Ask a photographer #AAP

friendlymoose last month

I'm sorry @photofeed. I accidentally posted this blog in photofeed instead of the photography community.

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victorbz last month

i remember your first post of this theme.
i hope that some people who are using cameras in daily or weekly manner will write their points of view of why photography topic is such silent here on Hive. I was really surprised a few weeks ago when i got 1200 likes on one of my images-posts but only 7 comments - all the comments were from my conversation with my friend, great photographer from Italy.
Nothing more. Personally i don't think that this place is suitable for photographers - whatever amateurs or professional. This place is literally made for gaining crypto for whatever one is doing. Nobody cares.
Almost nobody reads. To learn photography from rare random feedbacks just impossible.
I stopped putting my best photographs here due to feeling of the neglect to photography on this platform and debasement of the Artistic value of our Art.
I'm really sorry for my pessimism and disbelief in the future for photography here. It's why I was leaving this place already few times. And every time when i returned to see that something positive happened here, i was hardly disappointed again and again. It's only getting worse.
My Analog photography community, created especially for the "old school" photography on film, which should have generated interest in photography circles, never got an interest of the fat and lazy slipping whales managing the direction of the popularity and the earnings in this place.

i mention here a few amazing (by my opinion and my personal taste) photographers i met here and follow their posts every single day. Sure that part of them encountered the same problem of the deep indifference. Maybe they will have some idea how to make this place more respectful to Artists (photographers in our case) and not only the m0n0mad images will get some more attention, but also not always.

@jlinaresp @coloneljethro @barbarabezina @tonyz @castleberry @photofeed @neuerko @malos10 @photocuration @visualshots @lightcaptured @tattoodjay @careassaktart @abelfotografia @nenio @laimagenhabla @dimascastillo90 @harveyword @azwar.ipank @xaviduran @wilfredocav @tikotiko @x-rain @cryptoreforma @grafvisionsp @abelfotografia @barnabo73 (of course, no pressure to discuss here my friends !!! ).

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9 votes

x-rain last month

I understand what you are talking about, there is a row of problems on Hive. But I don't see alternatives to Hive.

i got 1200 likes on one of my images-posts but only 7 comments

These likes are mostly from the curation trail, not real viewers, so not so many comments go with these 1200 likes.

But likes are not quite a real thing on every platform. Let's say a couple of posts of mine got 200 likes each on Reddit recently. But why do I need these clicks of half-sleeping scrolling minds of random people who looked at my work for a quarter of a second and decided "okay"?

This place is literally made for gaining crypto for whatever one is doing

In some ways, yes. While other platforms are made for gaining likes for whatever one is doing. Likes are a simulacrum or recognition. While crypto (along with real connection with people) is a tool to change things around you (like any sort of money).

Instagram, for example, gives hope that, one day, you'll reach a broader audience. In exchange, you work for IG for years. So many amazing photographers are serious about IG and have only 2000-3000 subs with 30-100 like for a post. They say "oh, that's just my blog, that's just a habit" but actually their creativity is oppressed by Instagram's cult of "look how many subs/likes I got". Moreover, likes on IG deforms your creativity: crowds have preferences and you need to follow them if you want to reach the mentioned broader audience. So, some people add a dose of vulgarity to their images and get... 50 more likes for each post, lol.

feedbacks

It's a problem everywhere to get a lot of constructive feedback - there are usually few comments below beautiful photographs, and most comments are of "love it/amazing" type. On Hive, I sometimes get feedback from photographers I do respect, and I am happy with it.

We need more people (photographers) on Hive. I believe we need more niche photography communities on Hive - photographers usually want to join like-minded communities like street photography, wildlife photography. And we probably need large yearly niche photography contests with prize funds to spread the word on the internet about Hive. And we need real-life exhibitions. If we have HiveFest, why can't we have a HiveExhibition? HiveExhibition can be part of the next HiveFest, for example.

