Roley

Wired: People I care about? My Instagram feed has long been chock-full of professional influencers hawking the latest fast-fashion trends, home cooks sharing their high-protein recipes, and random comedians doing stand-up bits. My actual friends are buried under a mountain of sponcon and memed-to-death dross. By piling these new features on top of the old ones, Instagram is trying to make the…

Biden Diagnosed with cancer. It’s going to be very easy to identify who has lost their last shred of humanity for the next little while. Take note of who they are.

Today is the Canadian election, and of course El Naranja couldn’t resist going down the 51st state road again. Every time I hear him talk about Canada being the 51st state, I remember how Saddam Hussein tried to make Kuwait the 19th Province of Iraq. ON a related note, if I was Pierre Polievre, I’d be really pissed at Trump. The Conservatives were poised to win, and win big at the next election.…

SEGMENT 1 Christmas wrapping (thyself around a telephone pole). Lynnhaven Mall Exit Swerve. I don’t complain anymore. I’ve been to New York since then. Taxi Story Navigator Story ——- SEGMENT 2 All the news that’s printed to fit. Rudy Is Losing It https://newrepublic.com/post/188868/courtroom-sketch-artist-rudy-giuliani-losing-it The PodBros are coming…

So What Does It Look Like?

Wrapping up the week here, and I want to share something with you that I’ve started doing this week that I think has positively affected my outlook, no matter how kooky it sounds.

I have this little barrel chair in my studio. It was given to me by my grandmother years ago. I remember spinning around and around on it in her house until they had to put a wooden block on the track to get me to stop. I’ve recovered it, and today it’s my reading/thinking/sulking chair. I sit down in this chair at the beginning of every day, and I’ve been giving some thought to the endgame. What does the endgame look like? What is my ideal result? There’s really nothing new about this. It’s called creative visualization. Shakti Gawain wrote a book about this years ago, and it’s “the art of using mental imagery and affirmation to produce positive changes in your life. It is successfully used in the fields of health, business, creative arts, and sports, and in fact, can have an impact in every area of your life.” Of course, back in my younger and angrier days, something like this would have been met with a roll of the eyes. I really can’t do that anymore because the simple act of visualizing what the end of this looks like every morning for just five minutes or so has changed my outlook on things. I feel better about rolling this rock up the hill every day. I’m doing good work here. I’m expressing myself creatively, I’m finding material relevant to the things I like talking about, I’m spending less time on the things I don’t want to spend time on, and at the end of the day, the work is getting done. I’m still spending only about an hour a day on this work, and as of right now, I’m a week ahead of schedule and still going. More to the point, I have fun because I’m literally creating something every day right now, and it does wonders for my morale. It all starts with just sitting in that beloved chair every day and thinking every day that I’m going to win. I’m going to get what I want out of this work, this time, this life.

Now, I haven’t gotten so far as to see the beach in my backyard, but give me a couple of months on that. Let’s see how this goes for a minute before I get ahead of myself.

I’d like you to give this a try. There’s no chanting, no mantras, no sitting cross-legged on a mat and contemplating your belly button, think to yourself, “What does the end of this look like to me?” What does success look like to you? Maybe, once you sort that out and see it every day, and you know what step you’re on now, maybe the steps in the middle become clearer. It certainly couldn’t hurt.

Cut Yourself a Break

Of course, it’s easy to get stuck. We all do. I certainly have. But that’s where “What’s Next?” comes into play. It’s the act of leaning into what’s causing you the trouble. You identify it, and you work to resolve it. That’s not just helpful in the creative arena, you know. Indeed, nothing hard ever gets better unless you commit to this. Otherwise, you’re spinning your wheels, and nothing gets done.

There will be times when you’re going to fail, though, so let me pass on this piece of wisdom gained from years of doing the exact opposite: Cut yourself a break. No home-run king ever hit it out of the park every time, don’t kid yourself. Perfectionism is a fast track to a permanent failure, which is just giving up. Don’t get discouraged. Just take a beat. Show yourself some compassion, relax, and lean back in when you’re ready.

