wildlife photography through the lens of an animator

Friday, January 1, 2010

This project is over!

After more than 500 posts,
nearly three years of frequent blogging

and more than a thousand photos published here,

Portraits of Australian Animals goes into history.


I will not delete it right now, but it will fall into deep hibernation for at least a year. I need to reconsider many things, decide how I would like to go on with photography and find a better way of assessing the good from the average photos. During the next 12 months I will post no more than 12 photos and I will start posting again after at least three months' break.

In the next few weeks I will do minor updates to the labels and reorganize some posts just to make them more search engine friendly.

Will I stop taking photos and spending every spare moment that I have outdoors?
Of course not.
But regular blogging has become too demanding and frequent abuse of the photographs has become really annoying. I know. 'If you want to keep your photos private, keep them away from the Internet'. The thing is that I don't want to keep them private. I wanted to share them with like-minded people, but unfortunately too many people with completely different values and agenda took advantage of this 'free' resource, and used it for purposes that I would have never approved.

A hobby is a hobby. I don't want to spend hours and hours tracking down these abusers or suing them. I've had enough of that with my design and animation work.
I have to move on, focus on other projects, maybe have another blog some day, where those same guys could steal and sell a drawing or two.

I had two main reasons for PoAA's existence.
  • The first was to share photos, improve my photographic skills and get useful feed-back on this. It worked quite well.
  • The second was to try and get more people know about the Kangaroo/Wallaby killing in Australia. I hoped to get Nature Blog Network involved into making the problem better known to the world. I did not get the support I'd hoped to get there and left the network.
  • There was also a third reason - occasional thoughts on animation - which I abandoned quite early as I realized there was no place for it in a nature and photography blog. And animation, the good classic animation, is completely dead anyway, replaced by ugly, anti-aesthetic, inhumane CGI.

A big 'Thank you!' to all frequent visitors and followers of PoAA, to all my Best Blog Friends, who supported me with comments and encouragement throughout the years and best of luck to you all for the future!

A special 'Thank you!' to bloggers who helped promoting PoAA and displayed the PoAA button in their own blogs!

Take care!
Nickolay


ps. I'm leaving the comments below this post open, just in case you want to say something. Thank you for every word!

That was all, Folks!

12 comments:

  1. Have a great year Nickolay! I will miss your outstanding photos from a far away place.
    I've been thinking about taking a break also, we shall see...
    Good luck,
    Dave

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Nickolay
    I always enjoyed your Blog posts.
    Marvelling at your technique - and the clarity of your images, etc.
    Hope you find what you want in your withdrawal from posting.
    Sad to hear that people were abusing your trust - with the photos.
    Have a good 2010.
    Cheers
    Denis

    ReplyDelete
  3. G'day Nickolay all the best for 2010 enjoy your time off.

    ReplyDelete
  4. boo hooo hoo! I can fully understand the situation but boy am I going to miss seeing your photography! I haven't been well these last few weeks, so I'm a little late getting here. The night time photos are amazing!
    Have a wonderful and productive New Year!
    Cheers
    Grace

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have enjoyed seeing your photography over the time. I'm glad to know you'll still be updating this blog 12 times though :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Nickolay, I'm going to miss your blog posts. I've learned a lot from looking at how you have taken photos - thanks! All the best for the year ahead.

    ReplyDelete
  7. There have been some fantastic photos on this blog Nickolay, it's a pity that you've stopped.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Nickolay,
    I stumbled on your blog while looking for photographs of some of my local birds, for identification.
    I'm sad to see you won't be keeping up this blog, and that you've had trouble with unethical use of your images. Yours are some of the most beautiful and clear photographs I've seen of Australian wildlife.
    Gorgeous work.

    ReplyDelete
  9. G'day Nickolay,
    Just caught up with your Frogmouth blog. Brilliant! Please come back to blogging.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hi Nickolay! Just caught up on the 2010's posts, sorry to hear you are semi-abandoning the blogging, but I understand. I'm really going to miss your amazing and beautiful, bird photography! Especially since I found this little orphaned Singing Honeyeater that I've been handraising. I just wanted to show you (on my blog), I've been trying to take photos blog about it every day. Thought you'd be interested :). Hope you're well!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hi. I was wondering if i can use a couple of your photos as drawing references? My email is ebruton7@gmail

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for visiting this bloG and leaving a message! Your comments are highly appreciated.