...In the 2010s, people could want a new social media to connect with friends or to look at images of random people. In the 2020s, people are fully packed with internet activities. People not only don't want another social media, they abandon accounts on major social media and focus on family and close friends to talk on messengers to share thoughts and shots. In the 2020s, people need not classical social media but internet tools. A community of like-minded photographers with large contests and exhibitions is a tool for a photographer.

P.S. bolded some thoughts for too-long-to-read people.

victorbz last month

thank you for participating. i fed all of these and to say you honestly, i'm also tired of these. MySpace, Flickr, DeviantArt, Google+, FB, IG, of course Twitter, Threads, some photo sharing apps, now the new and promising FOTOAPP. And of course Hive already for a long time. There is no end to the list, but also most of these already died or forgotten.
The idea about HiveExhibition is very interesting, because i believe that looking on printed photographs is much more useful spending of time than scrolling endless feeds.

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friendlymoose last month

Thanks for your contribution.

We need more people (photographers) on Hive. I believe we need more niche photography communities on Hive - photographers usually want to join like-minded communities like street photography, wildlife photography.

From my own experience I can tell that maintaining a community is a lot of work. And it takes a lot of work to attract the Hivers to your niche community. But I do agree that it would be a good thing.

And we probably need large yearly niche photography contests with prize funds to spread the word on the internet about Hive.

I like this idea. This could attract some photographers from outside if you promote it well. Maybe you should even make it a monthly one. But you do need sponsoring for this.

It's a problem everywhere to get a lot of constructive feedback - there are usually few comments below beautiful photographs, and most comments are of "love it/amazing" type. On Hive, I sometimes get feedback from photographers I do respect, and I am happy with it.

This is actually my first blogpost that has received so many constructive comments. It's good to see people do want change...

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x-rain last month

Some people with much HP might support this idea but only if it is bigger than the words of one person. If Hive photographers say "yeah, we love this idea", we can find a way to organize it together.

Not much news about Hive. Real-life events can make news about Hive in the media. In some countries, mass media would love to write about blockchain technology meeting art and stuff.

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tattoodjay last month

Thanks for the mention this past few months I have been pretty slack with commenting but trying to pick that up now

victorbz last month

of course no pressure my friend. 👍👍👍

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tattoodjay last month

I understand but its time I got more active again and working on it now

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friendlymoose last month

This blog is going in another direction than I had suspected, but I think it's a good discussion @victorbz
The 'problem' is broader than photography alone I think. In the PeakD interface you can get an overview of the number of (unique) visitors of your posts and for mine that isn't a lot. You can also see the amount of time on average users spent on your post. Both are quite low for most of my posts although some have quite some upvotes.
This indeed stimulates people to just make their blogs and don't interact.
I was hoping that this initiative could at least change this a little bit.

victorbz last month

indeed, i took the discussion a little bit to different direction, but i think that the themes are connected.
when people here will be interesting to conversate in the posts in the whole community, this will affect also your specific theme about photography and the feedback for the photographers.
and i don't need the graphs of the PeakD to know that when i have a few hundreds likes after the curie like, these people just voted automatically, no one from them is really using this platform for communication. So sad.

friendlymoose last month

I've been auto voting myself for a long time too and I still do because I don't have time to read all posts I upvote.
But I do want to try and change this because I totally agree with you.
And what better way to start a change than giving then right example.
I hope you're with me on that!

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victorbz last month

hehe i used to do this some long time ago when the hive was very high, but stopped doing this due to the remorse :-)))))) as i said - finally the money and rewards are not everything.
Once i got very high rewards in mono community and did some mistake, even i had no clue it was against their RULES. So the host spoke with my very harshly and said that he will block me in the community and will mute all my comments. I reacted - just do it. It was clear for me that i will lost all my future incoming from the most popular and rewarding communities, but life is life. some people should learn to speak - money isn't everything my friend.

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careassaktart last month

You have some point. Often it happened to me that I have made a big effort in writing huge articles accompanied with my photos for which I always try to be as great as possible but getting very little feedback and sometimes not even a lot votes and also just a bit of crypto.