Finally, don’t be a battering ram. That’s a good way to give yourself a headache. If it doesn’t work today, it might work tomorrow. Put it away for the day and try again tomorrow. Most importantly, don’t beat yourself up for the days you missed. Celebrate the days you succeeded because that will help you tomorrow when you go at it again.

Where Do We Go From Here, Which Is The Way That’s Clear?

Yesterday I told you that as creators, I think that social media is becoming our worst enemy due to the weaponization of the platforms for engagement and the appropriation of content by aggregators and other entities for their use and engagement. As such, I suggested that there might be a way to reassert control over your creative assets, and that’s what I want to talk about today.

You see, I think we’ve got to get back to housing our assets in our own spaces, places that we control. Our own ship, as it were. Years ago, I had a small limited run podcast series called “The Peaceful Pirate,” in which I talked about building your own ship. That ship is your website, your base of operations. In one episode, I mentioned the need to go fishing every day, and by that, I meant sending out bait to all the appropriate places—links to social media, contributing to forums, and things of that nature. I believe you still need to do that. What I don’t think you need to do is give your content to social media. Please give them the breadcrumbs to come to your content instead.

Some of you might think this is a difference without a distinction, but I don't see it this way. In one scenario, you’re laying it all out there somewhere else for someone to take it. in the other, they’re coming to you. Even in the eventuality that someone steals a photo from your site, for example, you have some recourse as long as your terms spell that out. Even if you don’t care so much about that, then I’d remind you that they had to come to your site, which was the whole point all along. For lack of a better way to put it, you caught the fish, and now that you know you caught one, you can catch another.

The Value Proposition

Chase Jarvis on how to get people to come to your site:

Want people to come to your site? Add value. 100%. https://t.co/rXAQqBpSM6 https://t.co/wCNr00SHIQ pic.twitter.com/C7wQdcrxaD

— Chase Jarvis (@chasejarvis) February 6, 2021

Note that I disagree with his suggestion to post your content directly on social. I still think you should link to your content at your place. That said, give them every reason in the world to do that by adding value to the topic, the conversation, and the platform. You have to build trust as someone who knows what they’re talking about, someone who has a talent for the topic, and above all, someone who is an adherent to Wheaton’s Law.

What About Clubhouse?

Steve Pratt at Pacific Content:

First and foremost, whether you’re a creator or a brand, you need to answer this question: what’s the job you’re hiring audio to do?

Once you know the answer, you can determine what to make, where it should live (podcasting, Clubhouse, radio, etc), and how to use it. There are lots of great uses — and some not so great uses — for Clubhouse. Here are a few ways to think about when and where it makes sense.

As a general rule, if your value prop is that you’re the “blank” of “blank” (Like the ‘Medium of Podcasts’, for example), you’re already in the hole because to remember you, I have to think of someone else first.

This is a real-time panel. That’s all Clubhouse is. Even then, I think of forums and Usenet threads back in the day. The shiny bit is that’s its audio. Now, one thing I think it’s got in its favor is that you no longer have to determine if someone is being sarcastic in a post. Unless you can’t listen for context cues, that’s going to be pretty easy to discern. Based on what I am seeing, Clubhouse is not going to be any threat to podcasting. I’m glad to see they’re doing well, but let’s check back in a month or so.

I do have one thing to ask about, how’s their moderation game? I haven’t gone poking around, but I wonder what happens with Proud Q. Gunsalot comes poking around with his bullshit. I’m taking a wait and see approach on that.

In Praise of Batching

Over at Jasmine Star’s website, they’re talking about batching your content. Hallelujah.

I set two or three days per month to create all of my video content… But let me tell you friend, these marathon recording sessions don’t happen without WEEKS of advanced planning.

*Yes, it’s true: when you have a plan to work smarter, you don’t have to work harder!*

Last week I talked about doing a bunch of stuff on an hour a day, and I thought I was being smart. What if I could work out all the stuff I wanted to do for a month in 2-3 days and get it all out?

