VERO and other social media

This post is mainly for me, noodling through what I think about social media. Maybe it will turn into a rant along the way. Maybe not. It could get long as I figure out what I think. Maybe best to go get a drink, then get stuck in.

Instagram. 

My most recent post is 35 weeks ago, early August 2022. I look at it every now and then, but the notifications is filled with spam, and the images are movies. So many ads. Plus it's a terrible platform for actually looking at, and for, nice images.

LinkedIn.

Once this was a staple of my life. Contractors have to stay connected to hear about that next job. People expect to see your working highlights. At first that's exactly what it was, then it's been migrating to be more like Facebook. I just looked. Good Lord it's like Facebook. So many ads.

Once I retired I weeded out a surprising number of my contacts that were dead, or I couldn't see any conceivable reason why we'd need to contact each other. I changed the header to say retired. I decided I wasn't going to use LinkedIn to promote my photography interests. I should probably deactivate the account.

News in general

Sigh. People have been saying that the world is going to hell in a handcart ever since we started writing down the things people say. I try to be optimistic, thinking that half of all the smartest people that have ever lived are here now, with ways of communicating that were undreamed of a lifetime ago.

And yet, the smart people seem to be drowned out by the great unwashed masses. People that vote against their own self interest. People that cannot follow a simple logic chain of A to B to C, or recognize even the most obvious logical fallacies. People that are essentially 2 year olds, screaming ME ME ME!

And then there are the advertisements, some disguised as actual news articles. All the things in the news that are not actually news, like sports and celebrities, to name two obvious non-news items. Don't get me started on political propaganda. It's all bread and circuses. 

I'm trying to look at the headlines in the morning, and ignore it the rest of the day, but it's hard. Humans have this morbid fascination with train wrecks, and we can't look away. I keep telling myself, under most circumstances, if the rich and powerful are permitting it to be published, then it's advertising. What they don't want you to see is more likely to be news.

Facebook. 

I've been on it about 10 years, reluctantly at first. Mostly it was fun, connecting with or staying connected to people as they got on with their lives. But really, many of the people I'm 'friends' with now are strangers, since we've both moved on with our lives. Over the last while I'd only connect with people I actually knew, and could contact via other channels to verify the friend request. So many fake accounts.

But it's a terrible platform now. So many ads. So little content that I want to see. Too many movies, or whatever they're called. What I want is simple. A reverse chronological display of what people on my friends list have posted for themselves, with comments on those posts, and then what they've reposted from elsewhere, and comments on that. Notifications when new comments arrive. Emphatically no sponsored ads, no suggestions for what the algorithm thinks I ought to see, no messing with the date order. Then it's simple, you scroll down and read until you recognize a post. Then you stop and get on with something important.

Except that isn't what Facebook wants. It wants you to keep scrolling, getting outraged, posting comments, and reposting postings, and reading the ads, and responding to the click bait. No more. I'm sick of it.

It got to the point where the only thing I was actually posting was notifications that I'd blogged, but the funny thing is that I couldn't tell if it made a difference in my readership. To some extent that's an issue with blogger stats (don't get me started on statistics), but then that's the way they like it. If you can't tell what actually works, you can't stop what doesn't work. If you aren't sure you've seen the post that just below the bottom of the screen, then you'll keep scrolling.

It reminds me of the old joke where a consultant tells the ad manager that he's wasting money on his campaigns. The manager responds, of course I am, I know that half of what I spend is completely wasted, and if I could tell which half I'd stop spending it today.

So a while ago I stopped posting the blog notifications. As near as I can tell, my blog readership didn't change, which I admit might not be completely true for the photo blog page. I'd look at Facebook once in the morning, mainly to see if there were any messages or notifications. The top item would be something from my friends, then the stupid click bait movie content, then an ad. I'd do a real fast scroll down a few posts looking for names I knew, then go look at the groups I belong to. I was pretty well down to looking at Facebook once in the morning, and once in the afternoon or evening. 

Starting April 1 I haven't looked at all. I'm going to see if I can make it the entire month without looking at Facebook. Let's see if anyone emails or texts me, asking if I'm ok. Let's see what else I get up to in the time freed up.