Still I like how this blog is made cause through it I can also promote my work in blog-photoessay form by sharing it on the other social networks.

I've seen recently how monomad community is growing & gaining attention & was so happy about.

I still believe that here are too less participants who can really write a criticism in comment or express any opinion on photo-art subject.

I stopped hopping about that. I prefer when some of photographers who really have some work to show, sometimes better than mine, write me a comment.

Anyway I believe it's still worthy to participate in here cause of the multiple purposes.

Thanks for mentioning me! It feels good to be here in this company.

victorbz last month

huge thank you for the participation to the conversation.
i hope for the best also inside of this platform :-)

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careassaktart last month

That's one of the reasons why we are here!

Few years ago I initiated "Selfportrait Photo Contest" & was giving awards from my own pocket.

I was explicitly emphasizing the difference between a portrait and a self-portrait and a selfie but I still was getting a bunch of portraits & selfies instead of self-portraits. Also I didn't ask of any support from whales in the form of delegation so that I can give bigger awards but also I didn't get any support voluntarily from any other participant of Hive. After some time I shot down the contest cause I was very much disappointed by the entries trying just to get crypto with really shitty photos, not respecting the rules, just spamming.

That was another experience here that made me not getting involved too much here & live the real life that is happening around me.

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victorbz last month

absolutely understand you. I hosted the daily posts with #mydailyinspiration tag and the daily hardly filtered and selected series of 10-15 images of the high quality photography and as well awarded people from my earnings in the m0n0mad when my rewards were not too bad. after a few month of doin that i felt empty and destroyed due to the daily endless browsing for the new and unrecognised by the system artists, and no whale was putting any-any attention so i gave up on. Than i decided to concentrate on my own art, finally i'm a photographer not a curator and photography critic.

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careassaktart last month

Exactly, I can get much more response from the physical life community admiring my photography or employing me for different shooting. Also getting paid in physical life in photography is still much higher than this digital world.

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victorbz last month

🔥🔥🔥🔥👍

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friendlymoose last month

Thanks for your comment.

I still believe that here are too less participants who can really write a criticism in comment or express any opinion on photo-art subject.

I don't know if I agree with that statement. I see myself as a photography enthusiast and there are many better photographers here on Hive. But I can express my opinion about a serie of photos.

Anyway I believe it's still worthy to participate in here cause of the multiple purposes.

I hope we can create a change....

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careassaktart last month

We are already changing it!

friendlymoose last month

👊

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cryptoreforma last month

Comunidades Fotográficas_AGO e SET copy.jpg
I've been following the performances of the photographic communities. Two months separate these two pieces of data. I'll do another one in December and by the middle of 2025 I'll have enough material for more objective conclusions.

However, this curiosity stands out: all of them (with the exception of one) have increased their number of subscribers, but most of them have decreased their active users, interactions and pending rewards. Curious 🙃

It's too early to draw conclusions, but it's worth noting that one of them absorbs more pending rewards than all the others. The second largest absorbs all the others.

That's why the flow of curators and content authors to these communities is natural. It's legitimate, we can't condemn attending where we are. Nor can we see those who act like this as enemies. The whales and they are doing what they want, money. That's their goal.

I respect that, but I'm not going there. If the ecosystem allows for other realities, then let's focus on creating something better. Only with transparency, justice, recognition, gratitude and decentralization can we attract new bees. Behind the bees will come whales.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

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acidyo last month

I don't really understand your comments about "the whales want money", it almost doesn't really matter what people vote on as close to no downvotes occur, so they could vote on pretty much anything and the returns in hive would stay the same, so not really sure what you think the whales are doing that enriches them in exchange for not supporting content creators.

