the person I was in those days. Generally, I shot the frames and sent the film off to be developed without being printed. Later I had a wage paying job and while still living with my father put together a darkroom in a closet. I invested in an enlarger and a print dryer. More than once I needed to escape the fumes of that small enclosed space.

I wanted to do color photography too but it was out of my budget range. That is when I began the Kodachrome transparency phase. Slides were convenient and eminently portable. Ciba-Geigy marketed a unique kit for printing the color positives to color paper. Then I could shoot a roll of slides and print the few which were worthy of the cost of printing.

Back when digital cameras first appeared, I swore I would never "go digital". That was when the sensor would shoot only a 1 megapixel frame. Soon the resolution of the electronics increased until it rivaled film negatives.

I say all the foregoing as prologue to the idea which occurred to me all those years ago. There were places I would go or pass by at irregular but repeated intervals. These locations became the subject of my multi-decade studies of the aging of the subjects. Some of my examples are only a then and now comparison bracketed by 1975 and 2020, or similar intervals. Other examples are: then, later on, later on more, later on again, later still and now. These series are a bittersweet look at places and times which are now gone or nearly gone.

I used to pass the Water Street Inn on my way to State College, PA where I studied Hydrology. I love the sight of running water. The Inn was already in a state of decay and collapse when I first encountered her. But then my camera captured the nuances of the demise, attempted resurrection and ultimate destruction of that once bustling establishment.

Another place located along US 40 west of Frostburg, Maryland "collapsed in slow motion" in front of my camera over a 30-year interval until its final day and the debris was hauled away. I am saddened both by the ultimate and fully expected collapse and that there is little reason to stop on my journeys to get the next frame. Although unlikely, a new subject may one day spring up on that land and I hope to be alive to photograph it.

My most widely varied study is of the Borough of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Braddock is the location of the Edgar Thompson Steelworks, the site of a bloody strike-riot put down by Pinkerton Agent. The plane and town remain only as a remnant of their former glory. My earliest photographs date from circa 1975 and continue through the present. 

The early photo set were shot from one of the high floors of the now gone Braddock Hospital. The later pictures depict the continual and intermittent loss of one building after another as the town is being allowed to die. Each year I return to see the changes i fins more grassy lots where buildings used to be. Once on a July 4th, I shot a building constructed in 1909, next I have a photo of a bulldozed pushing bricks and broken timbers. Lastly the location is a grassy rectangle waiting for its next life.

 

  

 

 

These three photos are from my OpenSea.io collection titled simply "Braddock" . They are Non-Fungible Token images available for purchase along with the other 40 images in the collection.

My travels have taken me around the 48 lower states and for visits to some of the same cities and regions multiple times. The collection I have posted at OpenSea is my way of sharing that experience with everyone who will follow along in my travels.

Robert Carlson's OpenSea NFT Collections

Opensea NFT Collections by Robert Carlson

These OpenSea collections are the result of my 50 years of travels with my camera. mostly the travel has been in the ower 48 states, but I did travel internationally a few times and got some really good local photos in those destinations.

During my travels I have hit all 48 of the lower 48 states and still have the pictures I took at those times. Due to an unfortunate mishap, my earliest negatives were lost. From that period of time I have only prints and a few Kodachrome slides. Since one of my passions is the time lapse of sequential visits to the same subject, there are surviving images of various places.

Gathered here are the selected few of the photos I think you will enjoy seeing. Click on the image to see details of that picture. Click on the icon at the top right of the image to visit the OpenSea collection. If you have a compatible crypto wallet you can show me you like the item.

Across the nation there are millions of homes of all descriptions. The front of those dwellings may be plain, contain a stoop by the door, have a covered or uncovered porch or in days mostly gone by, a veranda wrapping around 2 or 3 sides of the house. Some Front Porches are well maintained and decorative while others are places where junk accumulates. This project collects the many instances of front porches and the numerous uses.

Braddock, PA, USA is "The Town That is Being Allowed to Die". Building disappear on a continuing basis as the population declines and everything ages. Attempt to revive and save the Borough have been valiantly fought but time is not on their side.

I traveled a lot during my salary days and always had my camera and logbook packed. The camera captured the images and the logbook retained the Latitude and Longitude so I could recall precisely where the picture was taken. Now today the camera can geocode the digital images automatically. These photographs represent a life of travel.

Disappearing Railroad Blues. Freight lines still crisscross the nation, but passenger service is but a faint memory of what once was THE way to travel in America. Many of these images evoke the memories of those days.

B&W is one way to look at the world. Sepia is another way entirely. The tone is not merely a "color" it is an emotion itself.

Braddock, PA, USA is "The Town That is Being Allowed to Die". Buildings disappear on a continuing basis as the population declines and everything ages. Attempt to revive and save the Borough have been valiantly fought but time is not on their side.

