Heather Rivlin Photography

As photographers, we are visual people.  We rely on visual information when we recollect, ponder, consider, reminisce.  I know that for me, I am a very visual person.  My dreams are usually very vivid, and I feel through pictures much more than through other senses.  Some people, as you know, are visual learners, others are auditory learners.  I am certainly a mix of both, but the visual plays a huge role.

I have a photographic memory.  I remember once, in University, I was called into my social psychology teacher’s office following an exam the week before.  Her name was Dr. Smart  She asked me why I had cheated on my exam.  Flabbergasted, I begged for an explanation as to why she thought I had cheated.  She pulled out my exam paper, and showed me my answer, circled with her red pen with the words “plagiarized” written across it.  I explained to her that I hadn’t plagiarized, copied, or cheated, but that I had recalled verbatim what had been written about that particular question in the textbook.  I recalled it well because it set apart in one of those fancy text boxes off to the side.  It stood apart. I read it.  I read it again.  I probably read it without realizing I was reading it, as I was skimming other things.  Needless to say, I retained it.

So, Dr, Smart didn’t seem impressed, nor did she appear to believe me.  She told me she would have given me an A had I not cheated, but this was an automatic F.  My face went pale and I panicked.  Thinking quickly under pressure, I recited to her face the contents of that text box, and question #6 from the exam – word for word.  She went pale this time.

I say this to illustrate the fact that I organize information visually, and I think many people do. I know that most of my photographer friends will agree that they do too.  It is for this reason, that I love Pinterest.

Have you heard of Pinterest?  You haven’t?  Are you living under a rock?  May I come and relieve you of your predicament?

Pinterest is, in essence, a site upon which you can visually bookmark pages from the web.  Let’s say you are surfing the web looking for a recipe for Key Lime Pie and you stumble onto a site that has among its hundreds of recipes, one for Key Lime Pie.   In the OLDEN DAYS, we would create a bookmark for the page and try to keep our bookmarks as organized as possible.  Personally, I can’t remember the last time I used bookmarks.  They are words….I need pictures.  Pinterest does that for me.  When you join pinterest (you need to request to join, or be invited by another member), you can create BOARDS.  Your boards are essentially organized drawers that you label according to what is inside of them.  I have boards for graphic design, home decor, health and beauty, words and quotes that I love, etc.  When I see something online that I love, I simply PIN IT, and it appears in my pinterest catalog, which I can refer back to later, and guess what?  Instead of being a list of words that mean nothing to me the day after I saved it, it is an image of the very thing that compelled me to want to save it in the first place.  It is a luscious picture of the pie.  Catches my eye, and easy to find.

I started out with Pinterest because something about the “exclusive club-feel” was intriguing.  ”Who are all these lucky people who are members, and how can I feel included?”.  I asked to be invited by someone who I knew was a member, and voila, I was hooked!

So here is, for example, what I see when I open my “Photographic Wall Display Ideas” board:

One click on any one of those images, and I am immediately taken to the webpage that contained that article, post, image.  Easy!  I never have to search through boring lists, nor try to find interesting ways of classifying the bookmark nomenclature.

I will be doing a post this week on wall displays, and I will be linking to many of the images above, and the pages they originated from.  Thanks to Pinterest, finding them will be a snap

So, if you notice, there is now a little red flag at the top of every post.  If you are on Pinterest and want to Pin any of my images, feel free to PIN ME for your collection, and I will be flattered.