When it comes to the communities, one of them is incubated in the OCD program and was recently handed over to a curator who is still active after the previous owner left Hive. You're correct when you say the data is still too small to draw conclusions, especially since the price of Hive has been going down these past few months which may affect the decline in active users in the other communities. You are also correct to assume that the photography community may be "absorbing" activity from other ones because of our active curator in our incubation being able to reward those posting there well. We are however just one curation project on Hive so it doesn't mean the others can't do well only based on if they're incubated in our program or not. I think there's 200 million Hive staked currently with us using 6 million of it + some autovotes on our trail, that's less than 5% effect on the rewardpool.

The reason we don't have other photo communities incubated is because we're trying to only incubate one niche community at a time to allow for others to join that aren't already incubated. The same reason we only have one Gaming community incubated.

Other factors that could result in the decrease in activity in the other communities aside from Hive price are things like the community creator not being active, it not having helpers/engagement/curators casting their votes to authors sharing content there. This is an issue with the way communities are, where the creator is the owner of that account and if they go away the community is left to people who can't control it unless they're also given some of the keys. We've had this happen a few times in the past but we didn't want to step in and create communities of our own to prevent centralization even if it meant a longer lifespan for those communities.

cryptoreforma last month

I'm not discounting whales, or their role in the network. He said he respected it and it is legitimate. What I think is that we shouldn't depend on them. Hence the need for more people, more flow, on the network. In my opinion.

acidyo last month

I'm not saying you shouldn't discount all the whales, like there surely may be some that aren't helping the distribution of Hive to deserving authors but instead spend most of their voting power on a few favorites through autovotes which I'm personally not a fan of. But hive accounts come in all sizes, there may be some orca's who only look out for a few accounts when they could be helping smaller users grow as well. You also gotta remember that at prices of Hive like this the whales are the ones that are at a bigger loss than most, yet they stay here.

victorbz last month

Thank you for this investigation. It's interesting to see all these in one table.
about the "pending rewards" - it's not some additional feature of the communities but the sum of all
ongoing rewards made by the last week publishers to the community and how they were rewarded by the whales, supporting the community hosts. like qurator peakd for the m0n0mad for example.
Don't be wrong, there is no special "pending rewards" coming from HIVE only from the whales connected to the community hosts (the chain, protection whatever) so they votes for their interests as well. You can check the trading posts of every community and to see the "supporting" whale. "appreciator" "resonator" "curatorhulk" "blocktrades" and others
Seems like curie and ocd are less involved and more "fair" but can't say what is moving them.

tikotiko last month

Hi - @friendlymoose thank you for providing this chance to say an opinion and @victorbz thank you for your appreciation.

I too think there is a lot of quality content here in Hive without the reciprocal rewards. I myself have been member of this platform for many years - since 2016, that is almost 8 years, but with some breaks because I had severe health issues. And every time I returned to Hive I felt I was punished for my absence. I can't really prove it but it's a feeling. I think that I am trying and trying and I don't receive proper comments, appreciation, or just criticism. Again, I can't prove it but it is more like a feeling.
Post 4 surgeries, a cancer, a severe autoimmune that destroys my quality of living for years, sometimes I feel someone is pointing a finger at me... (ohh I miss onceuponatime - we had great discussions!)

On the other hand I see great content and appreciation to people which is encouraging. For others!

victorbz last month

thank you for taking a part in this conversation. hope you are feeling better these days !
sure that Hive is not punishing you but just not appreciate your publications as they should be. but i really understand the feeling

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abelfotografia last month

I see HIVE as an alternative to stock photography sites, and with many more advantages, because in each post I "sell" images that are still mine and I receive a payment, let's say instantaneous, without having to upload beyond 1920px with 100ppi resolution. Since the cost of living in my country Cuba is much cheaper than in other more developed places, taking out 60hbd per month covers part of my expenses. In the three years I have been here, I bought a PC and feed my family today, all thanks to HIVE. On the other hand, this here is identical to a social network, whoever has a whale on their side has the great advantage that this has a monetary impact on their content, be it good, average, bad, mediocre or terrible. It hurts me to see colleagues with excellent photos earn just pennies when other users with less talent earn a lot with a review of a third-rate coffee shop, with bad texts and terrible visual coverage, but that's how it is. I accepted that reality a long time ago, and I focus on my photos, with the best possible quality, with a brief story, whether real or fictitious, and with that I paddle in these waters. In shutterstock, Adobe stock and Getty I have made about 280 dollars in 3 years, with many obstacles because I live in a country restricted by all kinds of blockades. So I did my math and here I am.

