Lunar New Year - Year of the Dragon

To all my Asian Readers and followers: Have a great celebration.

See all my other photos at ClickaSnap.com

Image is available on many items at my Merchr store...

Lens4anEye Shop 

 

Hello, Singapore

Hello to the nation and people of Singapore.

The statistics of this blog indicate a lot of web traffic from Your country. The issue is there are no specifics for what anyone is reading or looking for. Every view is anonymous.

Are there those people who are willing to tell me what their interests are? I would really like to know.

If you click on this image you can get a free download of the full sized image.

Neon Holiday Inn Sign

I have over 1400 varied images for you to view. Many are listed for purchase as downloads or prints of various sizes.

Please take a look. Lens4anEye

Legacy Streetcar Tracks in Pittsburgh

 Legacy Streetcar Tracks in Pittsburgh

 

Click here to view larger image

Here are a set of streetcar Legacy Tracks leading into and out of what at one time was the Rankin Car House in Braddock, PA. {G3130} Pittsburgh once had hundreds of miles of streetcars and interurban passenger rail routes. The Port Authority of Allegheny County rebuilt a few miles of ROW into the T, but most of the other tracks have been pulled or buried under a layer of asphalt. The Legacy Tracks, as I refer to them, have never been covered and remain in isolate places around what remains of the former Pittsburgh Railway Company service area.

Legacy Streetcar tracks still exposed in the Pittsburgh area. {11039} I've researched more old trackage and have placed images in my "Pittsburgh" album. Photo by Robert Carlson. Pittsburgh and Allegheny County have undertaken to obliterate all vestiges of its once extensive passenger rail system. The tracks have been pulled from streets where new concrete pavement is placed. Where an asphalt layer is placed, the tracks are merely buried under the pavement. Those tracks occasionally reappear when the asphalt weathers, cracks and crumbles. Even so, there are seven locations I have documented where legacy tracks have never been buried under pavement.

Dooker's Hollow Tracks

#40 Line on Soffel Street

400 yards of streetcar tracks have been hiding in the weeds parallel to Bell Avenue in North Braddock near Dooker's Hollow. The recent replacement of the bridge revealed the tracks when they cleared the roadway as a construction access. This section of tracks was abandoned when the first Dooker's Hollow bridge was constructed. They lay there in the weeds known only to locals who continued to use the road as a pedestrian route. {10297}. Pittsburgh and Allegheny County have undertaken to obliterate all vestiges of its once extensive passenger rail system. The tracks have been pulled from streets where new concrete pavement is placed. Where an asphalt layer is placed, the tracks are merely buried under the pavement. Those tracks occasionally reappear when the asphalt weathers, cracks and crumbles. Even so, there are seven locations I have documented where legacy tracks have never been buried under pavement.

 

#56 Line at Dravosburg

#96 Line in Morningside

Legacy Streetcar tracks still exposed in the Pittsburgh area. {11036} Several other location still exist in the region:

• Chestnut Street in the Northside has about 3 blocks of tracks still set in red clay bricks
• Old section of Braddock Avenue in Regent Square/Edgewood
• Tracks rising to meet the former bridge over Turtle Creek in Wilmerding, PA.
• 
  

ClickaSnap.com: How Useful Is It?

 

ClickaSnap.com: How Useful Is It?

This large photo sharing platform is many things to many people.

by Robert Carlson

You’ve heard of ClickaSnap.com probably from some Youtuber or Tiktok star who makes claims of getting rich sharing your snapshots. Put most of that hype out of your mind and concentrate on what it is that makes you take photographs and want people to see them. Mine are all located at “Lens4anEye.”

National Building Museum, Washington, DC

Some people are long-time practitioners of the Optical Arts, others have only recently picked up their first camera. Most people fall somewhere along the wide variation of interests and experiences. ClickaSnap.com is for sharing your own pictures, not images you saw on the internet and think you’ll share them. The platform has a list of Terms of Service which enumerates acceptable and unacceptable imagery. Don’t ignore them.

In order to determine how the platform can be useful to you, you must decide whether you are in it for

1. the exposure of your craft to strangers around the world,

2. for being a place for your friends and family to see your snapshots,

3. to get feedback as a critique of your skills,

4. access to a Seller’s Shop at which you can sell digital files and prints of you work.