(You could plan all the other shit you keep crying about making, Roley…)

On Instagram Aggregators

So, today on the show I'm going to go over some ground that I've seen trod upon many times already, but I'm not really sure side I fall on. The question is whether or not instagram is good for photographers. To be sure, I follow a lot of photographers on instagram, but there's something else I have found myself following lately, and here's where I have the issue. I'll call them photo aggregators. My beloved state of Maine, for example. I follow DownEast Magazine, which is to my mind the authority on the State of Maine. Their photography...hell, just their iconic magazine covers, are extraordinary. But then there are accounts like For the Love of Maine, which is an aggregator of Maine photography that they repost from other users. Yes, they credit those users, but who's getting the likes here? I find myself wondering what the clickthrough rate is from liking a photo on those accounts to following the person who actually took the photo, and realistically it can't be very high. It's not just Maine, though. Hell, there's Nantucket and Cape Cod aggregators, Black and White photo aggregators, there's minimal photography photos...I bet if you went to instagram and listed whatever your strangest geekdom is, there's probably an aggregator for it. So I have to ask the question if posting your work on Instagram is worth it if it's going to be appropriated by someone FOR THE GRAM.

I suppose it comes down to a personal choice. Personally, if I post a photo of my work on Instagram and someone picks it up and reposts it, I would hope that person has approached me and asked for permission. I don't see that happening in a lot of these cases, but you never know. I would really be pissed off if someone took a photo of mine without permission and removed a watermark and I'd ask for them to remove it, but I'm not sure if I do anything other than shame them publicly if that were to happen. If that's happened on Instagram I haven't seen it.

To be honest, I think there's a wider question to be asked about whether we need social media anymore If it's going to be weaponized against the creative specifically, and the general public as a whole. Would it surprise you that I'm leaning against removing myself from Instagram and Facebook completely? Maybe it shouldn't. I'm sensing a little shift in the earth here and I'm going to talk more about this on another show, but one thing I really want to address is the free as in beer mindset that a lot of social media marketers and those nebulous 'influencers' seem to operate on. That model depends on the ability of a person to work for 'exposure', for likes, for engagement, and for that person to be ok with ceding control of their work in the hopes that they can turn that exposure into dollars. I am less and less sure that ceding that control is worth it. I'm not saying that you don't put your work out there, of course you should. However, I think you need to be able to control how it's put out there, and I think there's only one way you do that. We'll talk about that in more detail next time. See what I did there?

Monochrome In-Camera? YES, PLEASE

The more and more I shoot the more I prefer shooting in Black and White. There’s something about it that grabs me. One of the problems I’ve had time and time again was shooting something I thought would be amazing in Black and White only to bring it home and realize it was a great idea, but not a great shot. The reason I failed is simple: I’m shooting in color, I see in color, and I’m guessing about monochrome in my head. Turns out you can change that. I shoot with a Canon t5i, and here’s how you can change the Picture Style so your screen shows you a preview in Black and White (note: This is for the screen ONLY, your viewfinder will still show the world in glorious color). Also, my Canon camera has a touch screen function, but yours may not. For that reason, I’m going to give you the manual instructions. Adapt these instructions as appropriate.

Press the MENU button, and then use the right-arrow button to the right of the LCD screen to scroll through the menu pages until you find Picture Style. Use the down-arrow button to highlight the line, and press the SET button

Use the down arrow button to highlight Monochrome. Press the SET button again to select it, then press the MENU button to exit the menu.

Obviously, you may shoot with another brand, but I’m sure many later model DSLR cameras have this ability. Consult your user manual or online knowledge base for instructions on how to do this for your camera. If you can get this right in-camera, you’ll have less to do in post.

Oh, by the way: if you shoot in RAW, you can convert to color in the edit if you want. You’re not committing to monochrome by changing the screen.

For All My iPhoneographers

Of course, you know that the best camera is the one you have with you, and nine times out of ten, it’s the one on your phone. With that in mind, I’d like to give you some ideas about how to take your phone game to the next level. These tips will be for the native iPhone camera app, but I want to remind you that there are several apps out there that give you a lot more control. I personally recommend the Moment app, but you don’t need to buy an app to up your game. All you need is some knowledge.

