WINNER ANNOUNCED! The 20th Photographers' Lounge Salon Challenge: Social Media

Lightmancer

Legend
Location
Sunny Frimley
Name
Bill Palmer
Hello, and welcome to the twentieth Salon Challege! My thanks to Ray Sachs who has passed on the baton.

This time I am setting a brief which can be interpreted widely, so let your imagination run free! I am looking not only for literal interpretations but also for creativity and imagination; the impact of, perhaps, or the consequences of.

The theme is SOCIAL MEDIA. It is now an integral part of modern life - loathe it or love it you cannot ignore it. From the use of the hashtag (#) to the way the "twittersphere" reacts to - and impacts - major world events, from the quest for Facebook "likes" to the rise of Periscope and the increasing use of social tools and channels in customer interactions, social media is here to stay - so show me what you think of it.

Closing date is the 4th December.

Rules are simple................

1. Either take a picture that matches the nominated theme or select one from your portfolio. You must be the photographer that created the picture in order to enter it.

2. Only one entry per salon, please. If you want to withdraw an entry and replace it with another, that is OK, but you must make it clear in the post containing your replacement picture that this is what you've done. You can add or change the title and add to the edit line to let everyone know.

3. The decision of the curator at the end of the challenge is final - don't give him/her a hard time about it: this is just a friendly photo challenge, after all!

4. The person who submitted the chosen picture will assume the responsibility of curator for the next Salon Challenge and as soon as possible post a message in a new thread in the PL Photo Challenges forum, with details of the new theme. Don't forget - that opening message must include a copy of these instructions, which also double as the rules.

5. The curator can't enter his or her own salon.
 
A great theme. Social media users are everywhere: in the car while driving, on the bike, in the trains, crossing the street, in starbucks, etc etc it's definitely an addiction and a great topic for the challenge!
 
Nice and relevant challenge, I immediately thought of this image.

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Clearly this man has a really nice camera and lens at his side, but he is using his cell phone because, (I assume), he wants to share his image immediately. A few minutes later I did see him using his camera.
 
wish I knew what "social media" was - not much of that out here in rural SW France

Whatever you define as social media in rural SW france: wine (makes people interact), towels on the beach (to rest next to each other and chat), buses, phones, paper&pen, phones, etc. Shortly, any media that is used to connect with other people. But it's not up to me to define. Perhaps I am taking the definition too literally. ;-)
 
wish I knew what "social media" was - not much of that out here in rural SW France

Whatever you define as social media in rural SW france: wine (makes people interact), towels on the beach (to rest next to each other and chat), buses, phones, paper&pen, phones, etc. Shortly, any media that is used to connect with other people. But it's not up to me to define. Perhaps I am taking the definition too literally. ;-)

What he said... If you think about it, hieroglyphs in Pharaohs' tombs are "social media" as are the cave paintings in Lascaux; the social bit isn't new, only the media, and the way it is impacting our modern lives - or not...

Some, of course, take it too far:
Antwerp introduces 'text walking lanes' for pedestrians using mobile phones

...and remember, Bill, that you are active on social media by posting here ;)
 
My entry relates to the impact/consequences of living in a Social Media Era: 10 years ago this image would not have grabbed my attention. Isn't it weird that someone just enjoying a view draws my attention? It's the price of the social media era.

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This is an interesting challenge and one I don't know if i have anything remotely applicable to. I went back through my flickr stream and I have to go back many months to find ANY use of a phone or tablet, and those people were using their phones for actual TALKING! Not that I haven't had some shots of people staring at their electronic devices in public, but they rarely make it to flickr. And yet I have a few in there of people out in public reading actual physical BOOKS!

Which, frankly, when I'm looking at my phone in public, sitting in a restaurant, or waiting for a bus or train or something, I'm usually reading a book too, just on the Kindle app rather than having to weigh myself down carrying an actual physical book in addition to my phone. Once I get through the 2-3 emails I care to look at, I usually pull up whatever book I'm working on, which given the miracle of cloud communication, always opens to my last page, no matter whether I'm reading on my actual kindle, on my phone, or on my ipad - I love the virtual electronic bookmark!

So I'm going back in time to an earlier form of social media - the coffee shop. It's a modern day version of the coffee shop, and lots of people are no doubt using their free wi-fi on their phones and tablets and laptops wile sitting in this shop. But there are actual human interactions taking place too. In a coffee shop, which used to be one of the key places where people sit and interact. And if you see the proliferation of Char-bucks on every corner with people interacting with other humans either face to face, or through their electronics, it seems like the humble coffee shop still plays that role to a significant extent, even as the technology changes...

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Philly 10-14-134-Edit
by Ray, on Flickr

-Ray
 
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