Pause here while you ponder what your level of work will be to meet the above expectations. While there are hundreds of thousands of ClickaSnap subscribers they won’t trip over your profile without your efforts to get them to see your pictures. I don’t have access to ClickaSnap’s statistics but it would be safe to say most of the subscribers are the FREE ones. Those profiles represent people who want to see if it is worth their time and effort to prepare pictures, upload them and properly identify them so others will “trip over them.” The other subscriber level cost money and breaking even will take a while.

In the four months I have been a subscriber on the ClickaSnap platform, 933 subscriber have visited my Profile and looked at at least one of my pictures.

                                 Subscriber Visit Frequency for Lens4anEye

The chart above is the frequency of visits. 70% have only visited once. Another 15% stopped by twice. The number drops off rapidly after 3 visits (5%). A good factor is most views of my photos come from non-scribers through Twitter, Facebook, Google searches and other as yet unknown (to me) sources. Those views did not just happen. I made posts to Facebook groups which might like my pictures. I utilize a Twitter feed and widely employ hashtags [#streetphotography #BlackandWhitephoto #PhotooftheDay] et al. A good description with the images is essential for Google to index them. Leaving your uploads titled as IMG_1234.JPG is wasting that way of getting views. If your intentions are as a hobby, don’t worry it will remain known only to you. Even your friends and family are a hard-sell to get them to look.

Front Porch Album

Generating Views

Twitter and Facebook are free. You can create accounts and post links to your pictures. It remains to be seen if you can reach the right people. When you do, the results can be good.

When you are a serious photographer you must use as many platforms as you are able to pay attention to. It has to do with that saying about putting “all your eggs in one basket.” Diversify. Even when you do find a productive place to post about your images, keep in mind they age rapidly. Even the best post will get “pushed down” very fast in 2 days or less. On Twitter it may be a matter of hours before other peoples’ content pile on top of yours. Few people, including myself, take the time to scroll down beyond the first 3 pages of any website. Keep something of interest at the top of your Profile for when visitors come looking. In the newsprint business they talk of keeping a story, or at least the headline, “above the fold”. Think of the newspapers stacked for sale, “above the fold” can be seen when looking in the direction of the stack. Many stories never get seen because they are on the bottom, or they get buried on Page 6.

So far I have said nothing about photo quality or subject matter. Those factors will shape whether or not people will come back to see your material. When a subscriber visits your Profile and starts to scroll, they make the decision for whether or not to click on a picture. If they don’t click you will never know they were there. The Notifications page will show you their activity if they actually click something.

They make their decision within several seconds: Scroll, bail or click. Too many out of focus frames; bail. Crooked horizons: bail. Pets, babies, fingernails, food and the ubiquitous airplane wingtip; they are gone fast. Yes, there are subscribers who love those subjects but look at other Profiles and see how many Views those pictures get.

There is no shortage of sunrise/sunsets, beach shots and Cappuccinos. You love those shots, but do others? Again look at the view counts of those pictures.

Follow others. It is difficult to justify following a subscriber who has only 12 pictures unless they are extraordinary. Make sure you have enough content to encourage a return visit. Keep in mind 2nd and 3rd visits are difficult to obtain. Subscribers who Follow you will see your new posts in their Feed and have the opportunity to check them out.

Making Sales

One of the big advantages of ClickaSnap.com is that they are a fulfillment house for sales of your pictures. You do not need to have a printer, a shipping account nor a method of receiving payments. They will handle all of that as part of the price to the buyer. Once upon a time I was making 13"x19" prints for sale. Business was good. The printer cost me $600 and a full set of inks was about $130. Printing went well until the Print Heads needed to be replaced. The manufacturer wanted $77 for each of the four devices. At $308 the cost suggested a different approach. I needed inks too. The price of $438 was above the cost of a new printer at $399. At about $10 profit on a ClickaSnap fulfillment sale I would need 40 sales just to make up for the investment. Then there would be packaging and shipping to pay. With their fulfillment process I have zero investment to make. Of course, many subscribers don’t have access to the funds necessary to print for themselves. The fulfillment services are important.

Conclusion

Image sharing via ClickaSnap.com is a labor intensive endeavor as it is with every such platform. Pictures need to be their best presentation. Descriptions and tags need to be relevant and extensive. Your commitment to your goals is essential.

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.

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.