I really wanted to add text or a drawing to this picture but everything I put on it just detracted from it's simplicity. I do enjoy the edit and filter though. I've been playing around with Snapseed and this is their "Frozen" tutorial. I love the way my skin looks like frozen metal.

But more importantly, it's the first round of results for the Smut Marathon. When I participated last year, I didn't do any cross posting to this blog. I think I posted only one of my entries because I happened upon the perfect picture to accompany it. 

I'm gonna change that this year for as long as I last in the marathon so here's my first entry:

Blind Date
He burst into the pub with a snow flurry and she sat up straight, nervously smoothing her hair as he scrubbed his glasses with his tie. Then his blue eyes caught hers. The busy pub went silent, her cheeks flushed and his warm smile spread over her like a sunrise.

And here's my assessment of that piece of writing: "meh." It's ok.

It's got some nice moments, it fits the prompt but there's nothing about it that really stands out. And fittingly, I'm in the middle of the pack in the voting round. Which is just what I deserve. But what's hilarious, and also happened last year, is that the comments are polarized about my writing. Some commenters liked the sunrise simile, some hated it and thought it was trite. And honestly, while I always vote for myself out of principle, my smut marathon votes rarely line up with the judges so there truly is no accounting for taste when it comes to writing and erotica. Even and especially my own. Which is part of what makes this marathon so interesting. 

I found this prompt really difficult. Writing flash fiction or any sort of story in under 100 words is not my strong suit and I admire anyone who does it well. Here are a couple shout outs to the other pieces I voted for because they were far better than mine.  
Losing Everything by Sorcha Rowan.
Ok, Cupid by Zebra Rose 

And now we're on to Round 2. Good luck to everyone who decides to keep participating.
Also happy sunday.
​XO

So, two things today. 

Item one, this is obviously a pic from the same set as the one I posted on Valentine’s Day. And it’s amazing (to me) how subtle differences like a slight shift in perspective and hand placement change the whole feel of a picture. My Valentine’s Day pic felt very presentational, “here I am for you to see.” And this one feels more confrontational. 

Which brings me to item 2, I definitely feel confrontational but I don’t feel in charge like this quote describes. And I don’t like it. 

A couple weeks ago I got a well meaning comment on one of my IG pictures that said “if you’d started this account 5 years ago, you’d have 100k followers by now.” This observation made me laugh because that would basically mean that I’d have 99k people ignoring my posts and not commenting but her comment stuck with me because that follower count is something I’m supposed to want. And I think I don’t. 

I've been thinking a lot about social media this week, about the importance we give it and the lack of control we have over our online lives. A lot of these thoughts spring from laying low on IG due to my current shadow ban and trying to figure out what to do about my accounts. But rather than come up with options, I've only felt increasingly furious about my powerlessness, my lack of choice over who sees my pictures, my lack of options about what I can post on social media and the overarching fear that no matter what I do,  I’ll catch the Eye of Sauron and my accounts could be eliminated. 

In the course of these musings I’ve realized (again) how much social media censorship is about control not morality, which is why certain accounts are obliterated and others thrive. It has nothing to do with their content. Bringing down the hammer is just one more way that the Zuckerberg minions tell us who’s in charge and remind us that it’s not us and never will be. Our only option in this game is to adjust to arbitrary “rules” or not to play. If we play, we accept rule #1: if someone somewhere decides that something is offensive, instead of telling them to shut their eyes or turn off their computer or go elsewhere, we must instead structure the whole world to suit them.

 And listen, I'm not minimizing the need for some monitoring because there’s a lot of bad shit out there, Illegal shit, offensive trolls, asshole aggressive people who decide they deserve whatever they want because they like someone’s pictures, horrible racist sexist slanderous commenters who live to anonymously stir up trouble and increase the hate quotient. But weirdly, all the editing and sanitizing of social media hasn’t changed these people one bit and they’re the real social media problem! Not cunts and dicks and nipples and the portrayal of any sexuality between consenting adults. 

Social media companies have no fucks to give about the true offensive material, trolls and hate and instead are drunk on their control and the way they wield the power of life and online death. But the fucking scary thing about this situation isn’t the crass perversion of power masquerading as morality, the fucking scary thing is that we’re playing along! We’re letting this happen and in fact, we’re helping by editing our pictures and our choices and our lives so we can continue to use these platforms. We’re playing by the rules and begging for more chances when the Eye of Sauron decides we’re dead. When the situation gets worse and the doxxing and deplatforming and online censorship continues, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves because we’ve looked at this terrible situation and instead of shutting it down, refusing to play and telling the people in charge they weren’t the boss of us, we took our slaps and our edits and our shadow bans and said “Please sir, can we have another?  We'll do anything! Just let us stay in this hateful confusing horrific game that we’ll never win!”

Ok, deep breathing...

All the deep breathing...

Obviously these thoughts come from someone with three Instagram accounts, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Tumblr page and several blogs, depending on how far back you wanna look. So, obviously I’m not advocating being a Luddite. Plus, it’s impractical. Social media isn’t going anywhere. That genie is out of the bottle, online lives are here to stay until the internet dissolves. 

But I’m enraged because I feel played. And I’m not sure what to do about it, though playing their game their way no longer appeals so I'm open to any other suggestions. 

I feel like I’m tapping into a common wavelength lately. I’ll be thinking about a topic and open my email to find a blogger I follow has just written about it. This week, it’s Molly’s post about art and porn. 
In that same vein, I think this Picasso quote is true. And it’s not true. But it is. Sex is an artistic pursuit, art arouses, the two can be intertwined in ways impossible to separate and at their best, they’re elevated by the other. They can also be polar opposites. 

