photographic vlogger
photographic vloggers/
noun
plural noun: photographic vloggers
- a person who blogs about photographic equipment in which the postings are primarily in video form.
"see also - annoying, pointless, inaccurate, low production values, out of focus, fat, bald, ugly, self centred, money grabbing, irrelevant, narcissistic, nobody, talentless, dickhead."
The PhotographicVlogger Equation -
"The rise of the photographic vloggers is in inverse proportion to the number of cameras sold and the interest in photography as an art form using stand alone cameras"
These f*****s are everywhere. You've seen them, close ups of (in the main) fat ugly old people stumbling over their words into a camera. Spouting either complete b******s or a rehash of what's been said before. Static shots of talking heads that don't move for what seems like hours, except of course to go out of focus from time to time. They usually start with "Hi Guys' and go downhill from there. And they go on and on and on and on and on............ Some of them are so soporific they could be a cure for insomnia, some of them gabble incessantly as if suffering from terminal euphoria, some of them preen, some of them use white boards, some are incomprehensible. They all want you to subscribe, to 'like' them, to make them money. Very few of them are even vaguely interesting, let alone insightful, coherent and intelligent.
The production values of most of this stuff is so bad it has to be seen to be believed. There's usually no editing, focus slips all the time, there's no such thing as a retake or any attempt to be fluent, articulate or anything else that might resemble journalism goes right out the window. Because that's what it's supposed to be. Very few people it seems can be bothered to write anything anymore. BORING !!. So this 'new journalism' is shot on video. It's easy, just point a camera at yourself, spout complete c**p for a few minutes and then finish with a plea to subscribe. And don't forget to get a closeup of your nose hair and acne.
These people are of course virtually all men. And the amount of grey hair (and those awful unkempt grey beards) is way above the average. Have these people not heard of hair dye or razors? And as for the content....... There's an old adage "Opinions are like a*******s, everybody's got one!!" Cue endless self important twaddle. And unfortunately we are at the height of the Vlogging season. We've just had Photokina, the previously biennial photographic show. (Now switching to once a year) There has been lot's of vlogging involving shots of cameras in glass cases, because they haven't even been made yet. Not that this stops these people from banging on incessantly about them, plus a bit of pseudo Bloomberg channel waffling about the state of the photographic industry (As if they would know!!)
This is all just so disappointing and dispiriting. In a world that is seeing places where you can actually hold a camera in your hands before you buy diminish on a daily basis, it's actually important to get some kind of impression as to whether a camera or lens might be for you. But the vloggers don't help with that. Apart from anything else they get things wrong all the time and their standard of photography is usually pretty ordinary. The whole point of their existence seems to be to get followers on YouTube so they can 'monetise' themselves.
The ironic thing about all of this is that these people review gear and then prove that they can't actually use it. For example it's not hard these days to get smooth stabilised video, but the amount of shaky, focus hunting footage that these people upload defies belief. And then they go and moan about what's missing from cameras. Surely they would be much better served by actually learning to use a camera properly and show what it's capable of. It would seem to be obvious that if someone has the nerve to review gear and post it on the internet they should be able to demonstrate what they are doing.
Because this is not like this blog, where I make it clear time and time again that what I write about is how I interact with my gear and use it to make my living. It's personal and very subjective. But that's not what most of the Vloggers do. They try to convince us that this is an objective exercise where they are impartially assessing the gear to come to some kind of definitive judgement. Unfortunately that's about as far from the truth as it's possible to be. Now the manufacturers don't help by dishing out pre-production cameras that aren't finished, but that's still no excuse.
Is there an answer? Well I'm not sure that there is. What I would like to see is material from professional photographers using gear over a period of time and reporting back on it. But of course if you are making a living from photography, you may not have the time or inclination to do that. Even with my efforts, there can be periods of time when I don't post anything for a while. Because I'm actually busy with taking, editing, uploading and selling images. There is still Kirk Tuck but beyond that I'm struggling to think of anyone else who consistently provides informative and quality content. I use to read Mike Kobal a lot. A talented photographer and always interesting to read. But he seems to have given up creating content. If there's anyone out there that you can recommend then please let me know via social media and I'll publish some links.
Now what I would really like to see is stuff from female and/or younger photographers. Heather at Mirrorlessons used to provide that, but the output from that site has dropped dramatically. There is of course Dpreview, not without it's flaws, but at least they know what they are doing and the content is professionally presented. Now I guess that part of the reason is that with a falling number of consumers for stand alone camera gear, it's difficult to make enough money to justify it. I've stopped running ads apart from one link because the return was so low it's not worth the extra effort to include them. And if it's a source of income then that has be factored in.
So we get left with this shoddy amateur content, put together by people who seem to be doing it simply for the attention. And I suspect it's not going to get any better, because of the economic situation that exists. I imagine the rumour sites will keep going, but that's something different. And unfortunately they are left with little choice but to link to a lot of sub-standard material.