As human beings, we’re not stationary creatures. Even when you think. You’re standing perfectly; still, you’re not. In fact, if you were a Christmas Tree Stand, you’d be on the rug, and the house would be on fire. This is why sometimes when you take a picture on your iPhone, you go to the trouble of framing the shot, you try to stay perfectly still, yet the thing comes out blurry and out of focus. So next time, tap and HOLD on the subject of our picture. This will invoke the Auto Exposure/’Auto Focus Lock, and the camera will stay locked on to the subject no matter how much you move around. Then make sure you frame your shot and take that photo.

The RPS Archives

The Royal Photographic Society has made their archives from March of 1853 to 2018 available for free online. Just let that sink in. That’s 165 years of history, captured in photos. Mindblowing. The Society covered the art and technical aspects of photography and the developments in those spaces, major events, and reported the activities of the Society itself. Even if you’re not a photography geek you might be a history geek, and this should be up your alley either way. I know more than a few Civil War Historians that might find this interesting, and I hope there’s something in there to get their mouths watering. I’m going down this rabbit hole as soon as possible, I encourage you to do the same.

One Small Moment

Today I want to talk to some specific friends who I won't name, but I'm fairly sure that this will apply to way more of just them.

First things first, I'm not going to insult your intelligence by giving you a bunch of platitudes. In my experience, they're nothing but empty calories. Filler and no substance, they're designed to make the person giving them feel better, not the person who needs help. In some cases, people who need help end up feeling worse. I'm one of those people, so I absolutely understand the feeling. So, no bullshit from me. Cool? Moving on.

Let me describe my lack of bona fides right upfront. I'm a guy with a high school education and one year of college because I let my dick do the thinking up to the point that I ended up homeless and friendless. I tried to follow in my Dad's footsteps and join the military and washed right out after six months because I have a mouth bigger than my brain. I come from a family that describing as dysfunctional is exceedingly generous. My dad had anger issues, my mother was a narcissist manipulator, as is my brother. He's got a criminal record and is probably on his way back to prison for at least 12 years as I write this. I'm the voice of reason in my family, and as I have said repeatedly, this should scare the fuck out of you. I got married at 24, and I had three kids by the age of 30. I've been dirt poor most of that time. At this stage of my life, I believe that I am an undiagnosed case of autism from the 1970s because my kids--all of them--are on the spectrum. I didn't have a bad childhood if you looked at it from one angle, but I had a horrible one if you looked at it from the inside out. I inherited my Dad's anger issues and my mother's narcissism. I was a horrible husband for years until my wife walked out on me in 2005. It made me face myself in a way I had not seen before, and I couldn't take it. I had a nervous breakdown. My wife thought I was worth saving, and I am forever grateful for it. I promised I would work on my issues, and I have. Three times in my life, I thought I was at the end of my rope. Not from a thought of suicide ideation, just that there was nowhere else to turn. No one else to ask for help. No one else I could lean on. Just Roley.

That moment right there is the point. The entire lesson. One small moment when your brain says, "Well, you're really fucked now, aren't you?" There is only one answer to that question, and that answer is yes because if you answer no, you ain't there yet. Trust me on this. You have to answer yes. This is the moment where you're accountable to no one but you, and you cannot lie to yourself. You can TRY. It ain't gonna work. Not for long.

Let's not bullshit ourselves. There is a lot of work in repairing a life that you fucked up on your own. You climb up out of a hole for years before you ever see daylight. I was a shut-in for two years because I thought it better that the world forgets about me. I tried to make a living from home in 2006-2007, but this world we live in hadn't come to pass yet, and I was living a fantasy. It made me feel worse that I couldn't provide for my family, but I could barely function as a human at that point. So I decided to do the only work I was capable of: Working on myself. I read every self-help book and mental health book I could lay my hands on. I dug deep into myself to try to figure out why I was the person I was, how I became that way, and the answer was straightforward. First, I thought I was absolutely normal. My behavior, though abhorrent, was how I was raised. My parents treated each other and us kids horribly, but it wasn't physically abusive save for a couple of times I'll keep to myself. I grew up in the same environment I perpetuated. I was continuing a cycle. Secondly, to accept that fact and to change meant work I wasn't ready to take on. But human psychology is a lot like a car in that regard; you can do the work now, or you can do it later, but it's going to cost you a lot more. In my case, it almost cost me everything. It was the third of those three times that I faced myself in the mirror and heard that voice, and this was the time I said yes.

