“You have to be on Pinterest!” said Amy, over a roast potato. “I’ll send you an invite.” I nodded sagely and pretended I knew what she was talking about. You see, Amy is social. Not just in the truest, most human sense of the word but in the geeky, web-2.0y, search engine oiling sense of the word. Amy told me how sharing images from around the web on virtual cork boards was a great way of collating inspiring images for yourself and others.
A few hours later an invite landed in my inbox. I signed up, followed some of my friends who were already using the site and created a handful of boards. You can find them and follow me if you wish. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been adding images from a variety of sources that I have found interesting. I’ve also added “pin” buttons to my wedding photography site and this blog so that others can share my images if they are grabbed by anything.
It’s a shame that there’s no easy way to pin images from the real world though as I often find images I like in magazines and books. It’s not always possible to find the photograph on-line and it’s certainly time consuming to try. Photographing photographs is messy and time consuming. The site also seems to be a bit controversial: I don’t mind people sharing low resolution versions of my photographs, and the site claims to credit and police issues where they arise, but there are other photographers who do. I even found a WordPress plugin designed to stop images from being pinned.
I’m still trying to figure out how best to use Pinterest though. Pin images I like, things that might inspire a personal project in the future? Or pin some of my favourite images of my own so that others can see and share them too? If you are using Pinterest, how do you use it? For business, or pleasure? Or both?