So, is this a rant? Well I think that you can tell from the tone here that it's more of a lament. Photography is my passion as well as my job and I'm as interested as anybody else in new gear. I also like many different cameras and lenses, including formats from smartphones to medium format film, but I must admit I'm finding it more and more difficult to find genuinely useful information on what's around these days. I'm still awaiting my Canon EOS R + EF adapter and I have to admit that I pre-ordered it pretty much on trust that having used a lot of Canon gear, it's probably going to be OK. I did consider cancelling it to wait for the Panasonic S1 R, but that could be a long wait and I'm looking for something to use my Canon lenses on that gives me more of what I want than the Canon 5DS R, which I sold recently. i.e. Good IQ, 4K Video, articulating view screen, faster AF, better high(er) IOS performance and smaller and lighter. The EOS R seems to have all of that, though with some qualifications and it will be interesting to see how it performs.
So I'll end it there. I'm not optimistic about the chances of something useful emerging from the photographic internet. But then Leica, Panasonic and Sigma formed a lens mount partnership and Panasonic introduced a FF camera. So who knows, miracles CAN happen !!!
This is all just so disappointing and dispiriting. In a world that is seeing places where you can actually hold a camera in your hands before you buy diminish on a daily basis, it's actually important to get some kind of impression as to whether a camera or lens might be for you. But the vloggers don't help with that. Apart from anything else they get things wrong all the time and their standard of photography is usually pretty ordinary. The whole point of their existence seems to be to get followers on YouTube so they can 'monetise' themselves.
The ironic thing about all of this is that these people review gear and then prove that they can't actually use it. For example it's not hard these days to get smooth stabilised video, but the amount of shaky, focus hunting footage that these people upload defies belief. And then they go and moan about what's missing from cameras. Surely they would be much better served by actually learning to use a camera properly and show what it's capable of. It would seem to be obvious that if someone has the nerve to review gear and post it on the internet they should be able to demonstrate what they are doing.
Because this is not like this blog, where I make it clear time and time again that what I write about is how I interact with my gear and use it to make my living. It's personal and very subjective. But that's not what most of the Vloggers do. They try to convince us that this is an objective exercise where they are impartially assessing the gear to come to some kind of definitive judgement. Unfortunately that's about as far from the truth as it's possible to be. Now the manufacturers don't help by dishing out pre-production cameras that aren't finished, but that's still no excuse.
Is there an answer? Well I'm not sure that there is. What I would like to see is material from professional photographers using gear over a period of time and reporting back on it. But of course if you are making a living from photography, you may not have the time or inclination to do that. Even with my efforts, there can be periods of time when I don't post anything for a while. Because I'm actually busy with taking, editing, uploading and selling images. There is still Kirk Tuck but beyond that I'm struggling to think of anyone else who consistently provides informative and quality content. I use to read Mike Kobal a lot. A talented photographer and always interesting to read. But he seems to have given up creating content. If there's anyone out there that you can recommend then please let me know via social media and I'll publish some links.
Now what I would really like to see is stuff from female and/or younger photographers. Heather at Mirrorlessons used to provide that, but the output from that site has dropped dramatically. There is of course Dpreview, not without it's flaws, but at least they know what they are doing and the content is professionally presented. Now I guess that part of the reason is that with a falling number of consumers for stand alone camera gear, it's difficult to make enough money to justify it. I've stopped running ads apart from one link because the return was so low it's not worth the extra effort to include them. And if it's a source of income then that has be factored in.
So we get left with this shoddy amateur content, put together by people who seem to be doing it simply for the attention. And I suspect it's not going to get any better, because of the economic situation that exists. I imagine the rumour sites will keep going, but that's something different. And unfortunately they are left with little choice but to link to a lot of sub-standard material.
So, is this a rant? Well I think that you can tell from the tone here that it's more of a lament. Photography is my passion as well as my job and I'm as interested as anybody else in new gear. I also like many different cameras and lenses, including formats from smartphones to medium format film, but I must admit I'm finding it more and more difficult to find genuinely useful information on what's around these days. I'm still awaiting my Canon EOS R + EF adapter and I have to admit that I pre-ordered it pretty much on trust that having used a lot of Canon gear, it's probably going to be OK. I did consider cancelling it to wait for the Panasonic S1 R, but that could be a long wait and I'm looking for something to use my Canon lenses on that gives me more of what I want than the Canon 5DS R, which I sold recently. i.e. Good IQ, 4K Video, articulating view screen, faster AF, better high(er) IOS performance and smaller and lighter. The EOS R seems to have all of that, though with some qualifications and it will be interesting to see how it performs.
So I'll end it there. I'm not optimistic about the chances of something useful emerging from the photographic internet. But then Leica, Panasonic and Sigma formed a lens mount partnership and Panasonic introduced a FF camera. So who knows, miracles CAN happen !!!
Stock photography by david martyn hughes at Alamy
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