For two-thirds of my life, my story is a story of failure, of self-hatred, of being a bad example. But from the age of 35 to 50, it's a story of repair and redemption. I'll put my humble path to today up against anyone's and dare them to do the work I've done to heal myself and come out who I am today. I'm still married to the same woman for over 25 years now. I've got three amazing kids who I adore. Up until May of this year, I had what I consider to be a dream job until COVID ate it, but I'm still with the same company, and I'm going to bust whatever amount of ass it takes to get my job back or demonstrate the skills I learned there to someone else who's willing to take me. I have a sense of self-worth and purpose that I've never had before, and I'm not taking being a call center tech support agent for the rest of my life. It is a means to an end, and it is not my life's work. I know what that is. It's helping you in the best way I know how: By being not the example of how to fix it, but from showing you by my example, it CAN BE FIXED that you can go from being a person full of anger and self-loathing and cruel behavior to being a person of kindness and compassion and love for people. That you can go from being a person who has no prospects to a person who can go to a job every day that fulfills them personally and professionally. That you can go from being a person who hasn't got their shit together at all to a person that can get morning to night without falling apart at the seams. This is my road, and my lane, but it's big enough for you, and I want you on this road with me. Some of you are gifted and talented beyond description, but the world doesn't know it yet because you have these problems. I know. I get it. I also see who you are, and the world deserves to see you as well. I had no one else to turn to at that last moment, so I did what I had to do. Myself. I'm asking you to take a walk with me because I don't want you to have to do it on your own. I may not know your way home, but I can get you as far as Anchorhead. You can get transport there to Mos Eisley or wherever you're going.

I had to get one joke in there somehow.

Did Joe Know About This?

On the heels of the news of Joe Budden maybe-kinda-sorta-moving his show to Patreon (which is weird since it looks like it’s being hosted on Libsyn now), Spotify has announced plans for multiple business models for podcasts, possibly to include ad-supported subscriptions and a la carte options. These may be discussed at a live stream event later in February.

Asked if Spotify thought customers would be willing to pay for podcasts, Ek on the earnings call responded that he believed there were several new models that could be explored.

“I think we’re in the early days of seeing the long-term evolvement of how we can monetize audio on the internet. I’ve said this before, but I don’t believe that it’s a one-size-fits-all,” he said. “I believe, in fact, that we will have all business models, and that’s the future for all media companies — that you will have ad-supported subscriptions and à la carte sort of in the same space, of all media companies in the future.”

“And you should definitely expect Spotify to follow that strategy and that pattern,” Ek added, more definitively.

The answer seemed to indicate that Spotify is considering some of the ideas in that recent survey — of getting consumers to pay for some podcasts, instead of accessing them all for free or having them bundled into their music subscription.

I wonder if Budden was aware of this and balked. Would there be a revenue split between Spotify and the creators, and what’s the ratio? Now that I think of it, isn’t that what they’ve been crying about re: Apple?

For more than a year, Spotify has been making noise about Apple’s unchecked power over the App Store, and in March 2019, it filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission. Spotify claims Apple’s practice of taking 30 percent of an app’s revenue is unjustified, and says the company operates as a monopoly on iOS.

Suddenly, I find this Budden/Spotify deal more intriguing.

Wait, You Can Make Money Doing That?

Julie Miller from Vanity Fair writes about Hollywood coming over to the Pod Side for ‘fun and profit’:

…entertainment types began orbiting the audio space about two years ago in earnest, as the number of Americans listening to podcasts every month headed toward the 100 million it is today. It was also around 2018 that agencies like CAA began incorporating audio deals into their development packages. One insider estimates that many celebrities could get a six-figure guarantee per year, with the biggest actors receiving between $1 million and $3 million to launch an unscripted podcast. Scripted projects offer less up-front money but can be adapted into TV shows, films, books, and so on.

