I think it's a pity that it doesn't seem to be appreciated as much as it should be...
Well, perhaps anyone looking for appreciation, thanks, glory or whatever should change to a different interest - we photographers are a strange lot, with a lot of very niche interests and, as has been pointed out, many of us are ancient too
. And even within our very limited market, we're pretty bad at reading long-ish articles and watching videos that run for around 10 - 15 minutes. I've just looked at the stats for my latest video,
It runs for 14 minutes but the average viewing duration is just 2.12 minutes, just 15.8%, far too short a viewing time for people to actually learn anything. I've now started asking people to like my videos, comment on them and subscribe to my channel, but that request is at the end and as most people don't bother to watch for more than a couple of minutes that isn't working . . .
OK, I'm the world's worst presenter and my video "skills" are low, but even photography videos by fast-talking Americans who are constantly smiling and talking nonsense still don't get a massive audience, it's just a subject that doesn't appeal to many people.
I've been active on this forum for a lot of years now, it's always been my view that this is the best forum by far, and I formed that view long before I was demoted to moderator. I think that the great strengths are the static content such as galleries and resources, and the excellent search function, and of course it has the massive benefit that it's run by members for members, it isn't run to keep advertisers happy. Most forums have now wandered off into the sunset, replaced (up to a point) by a myriad of "groups" on anti-social media, where it's impossible to find old posts as well as useful info.
I really do wish that more people would join me in creating static content. I have a lifetime of experience in my very limited field, but like most people I'm completely clueless when it comes to subjects like macro and micro, I have no idea how to photograph birds, or sports, or pretty much everything, and I've pretty much forgotten everything that I used to know about shooting on film, developing and using an enlarger - let's get this knowledge written down while we still can!
Well, I did say "knowledge"... but yeah, the loss of knowledge and being replaced with bad information is discouraging IMO.
And this, as I see it, is a major problem. Literally anyone can publish nonsense all over the web. Before we had that facility I had a few books published, it was a long, slow and frustrating process, writing to a publisher's spec, then the book would go through the editing stage, where anything controversial (and potentially useful) would be taken out, and it would be out of date by publication date . . . but, these disadvantages were balanced by the fact that bad content simply didn't get published.