VERO

This is a new one, coming onto the scene in 2018 as a potential replacement for Instagram. It's a strictly chronological feed, and displays your photos the way they were uploaded. No messing with the aspect ratio or degrading the image to fit a size requirement.

I've started posting photos there about the time I stopped looking at Instagram, and I'm having a great time. The question I ask myself when looking at photos and deciding if I want to follow a photographer is, "Does this person post interesting photos?" They don't have to bat 1000. But if many of the photos are ones I'd have taken in that scene, or are interesting, or make me think, or inspire me, or make me exclaim out loud, then I'm going to follow that person. Almost every photo in my feed is better than anything on Instagram.

So then, what do I post? Let's take a digression. There's one guy in Antwerp that takes photos of women riding bicycles. Quite nice photos of well dressed, stylish women, in typically great light. For a while I was thinking he was finding models, putting them on a bike, and having them ride past a location where he'd know there's good light. I'm pretty sure it's a bunch of locations each used many times, but I've come to think that it's ordinary people out doing their errands. Maybe the women there dress better than most women here.

But I'm interested in many different kinds of photography, depending on the weather, my moods, what my photo buddies might be up to, and the magical aha! moment. So I want my VERO feed to reflect that. Like image of the month, I don't consider photos taken for the community association or any of my clients. I try to post the really good ones, but there's been some surprises. 

So for example. This one. I've blogged it a couple times, and posted it in VERO because I was looking for a black and white film image.

I posted it, not sure what the response might be. To my surprise, it's the most popular image I've posted. More people liked it than I had followers at the time. And this one, just to satisfy your curiosity, is the next most liked image. It has about as many likes as I had followers.

Other images that I've posted are not nearly so well liked, and some of those are a surprise. I get that people like various images for various reasons, and there's an element of people that might like an image but not seeing it because they were busy that day and didn't scroll. Still, one of the fun things about VERO is that people like an image, then check out the photographer, then a bunch of likes show up.

So far I have had little success in predicting which images will be liked or commented on. I'm not bent out of shape about that since I'm not posting images to get the likes. I'm posting as part of a social group that shares photos. This way I get to see other interesting photos, and I might get to meet other interesting photographers. After all, some of the people on VERO live in Calgary.

My routine is to look at VERO in the morning and think about what to post. The idea is to post one image a day. I'll look at recent images I like a lot, and it's a chance to back over images from previous years. I've talked about my star rating system, and generally wouldn't modify a rating for older images. 

But it does sometimes make me think about why I've rated an image a certain way. I look back at older images and let's just say I wouldn't rate some of them as highly as I did if I were to do it over again. I'm slowly working my way to selecting images to be printed, or to go into a book, and that's not a process to be rushed. 

This morning I was browsing for images, and ended up looking at a bunch of photos of Curtis. Such a handsome photogenic kitty. Still miss him. If you want to see what I actually posted this morning, there's a link to VERO up at the top of my sidebar on the right.

Lastly, I'm guessing that many of my readers have my blog bookmarked and drop in when they have a few minutes, or there's a link to it on another blog, or you get my blog notification email. Which, if you don't get it now and want it, you can be put on it for the asking. Send an email to keith at nucleus dot com and I'll add you to the list. Or text me, or leave a comment. I'm curious though, if you don't get the email notification, how do you get here to read the blog?

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

Tombstone

Film (new)

Film (old)

Us working to clear a blocked storm drain. Yes, that's a sword.

More recent books

The whole putting a book on hold feature at the library is great, provided you know exactly what to look for. We put things on hold, and let the computer system manage the lineup. It takes however long it takes. I think we waited about a year for our turn with American Gods season one DVD. I just put a hold on Three Thousand Years of Longing, and I'm 227 on 6 copies. It's going to be a while. We've been expecting a particular book and it's taking forever to get from 3 holds on 3 copies, to us reading it.

And no, since you ask, we haven't signed up for any streaming services since Netflix changed it's rules and kicked us off a legit shared account. Linda has been reading up a storm, and I haven't been much in the mood to watch TV. We still have a set of DVDs to chew through.

