No generative AI was used in the taking, creating, or editing of my photographs, art, or writing.
I'm a middle-aged, white, queer, non-binary, neurodivergent, disabled hobby photographer, freely sharing my works with the world. On this blog, I make a daily post of one (or more) of my photos, which are free-of-charge for you to use for any legal purpose, as long as I'm properly credited.
Western Gray Squirrel. Photo by Xer S. Rowan, Creative Commons Attribution license
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Photography is a hobby I explore for my own learning and enjoyment, and I share my work publicly under Creative Commons licenses—almost always just the Attribution license, which boils down to 'free to use, as long as you say it was me who took the photo, that I released it under that license, and, if modified, that it has been modified'.
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Photography always appealed to me, but it came with monetary strings attached. I did get to play around with a point-and-shoot camera as a young kid, when my mom paid for a few rolls of film and developing and printing. I learned the basics of photography through a few high school and college classes—SLR, black and white film, access to a darkroom, etc.—and I had photography-adjacent careers a few times in my adult life.
Even when personal digital cameras came out and I tried a few of the models I could afford (or borrow), the short battery life and lack of rechargeables made them money-eaters too. My iPod Touch was my first digital camera that I could really play with, but, at that point, my time and energy were going into being an undiagnosed autistic ADHDer struggling with their last-ditch effort to survive as a worker under capitalism.
Aside from that brief time as a kid who didn't know what they were doing, with a film point-and-shoot camera that I couldn't see the results of until weeks later, I never really got to take photos just for the fun of it. There was a little bit of experimentation and play during the photography classes, but I was limited by available time, funds for the film and photo paper, and other responsibilities. But just sitting with the camera, taking photo-after-photo, seeing the results and learning from them, and going out to do it again, for the sake of doing it... that was the dream.
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In 2011, I developed a tic disorder, and my chronic pain and executive function issues became much worse. Had to stop working. After about ten years, which included a few diagnoses (and some living situations that I'd prefer not to remember), I managed to win my Disability claim and start making some changes to my life.
The backpay was a significant (to me) sum of money. It was time to make the big purchases that would make my life better. In addition to mobility aids, properly sized furniture for my extremely tall body, and various tools and supplies to expand my capacity to care for myself, I decided to treat myself to a good camera. A Canon 90D digital SLR (with a couple of kit lenses and a cheap manual telephoto). And then I had to buy better lenses, a sturdier (and taller) tripod, macro extension tubes, a reverse ring mount, a portable manually-aligned star-tracker that I still haven't gotten around to using, some other stuff, and an adapter that allows me to attach my first ever lens, the fully manual one my mother bought me when I first started learning SLR photography in the 1990s.
I know I will never see that much money again (the Disability backpay). But I bought something that can make me happy, for a hobby I have yearned for all my life, that I have moderate experience in many facets of. If that was the last time I could buy something expensive for myself, purely for my own pleasure, I made sure it would be something that I would enjoy for the rest of my life. And sharing my photography is a way to share that joy.
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Why release my photos under a copyleft?
In one of my jobs, I was expected to find suitable high-resolution photographs to represent all sorts of businesses. Back then, the microstock photo sites were fairly new and didn't have nearly as many options. And my budget for photos was pretty small. That's when I learned about the copyleft movements.
We used a lot of Creative Commons Attribution photos when the businesses didn't send anything useful in, or anything at all. So, here's my way to give back. And maybe to repent a little for not realizing earlier in my employment with them how messed up and exploitative their business model was (it was built on not-quite-but-kinda scamming small businesses, and they lied to everyone, including their own employees).
Also, fuck the drive to monetize hobbies, and fuck capitalism.
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For more information about me and my free photo project, to get free access to the high resolution versions under the same licensing, or to give me material support, visit linktr.ee/DoingItForTheExposure.
California Ground Squirrel. Photo by Xer S. Rowan, Creative Commons Attribution license
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For anyone wondering what my photography workflow is like, it's very disjointed, and a bit convoluted.
I do my best to give myself opportunities to take photos, but it depends on weather, pain levels, and various other things. It happens in bits and spurts and occasional sprees.
I (ideally) pull the SD cards from the cameras monthly, and copy them onto the laptop (also to my photo backup drive) before returning the SD cards to the cameras and formatting them for a fresh start.
Every now and then, I look through the photos on the laptop and move the best raw images into a folder for transfer to my tablet, deleting the ones I don't think are good enough (but they're still on the photo backup drive).
I'm also slowly going through the old backup files, revisiting the pics I took, and adding some of those into the to-be-processed pile. Currently (July 2026, at the time of this edit), I'm trying to get through the rest of my 2022 pictures before moving on to 2023.
So there's occasional photography, occasional SD-to-laptop transfers, occasional browsing to choose best pics, and occasional transferring of chosen raw photos to a folder on the tablet. The folder is occasionally browsed through, and images are chosen and manually processed from raw according to no schedule or order. Some photos have been in the 'to-be-processed' stage for years (note to self: I need to go through and delete some of them).
As I finish processing each photo and adding the colored border with my watermark, they get exported as 10MB (or less) jpg files into a special folder, where I can pick and choose which to post each day (assuming I'm processing ahead of time, and not right before posting).
The chosen pics for the day's post get copied into my tablet's photo roll, and the originals get moved into a 'posted' folder that occasionally gets copied onto a backup drive before being deleted from the tablet. Then I make the posts, using the pics from the camera roll, deleting them after. (Despite all the deletions, I still have a copy of all the raw and processed photos.)
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All that to say, I take a lot of photos, and I select and process and post some of my favorites from that vast collection, and you get what you get. To use, for free, however you want, as long as you properly credit me. Because I want to.
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linktr.ee/DoingItForTheExposure