One thing I really like about Flickr is the groups and their weekly challenges. One of those is Smile on Saturday which had the theme of “Rings” this week.
In terms of the actual image, it was taken with the Sony Alpha a7C II and Sigma 105mm f/2.8 DN Macro. You may wonder what the surface for this image was, and it was actually taken on the arm of my couch. The texture and color of the fabric make for a great background.
We have a large window to the left of this, so I just set up my 5-in-1 reflector using the diffuser panel to soften the light.
Back to Instagram
So I made the decision to go back to Instagram after not posting on there for almost 4 years now.
By now, I was hoping we’d have the next Flickr or 500px, but sadly, it hasn’t happened, at least yet. A lot of the issues I had with Instagram are still there with some new ones (like my posts simply disappearing or the over-compression), but as I find sites like Reddit less favorable, I thought I’d give it another try.
To me, Reddit is better than Instagram in almost every aspect except for Karma. If you’ve never used Reddit, they have something called Karma, which is essentially like a voting/history system where people can either upvote you or downvote you if they like or don’t like your content.
This by itself isn’t a bad thing, but I find that it actually creates a culture of conformity. For example, there’s a certain game I like, and if I posted that I do enjoy it, I would be flooded with downvotes. If you have negative karma, you can’t post in certain subreddits or even comment, so it somewhat forces you to share the same opinion as everyone else.
In terms of photography, if people don’t like food photos, for example (which I have been told by many people they don’t like my food photos), you’ll get downvoted rather than just ignored like on something like Instagram or Flickr.
I may still post on Reddit, but for now, I’ll try to put more effort back into Instagram. That’s it for my small rant, so please make sure to follow me on IG if you want to keep up with me there. And if you’d like to be notified of these blog posts, please subscribe below.
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