But I'm old fashioned in some ways. I like browsing the shelves of a library, head turned to the side to read the titles. I like seeing the results of the librarians updating the 'what's new' section. I like seeing the gradual turnover of books, some of the old being replaced by the new. I absolutely love the discovery of a new book in a section I'm familiar with. I like that the parking lot is full, because it means the library is full of life. Libraries are one of the foundation stones of a civilized society. There's a reason those in power try to ban books and defund libraries.

Like the first one below. It was new to me, and I've lately become much more interested in black and white, so it was an easy book to pull off the shelf. The Photographer's Black and White Handbook by Harold Davis.

I ended up being disappointed. It's more about what I think of as digital trickery than the art of finding a composition and capturing light on a scene. Photographers sometimes look at an image and say that it's over baked. The colours are too intense, or there's a certain something about it that we know isn't the way the world looks at any time. Sure, there are photos with magical light, or unusual settings, and yes, every photo you've ever seen has been edited, but we recognize the real world in them.

Most of Davis's images are interesting, are compositionally well done, but just a bit too intense or a bit too sharp. It seems strange to say that a black and white image can be over baked, but that's where I ended up.

It could have been redeemed if the text was more interesting, but it's quite repetitive. It's all Photoshop layers and merging multiple exposures. For some photographers that's right up their alley and how nice for them. Not for me. It's probably worth getting out of the library, or a really good browse, but I wouldn't buy it.

Caste, The Origins of our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson.

This is an uncomfortable read. I'd always thought that racism was a white vs black thing. But it isn't. It's a status thing. A power thing. Who has it, who doesn't, and the gradations between them. 

Once you get that, it becomes much easier to understand the why behind the insanity happening in the US recently. It's about a group that knows it's behind the demographic 8 ball, and are desperately trying to maintain their position at the top of the pyramid. Part of the whole point of the caste system is about one group exerting their influence over another, just because they can. 

It's just assumed that the higher castes can interfere in the lives of lower caste people, which is why we see cops being called on black people going about their business in perfectly legitimate ways. Those higher caste people DON'T see it as legitimate. Even well off Black people are occasionally reminded of their place in the caste system (at the bottom, if you've lost track). We read about a politician, a sports star, or celebrity pulled over and harassed because of course a Black person is suspicious if they're dressed well driving a nice car in a nice neighbourhood. This is not a mistake or an accident. It's part of the system.

As a digression, the pronunciation of caste. Say these words to yourself:

baste

haste

paste

taste

waste

and ask yourself would you pronounce caste? But really, it's more like kawst or kahst. Or so they say. Don't get me started on reforming English spelling.

The book compares the caste systems in India and Nazi Germany to USA. You know it's bad when the Nazi's thought the American laws were too extreme. The only reason the caste system went away in Germany is because it was militarily defeated, and Germany has gone through a decades long soul-searching journey to come to grips with it's history. I wonder if there are any biographies of Jews that escaped Nazi Germany, and then moved back in the 50's or 60's?

India has outlawed the caste system, but it hasn't totally gone away. It's been part of their society for thousands of years, regulating how groups interacted with each other. It isn't a completely rigid structure, but the barriers between the Jati (think of them as sub-castes) are pretty firm. I think many Indian names are long and complicated, but their name and where they're from is often enough for someone to know what Jati you are, and thus determining the relationship between you. In some ways it's like Professor Henry Higgins saying, "Whenever any Englishman opens his mouth, he makes some other Englishman despise him."

America's caste system isn't nearly as old, but there's a lot of similarities. In India there are 4 main castes, plus the 'untouchables', now called Dalits. In America, there's pretty well only white people, and everybody else, with some subtle gradations within that group. Except that who is defined as White has changed. At first it was only people descended from western Europeans. Even Southern and Eastern Europeans did not qualify. Even the Irish didn't qualify at first. Chinese and Japanese people didn't either. Of course, slaves and former slaves didn't qualify, not even remotely. In fact, the common phrase was that 'one drop of Negro blood' made one a Negro. 

What that meant was that immigrants struggled to be classed as 'White'. It meant the world in terms of making a better life in America. Many (but not all) immigrant groups have successfully managed to get themselves classed as White regardless of their actual skin colour. They were allowed into the club mainly I think because it bolstered the numbers and staved off that demographic catastrophe. Which reminds me of the classic "One of Us" episode of Yes Minister.

