No, I'm not about to indulge in histrionics or drama. I'm not leaving in a fit of pique. I'm not going out hurling childish accusations, or any such nonsense.

No.

Rather, I'm just consolidating my online presence in one place: my own website. The primary motivation is a desire to stem the tide of stolen copies of my images that I've found out in the wild which originated from sites like dA, flickr, photobucket and a few other places where I'd published them unwatermarked.

I've had enough of it, so I'm removing all non-watermarked copies of my images, shutting down all of my photo and art site memberships, and only publishing my work to my own site, which is set to automatically watermark every image I upload (in addition to being the only place where I sell my work online).

Besides - it's a pain to upload, manage and maintain photography on 5 or more sites.

I've shut down 6 accounts this week, and dA is simply the last one I'm letting go... I'll leave this journal in place for awhile to point the way to my own site ( aaronbrownphotography.com ), and then I'll shutter the account.

By the way; if you use an RSS reader, and want to keep up with the new stuff that I post, here's my RSS feed of new images: http://aaronbrownphotography.com/recent.rss.

Thanks to all of you here who have helped me grow, and with whom I have had treasured friendships. I wish all of you the best in your future endeavors!

-- Aaron

PS - does anyone realize how much of a pain it is to actually delete deviations from this site? It took me more than 4 days to completely delete all of the works in my gallery and scraps. There are 8 clicks involved in deleting each. and. every. image.