(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* Sometimes I look at my old photography and think it's great, no notes, probably better than I realized at the time. Sometimes I look at my old stuff and wonder what the heck even is this? The Timberline photos I had were taking during a serious tryhard phase of me trying to become gooder and oof, yeah, I need to reshoot.

* When did youtube did it's big crackdown on adblock and trying to get people to whitelist or sub? Because it feels like it hasn't been that long and a lot of big youtubers have left since, now including the Watcher crew.

Comments

[mxcatmoon]

Reposted because DW did one of those weird things where it posted twice, and both would probably vanish if I deleted one.

So this is another thing I love that I'm losing this week. 😢

Obviously, I can barely make ends meet, so I won't be paying for Watcher videos (I've loved them since the Buzzfeed days). Life sucks.

[olivermoss]

That really sucks, I'm sorry. I know it's comfort media for a lot of people.

[mxcatmoon]

As for ad blocker... I don't use it. I'm old school from broadcast TV with an antenna days. I deal, use that time to go to the bathroom or get a snack. I wasn't raised on streaming. It's not the end of the world to deal with some ads to watch something for free. ;) The only time it does get annoying is when I'm listening to a long music compilation and the ads cut into the middle of a song. I admit, that will make me switch to something else.

[olivermoss]

I don't mind ads as a concept. It's a good way to cover the costs to make content and gain a wide audience. However, I am both sound and photosensitive since a medical crisis I had in 2016 and the exact sort of SOUND JUMP and flickering images a lot of ads use to grab attention cause me to fatigue rapidly. I can only watch Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse in a tiny window in ten minute chunks because of the specific type of animation that it uses.

I don't mind ads, but I need to be able to set boundaries with them. If I cannot set boundaries, they need to go away. Also, I credit not seeing food ads as one of the reasons I don't have cravings or angst like other people on very limited diets for medical reasons.

[mxcatmoon]

You definitely have important reasons for avoiding ads. I'm glad it's helped you in dealing with the limited diet. I just don't have any money to spend on ad-free streaming, so luckily, I can deal with it. I just feel like the paywalls are growing and it stinks for us poor folk. But then I tell myself to shut up and deal with it and remember the days when all I had were three networks and prime time.

[mxcatmoon]

LOL, just been on YouTube and see there are already a bunch of videos of people complaining about Watcher's move. Even streamers who have never heard of them before are talking about it! It might be a big mistake for them, business-wise but oh well. I'll miss them but I'll find other things to watch.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it's kind of baffling that they don't get their market niche and they dropped the announcement right before some UK live shows.

It seems like a very weird move to me, but I am trying to not have too much of an opinion on it because I've seen some Watcher, I'm in some Watcher-adjecent spaces, but I am not really in their fandom. But yeah, it's odd, especially in this economy.

[lovelyangel]

Self-assessment in photography often seems like an exercise in circular frustration. I guess that’s why we’re told to get outside opinions more often (which I neglect to do). If older photos seem weak, it probably means you’re growing as a photographer. That’s a good thing.

I look at my favorite photos, and many of them are my older ones – and I feel like I’m not improving, not growing. I have some ideas for changing things up, but oftentimes it’s just easier to do the patterns I’ve done before – and hope I get lucky. Being in competition with oneself is probably just causing myself aggravation, and maybe I should take things less seriously.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I place a high value on going outside and not looking for other photog's spots. I don't want to arrive with an idea of what I am going to shoot in mind. Tho, wow, yeah, I've had people try to harass me into giving them my 'locations list' when the shoot is from a 7 hour walk in the rain.

It's frustrating because during a point when I was getting out to a lot of cool places I was very much in my try-hard era. It's also frustrating because I keep having reasons to go through some of my old files and man, at this point I am just bored of looking at certain pictures that at the time I was excited about.

Once you reach a certain point with photography improving your skills or improving your portfolio becomes such an incremental thing. It takes insane amounts of time to get like a 1% improvement, but the only way forward is to keep going after those small improvements and hope they add up.

[mistressofmuses]

Looking back on old stuff is always such a mixed experience. I feel the same way about older writing or art... like, sometimes damn, I was so onto something here! Other times... yikes, me.

I know I've heard a lot of frustration about the youtube stuff for several months now, but I don't remember when it started.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I did some cool stuff when I was very much in my tryhard era about getting better. I guess maybe I needed than to learn what not to do, but it's still annoying to look back on.

[kay_brooke]

I've recently actually stopped getting the big "Turn off your Adblock" pop-ups on YouTube. I stopped watching YT months ago because of the pop-ups (and no, I will not whitelist), but a few weeks ago I followed a link to YT, didn't get a pop-up, tried some more videos and didn't get a pop-up on a single one. So I went on a bit of a YouTube binge and had no issues. Now, I haven't watched anything on there for the last couple weeks, so I can't say if the pop-up nonsense has started back up for me or not.

[olivermoss]

Huh, maybe the ad-blockers got better.

I know there are heavy hitters on youtube I don't even know about, but it's funny to me how many people have left since this started and how much less YT I watch.