In the best world, my work combines both elements into something other, but it's not something I can do by myself. My work requires the outside eye of an audience because outside perception changes everything about what is being perceived. A sexy Schrodinger's Cat, if you will. 

The hardest thing about being an artist/blogger/photographer is my audience’s reaction. But it’s also the best thing. I’ve had people invest way more thought and depth and meaning to my work than I ever intended and I’ve had pieces I slaved over get panned hard by my audience. There’s no accounting for taste. Including my own.

When I put my work into the public sphere, I can’t control the reaction. Nor do I want to. I can simply continue to produce art/sex/art and let it lead to whatever happens next.

So, Happy Valentine's Day everyone. Go out there and share some love, sex and art. XO

I really will...

Little Switch Bitch recently commented on one of my pictures that I should write a bit about how I get certain compositions. So, go visit her page and drool over her sexy photos and when you come back, I'll talk about this one.

It's ok. I'll wait. 

...

...

...

Yeah, she's hot AF with that ass, right? You should definitely follow her,

So anyway, back to this shot. It's a simple one and a set up that I automatically see because I love to shoot pictures where the light is behind me. It's why I have so many pictures in front of windows. For mechanics, I only use my iPhone. Long ago I had a regular camera but smartphone cameras got really good and I got tired of carrying another camera around. iPhone cameras have limitations, especially in low light, but this new iPhone Xs has a portrait mode that works better in limited light and also allows for some manipulation of f-stops. I'm still playing with it but it's definitely the best mode for dark pictures like this where the only light in the room was the fire behind me. I have several others from this set but I haven't decided whether to post them or not. Let's see how the week goes. 

As to this quote, I've recently started talking to a guy I like. He's a musician and we met via this alter ego of mine but he knows me in real life as well. I'm pretty sure he doesn't read this blog, but he would be welcome to if he wanted. This quote makes me think of him.

In other news I'm still staying off my AnnieSavoyWrites IG page for now and posting instead to my backup account, AnnieSavoyTakesPictures. Both accounts are private so if you want in, just request me. The interesting thing is that my AnniePicture page has a much smaller audience and initially the idea of posting to so few people was discouraging because I had definitely bought into the modern idea that the whole point of social media is to gain an audience and accumulate likes. But my giant realization of the week is: What if it isn't?

It certainly wasn't at the beginning. Social media was a way of connecting with people I knew or people with similar interests. The whole point was To Connect. But Connection is not what's happening now. I can scroll through IG for 5 minutes and "like" 20 pictures and only remember maybe 2 of them a half hour later. It's extremely low effort and thus low in meaning and lasting effect. And more to the point, most of the people clicking on my pictures on my original Annie page aren't people I know or follow, unlike my backup page where most are people I have a relationship with. When they comment or like, they do so with some context. There's a relationship there that feels like I'm sharing with friends.

It's changed my thinking. I've realized how much I had stopped sharing and instead was posting to simply accumulate likes, an exhausting unsatisfying process with no end in sight like a massive black hole of need. 

I watched a sports documentary recently called "In Search of Greatness" (it's fantastic. Go find it) and this comment feels like a brilliant encapsulation of the social media problem:

"If the ultimate outcome of professional sports is always just to be #1, no matter what you pay to get there, then you begin to wonder if the spiritual basis of these games is being hollowed out in the process of winning a game that people are losing interest in."

That. That. That. 

That is my food for thought this week.

I will go back to my original Annie IG page but I want to stay off of it long enough to remember why I do this, who I'm doing it for and find an appreciation for my audience.

Perhaps I'll also learn to be a more appreciative audience for other people. 

I love this piece of poetry so much. It's so human... the tendency to argue about senseless things while life passes us by. I suspect this photo is too passive for the quote, especially the line I chose to use, but c'est la vie, though I do like the open feeling of both the question and the photo.

This was the first photo I took for last week's Sinful Sunday prompt of "White." It didn't seem quite right so I went with a different one last week. But I love the mix of patterns here. . 

This february photo fest has reignited my love for my photo project but also reminded me how much work it is to take pictures, do all the editing and post every day. I'm trying to think just far enough in the week that I'm prepared for any days I'm really busy but not too far that I can't act spontaneously. I want to actively participate and see what each day brings me.

So thanks Molly, as always, for a chance to participate in Sinful Sunday and this February Photofest particularly. I've pushed myself artistically in ways I never would otherwise. And getting to see everyone else's work every work spurs me onward, so thanks to all you bloggers and photographers out there too.

Speaking of things that inspire, it's the first week of the Smut Marathon and I've decided to participate again. It's an intriguing prompt this week, difficult I thought, with very mixed results, But swing by the opening round, see what you think and then vote.

have a good week everyone XOX
​

I love the way this filter and edit combo created a kind of post-apocalyptic vibe. The green light in the sky makes me particularly happy. 

Which is good because I'm generally annoyed since I'm shadow banned on Instagram. I've been pretty careful there not to defy the "community guidelines" so I expect it will sort itself out but it still brings up all these feelings of immense weariness about fighting a fight we can't win against an unreasonable faceless massive corporation that has all the power. 

The only thing that makes me feel slightly better is that Instagram has peaked so something new has to be around the corner. And the way I know that is that my 73-year-old father has gotten himself an Instagram account. Just like when grandmas started joining Facebook, the older generation finally catching on to a social media site is a death knell. 

I love Instagram. But I hate the prudish leadership. the arbitrary enforcement of the rules and feeling overrun by an entity that cares nothing for me or any individuals. We're all bits of code and we're all dispensable.

So, sigh. Here we are and it's Saturday. I'm going to endeavor to remember that I have a light. And perhaps today, to actually be a light.