I go back and forth on how and where to share my photos. Content creators have written blog posts on the importance of sharing your best work only from your own site hosted in your own domain. I agree with the premise: I want to retain ownership and control over my content, so it is best to distribute it from sites like this one, which I own.
But building an audience that will go out of their way to come to my site is a challenge the way social media is set up and based on people’s habits. One blogger looked at the stats for his tweets and discovered Twitter users usually do not click through links to read/view the original site. Some of the Facebook photography communities I frequent do not allow outside links to be shared, and Facebook’s algorithms demote outside links so fewer people see them. The user base on Tsu gives preference to original content hosted on Tsu when choosing what posts to reshare. The high end art world may not be crawling social media looking for new talent, but there are lesser-known art show curators on social media who could see and become interested in my work. That could lead to exhibits that would grow my CV and help me get the interest of more well-known galleries and art dealers. While only sharing my photos from my own site may be ideal, it doesn’t seem to be helping me grow my audience.
It’s a balancing act I’m not sure I am handling well. All of my images are watermarked, and I only share low-resolution images no matter how I disseminate them. I host my images on my own sites, but I also upload some to Ello, Tsu, Google+, and Facebook. Perhaps the balance will become clearer to me as I continue via trial-and-error. I can only hope my decision to upload some of my content to other sites doesn’t burn me in the future.
