Flying Along

A

fter reading Storyteller, many of you know I like blurry motion pictures. I try not to publish too many of them because, you know, you’d get bored. For that matter it’s the same reason musicians playing a concert don’t play five or six fast songs in a row. They — and me — try to create a little space using the notion of ebb and flow.

I think it works.

But, I’m not sure about that. My numbers keep dropping on all the socials. I’m not alone. Some photographer’s groups are discussing just that. The biggest change comes from Instagram. They’ve changed everything with respect to advertising and video.

Rather than showing the usual people that you are following on you feed, Meta added more advertising some of which is hidden in plain sight. I went wild on the other Meta platform — Facebook — and deleted all advertising, even legitimate ads from banks, phone companies and so on.

In direct competition with Tik Tok, they have also added more “Reels” to my feed. How many cute kitten videos do I need to watch? If I want that, I’ll go to YouTube.

They also show me feeds because I liked or watched something similar. Stop force feeding me. I have a brain no matter what they think.

So, what’s the result? In both the short and long term, photographers are leaving social media sites. If they go anywhere they are feeding Twitter. They say that these days Twitter provides more direct engagement with less forced advertising.

Hmmm.

T

his picture is another Australian image. I wrote about my days in Melbourne yesterday. This is the commuter train I used to ride into the city. I don’t think it moved quite as fast as I made it look in this photograph. At least I hope not.

I made it by racking a zoom lens out, or in, I forget which. That’s one way to make light streaks.

And, look, look, look, that little sign board says Flinders Street. The very place that I traveled to almost everyday.

Happy hump day.