For the record, I am Steve Jobs, “Podcasts are Amateur Hour" Years Old. For years, podcasting was seen as less-than, so when I see stories like this, the little imp of the perverse in the back of my head tosses a bone at every true media elitist who, strangely, has a podcast now..

How About Not Doing That?

Chris Curran over at PES has a question about your thin mouth:

When I’m doing my fine-tuned editing on a podcast episode I use TwistedWave or Sound Forge because they allow me to VERY QUICKLY zoom in, highlight very small things like single mouthclicks, and delete them. 

When I try to make the same kind of edit in a DAW (Reaper and others) it takes forever. 

What say you?

For the most part, my workflow tends to remove mouth clicks, or at the very least minimize them. If they still show up through my noise gate, I highlight and remove them. I can’t say this happens often because I like to make sure I keep some water near me while I’m recording. The single biggest thing you can do to prevent mouth clicks is to keep hydrated. Remember, you can’t fix it in Post if it never happens in the first place.

It might just be the time of year, but I find myself getting discouraged easily. It’s compounded by the fact that we’re coming up on a year since my job sent me home and everything that’s happened since then. The simple fact of the matter is I’m not where I want to be at almost any category of life you care to name. I’m currently making about half of what I was pre-May 2020, I’m struggling with staying in a creative mindset, I’m not necessarily hopeful that I will be able to realize a key hope of mine to regain the position I was previously in, and I’m not finding anything equivalent out there that I can do despite the experience. It leaves me in a pretty depressing place, and I’m not sure what my next move is. So when this happens, I try to move out of the mindset of what I can’t do to figure out what I can accomplish. I believe it starts with talking about the things I am passionate about. Demonstrating some knowledge. Possibly not being so unassuming about it?

A lot of the past year had to do with how my friends stayed creative and productive during the pandemic, and now I may be best served by turning this camera inward. Let’s see what happens.

After I wrote the above, I fired up my Feedly reader, and Seth Godin’s post today is very timely indeed.

So, let’s consult the imp in the back of my head that wants to know what the bleep I’m going to do to turn YET into DONE. I think first we have to define what DONE is, and I’m finding that a little hard to do at the moment. It’s a Jackson Pollack splatter of thought about what I don’t want to be doing anymore, and very little thought about what it is I would rather be doing, and whether I can do it for a living. Nothing new here, this has pretty much been the case for a few years now. I need to put these thoughts together. I don’t want to take phone calls anymore. I do want a job in a creative field. I want what I create to be able to help people. I want to be able to live comfortably on the fruits of that effort, which means not only the bills are paid, but that the wife and I are not worried about health insurance, and that the kids are taken care of.

So, maybe that’s what done is. If that’s true, then the next question—my favorite—is ‘What’s Next?”. What I’m about to write is the first time I’ve ever written this answer: I don’t know. I don’t know what the first step is, and if I don’t know what the first step is, I can’t figure the next one. Marie Forleo likes to say “Everything is Figureoutable”. I sure hope so, because being stuck in this place is a goddamn exhausting place to be.

Of course, as I said at the beginning, it could just be that it’s January and it’s cold, and that I hate everything right now. It feels like more than that, but maybe it always does and I’m not remembering it.

Oh, You Didn’t Know?

Joe Budden, who up until a few months ago had an exclusive deal with Spotify, is moving his podcast to Patreon. The Verge has some comments from Budden:

He says he proved the model, along with the potential of his audience, but didn’t want Spotify to use his fans and reach to prove the platform’s own worth and make money. 

“For many years, the record labels and the system that I come from tricked us into thinking they were doing us a favor by capitalizing off our talent and basically loaning us money, and that’s been the standard the entire time,” Budden says, adding that he already knows how that system worked out for creators. 

When Budden announced his split from the tech company, he said Spotify was “pillaging” his audience and only cared about how his show contributed to Spotify overall, not about his actual podcast.

