Mark Velasquez Photography's blog

Along with my old account, I set up a new and so far non-censored profile on Flickr:

www.flickr.com/photos/markvelasqueztoo

Here's hoping I don't have the same problems. If you have a flickr account with the "safe search" turned off, here is the link to my old profile:

www.flickr.com/photos/markvelasquez

Feel free to add both of them to your contacts. Thanks!

For some reason, I have had almost the exact same conversation over 50 times in the last year alone. Usually its with a new women I am photographing in the midst of the "trying to get to know you" conversation. It goes a little something like this:
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Me: "Nah, I've never even taken a puff off of a cigarette, I'm that boring. What drugs have you tried?"

Them: "Oh, I dunno. I smoke pot, of course. When I go to parties I'll do some coke occasionally. I've done X (ecstacy) at raves a few times, its fun. Back in high school me and my friends used to drop acid a lot. And man, I went on a meth binge a few months ago that was pretty crazy... "

Me: "Really? Wow. Ever tried Heroin?"

Them: "WHAT!?? OH GOD NO!! I would NEVER do THAT!! That's a SERIOUS drug! GEEZ!! OF COURSE NOT!! NO WAY!!"

---

I'm not the kind of person to judge for the most part, but I still don't see how heroin has such a huge stigma as a serious drug while most everything else is seen as a viable option as a vice.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned.

Well, my luck officially ran out this week. My profile has been irrevocably set to "moderate" by the people at Flickr, thus making my page a shadow of what it was. The average web surfer can't find it as a link or view any of my images, vastly cutting down on the people I can reach. Its frustrating, but that's how it is. Ironically I gave Flickr high praise for helping support the "independent artist" in a local interview last week.

Ah well. Basically, it feels like a break-up where the other person won't give you a chance to talk to them about it. Do I move on, keep trying to get more information and work with what limitations they've given me, or sit back quietly and act like nothing has happened?

I was so used to having an audience who could give me immediate feedback and could create a dialog with me, and now I don't know who can see my work or how often.

This is no where near the worst thing that happened to me this week, and in comparison there is really nothing to complain about in this easy world of ours. Its an inconvenience and disappointing, but life will go on.

Thanks for reading the useless droning. Tata...