Impressive architecture of the Museum on the Mall in Washington, DC. 1/1 photos. Photos by Robert Carlson

This series of photos follows the slow motion collapse of one building over a period of more than 30 years. The building was on US 40 in Frostburg, MD, USA. 1/1. All photos by Robert Carlson.

Images by Robert Carlson of Reykjavik, Keflavik and surrounding regions of the island. All images 1/1

Utility covers, usually round, are strewn around the urban streetscape. They can be decorative or plain. They can highly worn from foot and vehicle traffic. Most are self-identifies as to purpose but some house a mystery.

Street Coins, those ubiquitous metal disks on the ground in every city of the world. Photos by Robert Carlson

Are Non-Fungible Tokens Really Real

Are Non-Fungible Tokens Really Real?

That is the big question being asked by a lot of people who are interested in what they are, how they possess value, and why someone would buy them. The other version of the inquiry is: They are nothing, are worthless and stupid.

The truth lies somewhere in between worth a great amount and worthless. One must first define the parameters of worth. There is financial worth, personal worth, potential worth, and intrinsic worth. Worth in the personal aspect relates to such things as do I like what is being offered and what would I do to possess it?

One acquires a thing on the basis of the emotional benefits of having it. Take a painting by a starving artist for example. I give the artist a few dollars for something he/she might have dedicated a couple of hours to create. I buy it because i like it and want to display in in my home. It will never be more valuable than what I paid for it. In the long-run it may end up in my basement or attic or out for sale at the neighborhood yard sale. In the end, my family may put in in the trash when cleaning out my house when I die.

Potential worth can only be measured in retrospect. Great works of art by famous painters have been found at flea markets, in basements, attics and barns. Suddenly, the finder is wealthy beyond any imagination. Van Gogh traded some of his paintings for breakfast at the local pub or cafe when he was unknown. Later on someone with money decided the work was great and collectors would want to possess it. Only because it was a Van Gogh did it have value. The painting in and of itself was merely canvas and paint. Only because someone else with more money wanted it was its worth increased.

The concept of intrinsic worth is a difficult one to master. If you cannot eat it or "sleep with it" or heal yourself with it, there is little in the way of intrinsic value in the thing. One might say that gold has intrinsic value whereas a paper dollar does not. But there are societies which assign no value to any such pretty metal, mineral or crystal. What does have value is what you can do with the item. 

As a log time photographer I began my time shooting Panchromatic B&W film with a 35mm SLR camera. Most of my early images were of the B&W variety. Then I became a bit more wealthy and could pay to develop and print color film and paper. Once the pixel density of digital cameras exceeded 1 megapixel, I embraced the digital revolution. I could shoot hundreds of frames at nearly no cost and hold them indefinitely. With a large format color printer I could produce big colorful prints for a dollar or two. Interestingly enough, my B&W versions of digital images and some of my older prints from B&W negatives generated greater interest.

When a person chooses to collect a picture, the collector must decide whether the purchase is for financial gain, personal enjoyment or both. Possessing art is a double edged sword. You might own a piece of great cost but the possess it one must have it crated, transported by secure vehicles and delivered to your home (or designated location) which then must be made ultra secure, insured and guarded. No matter who owns the Mona Lisa it will continue to hang in the museum for the public to gaze upon. That owner can sell it or use it as collateral for other transactions.

A person buying a house really only owns the Title to the house since except in a few circumstances the buyer cannot move it. He can enjoy it or merely hold the Title until someone offer an acceptable price.

Here is where the concept of #NFT comes into play. I have a photograph I took and is not capable of being taken again. The subject is gone. You can buy the "title" to my picture and maybe someday can sell it for a profit. Meanwhile you can bask in the warmth of ownership and have bragging rights to being the owner of an original "Robert Carlson Photography" before he became famous. (You can do that be visiting my OpenSea #NFT collection  and putting al offer on some of my photos.)

 Street Coin

 

The concept of #NFTs is new enough that most people do not fully understand or appreciate it. Just like anything which can be bought and sold, these items are no different. They have an initial offering price. They can be sold for more or less than the purchase. Here is the wonderful part of the equation.

 

If in 2008 I offered you two dollars in cold hard cash (8 quarters for example) or One Bitcoin, which would you have taken? I'll bet you would have taken the 8 Quarters. Today those 8 coins would be worth leas than $1.80. If you had kept the Bitcoin you'd have $34,614.10 (at 1:00 pm January 22, 2022) and at one time would have been over $68,000 (Nov 10, 2021).

Your dollar currency will only lose value due to inflation whereas the Cryptocurrency versions of money can lose or gain value. The same conditions apply to art and more specifically #NFT versions. To sell a physical piece of art you need to present it to the buyer either directly or through a broker or auction house. They will take a percentage of the sale price. Ultimately, that piece will need to be delivered to the buyer. The digital version can be passed by a few instructions on a computer.

At the bottom of the ledger, worth and value are in the eye of the beholder and his willingness to trade what he has for what you have to offer.