0.89 VYB

7 votes

friendlymoose last month

It's nice to see that Hive is a source of income for some people. That makes the lack of comments more irrelevant for some.
Thanks for joining the discussion.

nanixxx last month

I enjoyed reading your vision. 👌 You do your maths very well indeed and have in your favour your talent as a photographer, your perseverance and your focus.

abelfotografia last month

Gracias Nani! 🙏☺️

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acidyo last month

It's important to remember that a whale of 500k HP for example is the same as 1000 users with 5k HP each. I'm only making this point because my curation project for instance focuses on distributing hive inflation daily to deserving authors but we can't "force" them to hold onto some hive power for their own use. Many decide to sell everything (instead of say only the HBD) or just leave after a while instead of combining their efforts to get a post to some good rewards together instead of having to rely on "whales" who haven't sold their hive or bought more.

I agree with the rest of your comment, though, hive's a social media platform so it's not enough to just share your photos and expect rewards, you gotta go out there and build connections as well.

This is why we need more users and consumers/curators and preferably those who don't have to sell everything they earn. If we had 100x more users and naturally a bit higher price a lot of authors who only focus on creating could make better rewards in terms of $ value without having to rely on whales/curation projects.

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3 votes

victorbz last month

you're so right, but the mass is even don't attend this conversation and don't really think about

acidyo last month

I'm all for helping authors get properly rewarded and to try and distribute hive as wide as I can, but authors also have to "meet us halfway" so to speak, there's not much point to throw rewards at people if they're not going to be around next bull market to then use their votes for the next generation of authors.

Just looking through this comment section today I started thinking of some ideas on how to empower photography artists more, will need a dev or two and some other help but will think about it some more.

friendlymoose last month

Just looking through this comment section today I started thinking of some ideas on how to empower photography artists more, will need a dev or two and some other help but will think about it some more.

If you need some help or want to share your ideas; feel free to contact me :)
This blog was initially created to improve Hive for photographers. And not only in the form of Hive rewards. I think appreciation in the form of comments.

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victorbz last month

yes, rewards is not really the issue don't get me wrong.

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victorbz last month

i was surprised to saw you attending this conversation :-) and glad that you got some ideas how to improve this place and to make it maybe less depending on "must" posting in, say, m0n0mad where i was banned a few years ago, cos wasn't agree with the host, who is already left as you wrote above if i guessed correctly the name, due its long inactivity and decrease dictatorship of the community :-)))
good luck with the ideas, and i will happy to help

castleberry last month

Howdy @victorbz, i do feel your pain and sentiment more than you realize. Managing the PL community, the Alien Art community, judging the Splinterlands weekly art contest, curating for OCD, and now judging Holozing's Inktober event keeps me more busy than I would like... not to mention having a baby and real life stuff going on.

I love the art of photography and wish I had more time to comment on everyone's posts. I try my best to curate and reward as well as feature the best photographic content we have shared in the community. We are one of the only communities that do features even when the whales aren't voting. Unfortunately, as Acid pointed out many folks don't power up any Hive and have little to offer in the realm of rewards. Most of them don't bother to comment either.

I do think most people are here mostly if not only for the financial aspects and miss out on making connections and friends in the social aspects of what Hive is. I think we have some fantastic photographers, yourself included, and I wish there was more dialogue between everyone. That is the main purpose of doing the HotShots curation posts! I am trying my best to help everyone connect with each other... but the socialization aspects are up to each individual users.