Budden was a recording artist before he was a podcaster. If he’s aware that the record labels played games, I can’t believe he didn’t see the obvious. Streaming Services aren’t exactly known for treating artists differently, for a start, but let’s address what I think is the elephant in the room, which is the question of whether or not what you had was actually a podcast, because I think that question is fundamental to the problem Budden experienced. A podcast is not exclusive to a platform, and I’ll argue that point until I’m blue in the face. If I can’t subscribe to your show on a different platform than Spotify, then you don’t have a podcast, you have a show on Spotify. Spotify might have a big user base, but that user base is all you have. Spotify’s Q4 2020 earnings state that they have 345 million active monthly users, and that only 25 percent of those users listen to podcasts on the platform. That’s around 86.5 Million, and trust me, they’re not all listening to Joe Budden. Yes, he’s got a lot of downloads, but what he’s got on Spotify is all he’s going to get by staying there. Patreon is a huge and smart play, I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes 3x on listeners and money at the very least.

(Note to self, get back on Patreon, it’s about to blow up.)

The Clothes Suck Anyway

Ah, exposure. SO great for paying bills, only the complete opposite of paying bills.

One of my favorite Twitter accounts is @forexposure_txt, and they receive posts every day from creatives who receive requests, demands, and straight-up meltdowns from people who believe it’s ok not to pay a creative for their work. However, in some cases, there’s the odd post about a company that lifts a picture, alters it, and uses it on their social media without attribution. Take, for example, Meg of Margate, a photographer who discovered a fashion brand called Ted Baker (no link, I’m not enabling this behavior) lifted a photo, photoshopped it, and post it on their Instagram “for engagement”. When called on it, they offered Meg a 200 dollar gift card from their store, which she declined. They then stated they didn’t have the budget to pay photographers, so they deleted the image.

Fine, but let’s be clear about what really happened here. A fashion brand that declared revenue of 617 million pounds in 2019 used a picture that didn’t own to drive traffic to their brand. They got likes and engagement for hours on that post. Then they told the photographer, sorry we can’t afford it, and just deleted the post. Ted Baker made money off that stolen picture, and they probably will have no liability for screwing a creative because it costs money to take people to court.

If this doesn’t make you angry, it should.

This seems like a good place to link to one of my favorite talks by Mike Montiero, “Fuck You, Pay Me.”

More Instagram Stuff

Instagram is now conducting a test to remove the ability to share feed posts within Stories:

You would assume that a lot of Stories updates are re-shared feed posts. The fact that Instagram is willing to reduce this seems like a positive sign for its development focus - but it might also indicate that people are viewing Stories less as a result of such shares, which has prompted Instagram to take action.

I can tell you that many of my stories are photos from other accounts that I think are amazing, and I do that to encourage my followers to follow them. If you remove the ability for me to do that, then I have to resort to a third party program—Repost—to post them to my feed, and I don’t want to do that. My feed should be for my pictures. I hope what they’re driving at is removing the ability to share one’s own feed posts as Stories, and I would completely understand why they feel it’s redundant. That’s not how I read this story.

In other Instagram news, it looks like IG and Twitter might be burying the hatchet soon and allowing integrations again:

That's an even bigger integration. As noted by Jane Manchun Wong, Instagram hasn't provided direct Twitter integration since it disabled Twitter card preview support back in 2012, which makes it annoyingly difficult to share content between the two apps. Now, it seems they're mending bridges, which could facilitate not just tweets in Stories stickers, but wholly new integration options which would enable direct sharing of Instagram posts to Twitter as well, fully integrated and formatted in-line.

That's not part of this proposal, and it may not ever be. But it would definitely be handy - and with Twitter seemingly now more open to such, it could pave the way for improved connection.

If true, this would look a lot cleaner than the screenshots we’re all doing right now anyway. Honestly, this horse has been out of the barn so long it’s dying of exposure.

Hey, you sick twisted freaks, It's Roley, how ya doin', welcome to the show.

I've been doing something the past couple of weeks that has been really productive, and I'd like to share it with you today.  So let me ask you a question:  Is there an hour a day that you've been pretty much screwing off instead of doing your creative work?  What if you instead locked in for that hour and dedicated it to "the plan," or whatever you want to call it?  How much do you think you could get done in an hour without interruption?

