I'M ALIVE!!!!!
Sorry about that; my get up and go got up and went without me. I wandered out of funkland today just in time to be a week and a day late.
<_<

For this week, you may use any media you like - photos, sketches, paints, collage, et. al. to portray BLUE. In any sense of the word. Posting and up voting will cease when the 16th is over and done with.

If you end up with the most votes appreciating your piece(s), you will have the honour to decide the theme to the next week's thread! If that's not enough I'm sure I can find a gif of people grovelling in your magnificent wake. \o/

We've been having a smattering of art, poetry, and photo participation posts, such as this, and this, and this, and this.

We seem to have enough ~tilders to have a schedule of sorts, but not enough to have each activity every week. How about we rotate weekly activities for a while and see how it goes? I'm thinking we have enough interest for a series of visual/craft based threads and a series of writing based threads. For example:

July 3-9th Photography (subject exploration or technique)
July 10-16th What are you making now?/Speedart
July 17-23rd Photography (topic or equipment)
July 24-30th What are you making now?/Media challenge

July 3-9th Freestyle Writing (up to a thousand words)
July 10-16th Themed Drabbles
July 17-23rd Poetry format challenge
July 24-30th It was a dark and stormy night

Please note that these are suggestions and not an arbitrary bid to codify content or become TEH LEADER. I just think it would be fun to have an activity to look forward to every week. We could even just sign up for hosting a week's topic, and whoever is in charge of the week picks the activity.

What does everyone think?

For our first photo challenge, any equipment goes! Please participate regardless of skill level or experience. :) Be it an old Polaroid, a point and click, a phone cam, or a professional kit, capture those photons and post them here!

Our subject this week: between three to 10 images exploring a pastime of yours. For example:

Reading? Pics of stacks of books, libraries, e-readers, pages of text, people absorbed in the printed word...

Running? Your shoes! Legs blurring by, your favorite route scenery, your muscle rub cream, brand of sock you like...

As long as you can connect it in some way to your activity, it's fair game. Let's clean our lenses and get going!

This is a photo I took in rural Myanmar October of 2012. We were on a group trek from the city of Kalaw to Inle Lake. We stopped at a school in one of the rural towns to meet the kids and donate supplies. We arrived during their school day but their teacher allowed us 30 minutes to an hour (can't remember) to play with and talk to the kids. It was an absolute blast, the kids were full of energy and opened up to the group quickly.

The school was a single room school house where all ages study together. The teacher for this school was young and from another city/town/village. We were told that the community provided her food and shelter in trade for her teaching the kids. If money was required for something, maybe transportation back home, they would come together to help. I do not know the ethnicity of the community or kids, other than Burmese.

Please critique the above write up, both grammatically and content wise, and help me with suggestions of titles. I severely lack in title creativity/ability.

I have been using Tildes for about a week now. I have come over from Reddit where I am primarily a lurker. I lurk because I often feel my thoughts and opinions on topics and discussions have been touched on because discussions are already hundreds of comments deep by the time I arrive. The biggest positive with Tildes is the fact that the community is currently small and I read the post/sarticles that interest me instead of jumping straight into the comments to be given a synopsis. I now read more than just the headline.

I still have not found my 'voice' in regards to posting comments related to articles/stories that I have read. I think it is because I haven't found a discussion that I am really interested in. I have posted a couple of news articles that provide information about the part of the world I am in but, while they interested me, I didn't feel the need to discuss their contents further so I didn't add any comment to start a conversation to the post.

Regarding providing some more content to the site. My hobbies include, like everyone else, traveling, reading, and photography. I am no where near being an influential voice in any of these! I am not interested in having a travel blog or a website but I would like to provide information, incase someone else here is interested or has experiences too. For example, I recently took a short weekend trip from Bangkok, Thailand to Ayutthaya, Thailand. I rode the train, visited the sites, visited a bar, ate some food, and stayed the night. I want to provide a write up on my experiences and thoughts of this trip. Is a post in ~hobbies with the tags of: thailand, ayutthaya, bangkok, train the way to go?
What do y'all think?

Sharing photographs - Taking pictures is another hobby I share with everyone else. I enjoy sharing pictures I am proud of. I tend to post to r/nocontextpics, because I like their rules of no back story in the title. I also post to location specific sites. I do this to show off my pictures and to feel good from earning points. I do not post pictures to facebook very often because I like having the feel of anonymity. I don't want to be perceived as a pretentious twat. How does everyone feel about picture posts in ~hobbies with the tag(s) like: location, device used, etc..

My problem would be not 'spamming' photos. With the age of the site, and my brief interaction with it, no one wants to see 2+ picture posts from one user in the ~hobbies group.
Any thoughts on etiquette or rules for picture posts? Allow: Yes/No?

Over the last little while I've started buying (and fixing) up some old cameras, and have really been enjoying the experience of slowing down a tad after so many years of digital. This my collection at the moment: on the left a Zenza Bronica ETRS, then from top to bottom on the right, a Canon A-1, a Voigtländer Perkeo I with a Sekonic LC 2 meter on top, then a Canon 3000N (not as fun to use as the others, but it takes EF lenses and is super light so it's good to have around).

I've got a few rolls going on the Bronica, some Ektar 100 and some Fuji Acros 100 (I think, it was a while back and I very helpfully just labelled it 'B/W 100 ASA') and I'll definitely post some of my favourites once they're developed if I got anything good. Also, my local photo place was selling expired rolls for just $5 the other day so I picked up a couple of 35mm rolls too - it's always nice to find some cheap stuff as film seems to just be getting more and more expensive...

So, any other analogue enthusiasts? Favourite films or cameras? Got any photos you wanna show off?