Having said all that... i try my best to appreciate all skill levels and formats of photography. I try to help encourage those with less skills and less professional equipment so that they can grow and discover their own passion for photography. For me, personally, I approached photography as an art from the beginning and less about just getting good 'pictures'.

Analogue needs to be more appreciated by all in this digital age and I have done my best to reward those who are putting in that much work and effort with their photography. Film and development and equipment to do analogue is not cheap and especially when it's compared to the ease of just point and shoot or phone digital photography and editing.

I really appreciate this discussion and the initiative from FriendlyMoose. I don't blame you for being down on the way things operate here on Hive and with photography in general. However, I try my best to find the silver lining and I know that I wouldn't have met so many wonderful people and seen so much diversity in photographic content with the opportunity to connect with the photographers themselves without this platform. I'm thankful for all that Hive has had to offer over the years regardless of some of the shortcomings of the platform and it's users.

Keep up the great work and please don't stop posting. Cheers my friend.

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4 votes

coloneljethro last month

I don't see how you do all that, just responding to the comments on my posts wears me out.

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victorbz last month

Sure @castleberry ! will continue posting and talking about photography, music and collaboration
agree with you that "just getting good 'pictures'" is very easy today with the high quality phones cameras and the less professional digital cameras, doing an amazing job, but can't dictate better seeing :-))
thank you for the kind words and the difficult work you're doing here on Hive

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friendlymoose last month

I do think most people are here mostly if not only for the financial aspects and miss out on making connections and friends in the social aspects of what Hive is.

I think a lot of us are. Especially those who need the money to pay the bills. But when I read the comments on this post a lot of people would like to have more engagement too.

There are initiatives like @commentrewarder and the OCDB comment nominations to generate more rewards for comments.
Yes, you do create a financial incentive again, but it might be just the push some people need.
And the result will be more engagement.

I'm also playing with another idea (besides this #aap initiative) to promote engagement via comments.

3 votes

monochromes last month

The "m0n0mad" host is still here.
It's sad you take every chance to bash the second biggest photographic community in Hive just because you were called out and muted for recycling your own content. Thank yourself for that.
While you move air around we move stake and support good photography since 2018 (2017 if counting the time I was starting it from my @brumest account).
You were muted what? 3 years ago or so?
And still holding the grudge...
I am not much of a statistic type of guy, but I would love to see the value of my curation/proxy votes through the projects I cooperate with comparing to your contribute to the Hive ecosystem along all that time.
You're a flip-flopper, a taker, complaining about whales and stake holders. The same whales and stake holders who actually have the ability to give you the votes you're so disappointed you're not getting.
I don't think you understand the ecosystem you're in or what a DPoS chain is.
You recently even accused us of using a bot (or bots?) to make our selections.
I think this is a good time to ask for you to back up that claim or simply shut the fuck up once and for all.
You're paranoid and delusional. Seek help @victorbz.

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victorbz last month

you make me smile ;-)

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victorbz last month

i'm glad that this platform is working for you perfectly. especially when there are blockaded and i can't get why these blockades are still exists.

coloneljethro last month

Ha, I'm paddling with you! Did the math and decided hive was going to do better than stock, have debated going expat and wandering places where I can live on my HBD.

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abelfotografia last month

good to know! Lets go hahaha! 🙌🙌🙌

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grafvisionsp last month

I truly understand your reflection on all of this, and the world of photography still suffers from great prejudice, a great lack of visibility in all niches. The secret is to focus on your best, and never give up, because the secret to success is persistence! Thank you for mentioning my profile in this report, and for liking my photographic work. Stay strong my friend, together we are strong!!! @victorbz

victorbz last month

thank you for the kind words !

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stayoutoftherz last month

A lot of interaction comes from how far you interact with the community here for yourself. If one just dumps photos and does not incentivize comments by upvoting, replying, appreciating and if one does not comment on other people´s post, he will not get too much attention. But of course this is time-consuming and requires patience. Also to have a stake here helps, too. If a photographer is embedded in a (local) community, this is of course better, too.