So who isn't White now? Mainly its Native Americans, and some people with brown skin. It doesn't matter if they are descended from slaves or are a recent immigrant. What confuses things is when religion comes into it.

We tell ourselves stories to explain the world in front of us. For a long time that involved a multiple pantheons of gods squabbling with one another. When you learn to think of those gods as children, the stories make a whole lot more sense. Then we developed a more scientific way of looking at the world and we've got a pretty good grip on the natural world. We can predict the weather, we can send a robot millions of kilometres and have it land on another planet within a couple of kilometres of the intend spot and have that robot last 50 times longer than the expected useful lifespan. But we're still getting a grip on how our brains work, so we're still figuring out the story there.

And then there's the stories of how we relate to each other and why. How we make collective decisions and what the balance is between societal expectations and individual freedoms. The stories (being polite) that politicians tell to get and stay elected. The stories the people in each caste tell each other about themselves and the 'other'. We've always been afraid of the other. 

What these stories have in common is that many of them are poisonous, and the caste system story is one of the worst. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

Tombstone

Film (new)

This is bridge 3 on Acros II.

Film (old)

Nefertitti trying to take advantage of a sleeping Sebastian. It didn't work. She got thumped.

March Image of the Month

That month went by quickly, though it wasn't particularly productive for my own photography. I always seem to struggle with the tail end of winter. I'm sick of white, but there's still a lot of it. And where it's not white, it's mud, which is even less photogenic.

One of the things I'm learning is that some images don't need colour. That there isn't any to speak of these days is beside the point. So this was a good time to expose some Acros II black and white film.

As it happens, I posted two of these in a group on my other blog last Friday, so they won't be new to you, but maybe you'll be pleased to see them again. 

Second Runner Up

Same film, but on 35mm during a walk in Votier's Flats in Fish Creek. I was loving the various shades, from the bright white snow, to the dark shadows, and the transitions between them on the curves. This turned out even better than hoped.

First Runner Up.

This was a tough choice. I also liked the one a bit further down stream. You can see all the photos from that roll here. As soon as I saw this I knew I wanted to capture it, and spent some time playing with composition, and trying to figure out the metering. I was hoping the flowing water would show up better, but it's there if you look. There was just enough motion in the water that a normal exposure photo wouldn't have seen the reflections.

Image of the Month

Long exposure, knowing there wasn't any water spray to go white, but looking to capture the texture of water over the rocks. The reflections were a nice bonus.

19 out of 44

Or if you like percentages, 43% Actually, it's not as bad as that. I'm trying to be a tough marker. In another sense, I got 37 out of 45, or 82%. Confused? No fear, all will be explained.

The big film camera will get 8 photos on a roll. There is no sneaking in an extra. The small film camera will, on a roll of 36, sometimes get 37 photos. 

Those following along with the story till now know I dropped off a roll of each at the lab, and now you've probably gathered that I got them back. Everybody caught up now?

I'm pretty pleased with the results. There aren't enough photos on a coherent topic to create a blog on the other channel, where I typically talk about film, and try to produce an actual essay. The long exposures were ok for an initial exploration of an idea. They didn't turn out quite like I had expected, but they were interesting (to me, at least) and I'll be exploring further. 

I'm getting better at focus. None are wildly out of focus, and the two that look soft, I think are actually underexposed. They're sort of a soft grey all over, and I remember the setting being fairly dark.

There are a couple pairs, where I did different exposures of the same scene, and would typically only pick one to edit. And of course, there are some photos where I look at them now and wonder what I was thinking then. It might be a case of the camera not seeing what I was seeing, but more likely is that I didn't think about it enough. At least none of the big camera photos are like that.

So you get this blog today, with a bit of this and that. Some fairly recent photos.

1. Linda, strolling a beach.

2. As the wind blows, so the tree is shaped.

3. Artsy. Not sure where the purple came from, but there it was.

4. Surfers working it on Sombrio Beach. 

5. Abstract ice.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

Tombstone

Celina, ignoring me and the camera.

Film (new)

I like the shapes of snow as it melts. Not actually a panorama, just cropped.

Film (old)

Sebastian and Nefertitti.

In colour and black and white

No, I'm not talking about the famous 1977 Cheap Trick album that was one of my favourites. Still is, actually. I'm listening to it as I write. 

