The demise of the blog photo children

Oh no!

My, that IS an eerie blog title.  Thank goodness it’s getting close to Halloween.  You can get away with saying things like that near October 31st.

Here’s the bloggin’ scoop.

Remember the blog–a few weeks ago, wasn’t it?–about how I had received an ominous message from the WordPress site saying that Lake Superior Spirit had “exceeded its upload quota”?  Which means, translated, that there was no more space to post pictures without forking over an additional $20 per year for five more gigabytes of space. 

Since the required “forking over” had already happened on August 1st, I assumed they were in grave error.  All would be righted in the blogging world ASAP.

Alas, you know what happens when you ass-ume, don’t you? 

Here’s how WordPress works.  You get three gigabytes of space free.  That’s all.  Forever and ever more.  You can compress your photos and behave nicely and not use up your three gigs forever. 

Or you can think–wrongly, like me–that it will be a piece of cake to easily purchase your five new gigabytes whenever you please.  I mean–you can spend $20 eating out in an instant, right?

But, alas.  That’s not how it works.  You buy your five gigs.  But that’s only for a year, it turns out.  You have to re-new your five gigs after one year. You’re paying for the space, and renewing it every year.  So you don’t want to buy another $20 this year, because next year you’ll be forking over $40.  And so on.  And so on. 

Don't worry, child, I won't get rid of YOU!

The nice support fella suggested I might want to start deleting photos.  So, in the past month, I have been slowly reading through the least popular posts of all time (and there are 483 posts on this blog alone) and–sob!–deleting my blog photo children.

Honestly, it feels like it sometimes.  How can you choose which of your children to delete?  (Chris and Ki, don’t take offense.  I would never delete one of YOU.)

You look at your photos.  Some of them are obviously immature.  You can tell that right away.  Out you go, dear one, thank you for what you gave!  Some of them are blurry, but you used ’em anyway to make a point.  Goodbye, Pointers!  Some of them are explained in the text.  Even though they might be blurry or immature, you have to keep them, then. 

On it goes!  The deleting, deleting, deleting.

Why does it sometimes feel like our creativity is our child?  And that deleting it is just wrong? 

Sometimes, in Native American or shamanic traditions, the elder will request that the apprentice create something very beautiful.  Hours may be spent making this the most wonderful creation.  Then the elder will say, “Now, let’s hang it in the tree and give it to the earth” or “Now, let’s burn this and give it to the fire.” 

Can you imagine what the artist might initially feel?

It's a scary world, folks...

On a separate note, I am AMAZED at my former appreciation for extra-large photos.  Why did I adore extra-large photos?  Answer:  because that’s the only time I really looked at photos.  But guess what?  My visual discrepancy must be healing because now I can look at smaller photos and truly SEE them.  Kathy’s growing up visually!

Separate note #2:  Unless you compress your photos before uploading into WordPress, the size you post on your blog does not matter in reference to upload space.  Therefore, my large-photo obsession did not result in the use of the gigabytes.  The refusal to compress–which I will continue to do, except on vacation–because I am still in love with non-compressed photos–is part of this chopping frenzy.

I am trying to leave at least one photo child per blog.  To make it visually attractive.  Readers who google will never know that four photo-children once danced happily on that post.  They will ass-ume that this post was a one-child family.  (Tee hee, we’ll never tell, will we?)