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victorbz last month

exactly what is about the original post - communication between people and not only votes gaining process :-)

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careassaktart last month

Great initiative! Bravo!

friendlymoose last month

Thanks!

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hivephoto last month

!LOL

Posted using Hive Images

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lolzbot last month

lolztoken.com

What is Victorias Secret?
High prices.
_{Credit: reddit}
@friendlymoose, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of hivephoto

(5/10)
Farm LOLZ tokens when you Delegate Hive or Hive Tokens.
Click to delegate: 10 - 20 - 50 - 100 HP

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nanixxx last month

I think the debate has started, which I think is perfect!

friendlymoose last month

It surely started. Good to see I'm not the only one.

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coloneljethro last month

I will have to try the tag out, I've had similar experiences, posts with the most upvotes for the day and yet almost all of the comments are of the shallow 'good job!' variety.

friendlymoose last month

Cool!
I think we both need to use the #aap hashtag on our posts and check other posts with the hashtag.
Personally I have started to create more quality comments under post.

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manuelgil64 last month

I have a little over 6 years in Hive and my content is mostly photographic, and as you say, although it is a very popular topic and there are several weekly initiatives, the level of interaction, and even support from users and the communities themselves, has decreased a lot compared to previous years, and I really do not understand the reason.

I understand that this is just the beginning of a much deeper debate than what we see today, but it certainly affects those of us who create and enjoy photography.

lightcaptured last month

My two cents.

HIVE is not the best platform for photographers. Here the rewards of the posts are similar to the likes on the web2 social nets.
As photographers speak with their visuals and here, unless your post is tens of photos and thousands of words, you won't get proper rewards. Not to mention the circle-circling as for some it doesn't matter what is posted at all.
Then, posts with low rewards are not shown in the trending lists.

Then comes another issue. As many here just follow the money trail and post where the big whales spread votes, there is one huge photographic community and the others are almost invisible. Now see, the two curators of that community has nothing or let's say very little to do with Photography. Check out their posts if you don't believe me. Additionally, they don't just curate "good" content, of course to their own taste, but they follow a set of unwritten rules. "you have to post here, you don't have to post there, you have to make n number of comments, you have to engage, you have to be friends with ... you have to be always positive, etc.". Content matters, but probably somewhere between 10 and 20% ;)))

As a summary of that I would say there are hundreds of whales and curators here but only one team is objective enough to really add some extra rewards and attention to good photographic content - that's the team of Curangel. In some extent the other teams don't go /usually/ outside their circles of accounts.

I still create exclusive content for HIVE but I am losing my motivation and inspiration with each passing month and I understand all those photographers who either stopped sharing their best stuff or just quit.

I wasn't going to comment at all but I saw the comment by @victorbz whose works I follow. I fully agree with his comment.
I am not expecting any miracles to happen here, as I generally don't kiss ass and I more or less speak what's on my heart.

I still ride this train as there are a handful of people whose works I like and would like to follow forward but to be honest, the financial part of the equation, personally for me is quite disappointing and on HIVE it is, in my opinion, an estimate of how valuable and original your content is. Then, as I said, I couldn't be more wrong about that :))))

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victorbz last month

thanks for your frankness my friend.
some people here are trying to shut our mouths, but truth is truth and the smart heads know exactly who do you mean.

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lightcaptured last month

Unfortunately nothing good will come out from that. I just wasted my time sharing my sincere thoughts :)))

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victorbz last month

actually me too. i finished with this completely from now.

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friendlymoose last month

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I'm not a professional photographer, so every earning I get from my photography posts is nice for me. I won't earn more when I'm going to post them on other platforms I think. But that might be different for other photographers.

And it can be annoying when low quality posts of users that get autovotes (or manual votes) from people with large stakes get many more rewards than my posts I worked hard for, but I choose not to worry too much about it since I cannot change this.

What I can change, and this is what I'm trying with this initiative is improve the amount and the quality of the feedback on photography blogs.

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