I'm thinking about photos that work better in black and white, rather than colour. I recently blogged two photos of waves crashing over rocks. They were in colour, just barely, and Sean suggested they might look better in black and white. I hadn't thought of that at the time and after a few minutes of processing, I had black and white versions of them. 

What do you think?

And.

There was a bit of additional processing for the B&W version, and I'm still not 100% convinced I got it right. I could probably make the water whiter. There is specialty image editing software specifically for B&W, and I'm considering getting it, and seeing what difference that makes.

The two most recent rolls of film, which are currently at the lab, are B&W. I'm pretty sure I know what the 120 film photos will look like, but being long exposure, you never know till you see them. The 35mm has been in the camera a while, and I no longer remember what started the roll. That's part of the charm of film. Part of the trick to editing is to have some time between making the photo, and seeing it. I'm having fun reviewing old photos to decide what to add to VERO for my daily update, but sometimes I look at a photo and wonder why I edited that, or thought it was good at the time.

I'm also reading a book about B&W photography, and after seeing one of the examples in the book, I was inspired to go out and capture something I'd seen the other day. In colour they are yellow and white and kind of gross looking actually. Converting to B&W, and tweaking the sliders a bit more than would be seemly for colour, you get this. Artistic? Or still gross?

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

Tombstone

Film (new) In fact, I'm out of new film photos at the moment, though I've got a roll of both 35mm and 120 at the lab right now. So to hold you over, you get another old film photo. This one is a rare occurrence, to see all of Linda's brother's and sisters together with their mom. From L to R, ignoring the small children, Kelly, Angie, Dave, Mary, Linda, Audrey, Gerald, and Kim. The time frame is 1992 or 93, as near as we can tell. Sad to say, but three of those people have passed away.

Film (old) Sebastian.

Recent books

The three recent books out of the library are:

Venice from the Skies by Riccardo Roiter Rigoni and Debora Gusson.

Walk with me New York by Susan Kaufman.

Tones of Grace by Dave Brosha.

I loved Venice. I'd go back in a heartbeat if it wasn't for all the other tourists crowding it. There's more to see than where we got to, so I snatched it up as soon as I saw it. Then I was disappointed. It's helicopter photos, with a bit of history. Here I was and this is what I saw. Most of the book is the other islands near Venice, not the city itself. They didn't include a map. 

The New York book was better. It made me want to walk the city, so I suppose the book is a success from that point of view. There were some lovely (and extremely expensive) homes, and a surprising amount of greenery in what I had conceived of as a boring city space. Linda liked it for the garden photos, and what people have done with limited space.

Often reading about New York it seems like it's a big village where everyone knows each other. More accurately it's s conglomeration of villages, somewhat overlapping each other. The book included several small scale maps, so at least one could look at an ordinary street map and figure out where that neighbourhood is. It's probably better to read the book, or rather, the many photo books of New York, than to visit. I'm not likely to ever see the city in person. 

When we were in London, we were constantly amused to recognize scenes because a movie or TV show was filmed there. I'd imagine that the same is true of New York.  In fact I just checked, there are pages of location tours in New York.

Calgary has been used as a set location for various films and TV shows. I remember watching the first season of Fargo, when there's a winter scene of someone driving along with a city downtown in the background. The Bow building is prominent, and it took me right out of the show, since I instantly started thinking about where that camera had been situated, and what they had to screen out or screen in using digital wizardry to get the look that appears on screen.

The Brosha book is wonderful! If you're a photographer put a hold on it at the library, at the least. It's at The Camera Store for $50. I'm not sure I'll buy it, but it would be a good gift for a photographer, especially one that likes black and white.

I see great black and white photographs, and yearn to be able to create good photos that work without colour. (And with colour too, for that matter.) There's far more to it than using black and white film, or telling Lightroom to convert to black and white. He references Sebastiao Salgado, a well known photographer in black and white, and as it happens, I've read his book Genesis. You can get that one out of the library as well. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

Tombstone

Film (new)

Film (old)

With the red 1995 Caravan in the background, that dates the photo late 1990's. We had it till 2004 or so. I'm trying to clear the ice blocking a storm drain.