My answer should be pretty evident; I did 13 podcasts last month.  I edited two albums of photos.  I deep cleaned the ever-living hell out of my studio.  I did a few screen simulations for things I have yet to edit.  I took a class on shooting video.  I edited a video for a friend's podcast.   This month, I plan to keep that momentum up and hopefully add a few more things.  

I did it with an hour of dedicated, uninterrupted time every day.   Because I was able to do it with an hour a day, I was able to do it without the burnout I've previously felt by grinding for hours, I was able to take care of other things outside of the creative as well, and most importantly I was able to get the sleep I've been sorely lacking.  

Once I've finished my hour, I take stock of where I am and plan out what I need to do next.  Since most of what I do is cyclical, I have a checklist for that.  If I take on additional work or have a new project, I'll plan those outside the dedicated time.  Usually, in the morning, when I'm going over admin stuff before I hit the day job.  

Admittedly, this took a little getting used to because I'm used to just powering through a mountain of work, but what I have begun to realize about myself is that after a while, there's a point of diminishing returns about what I do.   Constraining the amount of time I get down to writing, for example, makes me focus on the task for a certain time, and I think it improves the product.  

I'll be using this process in the future, and I plan on folding it into a larger idea of workflow that I'll share with you once I have it ironed out.   For now, I think we'll call this an experiment in Project Management, but one that appears to be working out.

If you've found this helpful, I would appreciate it if you'd share this with someone you think could use it. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, and I'd really appreciate a review of the podcast if you have the time.  Also, if you find this episode or any of this podcast to be of value to you, how about being me a coffee?  You can go to buymeacoffee.com/krisroley, and...well...buy me a coffee.  Now, I've mentioned this at the end of the podcast since the beginning of the year, but I haven't really gone into a lot of detail about what you can find at the BMAC site.   Over at Buy Me A Coffee, I have three tiers:  Free content, content for supporters of my work, and membership content.  I'll always put up free content at the site because I realize some people can't part with a buck right now, but I still want you to have something.   Supporters get a weekly dispatch, a sample of my photographic work, and what I call 'One Sheets,' which are one-page tutorials on how to do something.  For example, January's one sheet had to do with how I process voices for audio.   Members will get all the Supporter content, a special podcast, and any video tutorials I do.   You can support my work for as little as a dollar, and memberships are 5 bucks a month or 50 dollars a year.  

There are two other ways you can support my work. The first is by going to krisroley.com and clicking on the photography link in the menu.  The photos I've posted there are available for purchase, and more photos will be posted there as we go.   The second is by hiring me to edit your podcast, provide show notes, or write for you, and you can check my rates by going to krisroley.com and clicking on the services link.

The website HQ for all this madness is krisroley.com, and you can go there to see the latest and connect with me on all the social mediasssss.  

On Social Media

You may have noticed that some parts of yesterday’s blog post made it to other social networks, primarily LinkedIn. I did post a little to Twitter yesterday, but mostly personal stuff and not business-related. I’m having a bit of a clarifying moment when it comes to social media lately that I want to dig into a bit more. LinkedIn doesn’t suffer from this malady because of its nature, but depending on its members' ability to police themselves, it may only be a matter of time. This malady I refer to is the weaponization of social media and the appropriation of content.

Clearly, the whole point behind social media is engagement, but I don’t think any of us anticipated what has happened in the last 4 to 5 years. In retrospect, we should have. If you lived through the age of shock or conservative talk radio, you might have an inkling of what I mean. Someone says something outrageous, and it’s an almost Pavlovian response. We MUST engage. The part I don’t think we could have predicted was social media promoting the outrageousness to the degree they did. Social media might recognize the part they played in this mess one day, but I have a hard time continuing to participate in something designed to promote Shock's Culture for the sake of likes and dollars.

LinkedIn feels different somehow. Yes, it’s a social network, but it is populated by people who have a vested interest in maintaining a professional appearance. I’ve seen many times when someone tries to lob a metaphorical Molotov Cocktail into the mix, and someone says, “That’s not appropriate for this space.” I hope that means that legitimate content is King there, and the engagement follows as a result of the substance of that content, not on the controversy. For now, I’ll put my focus there and see how it goes.

The other issue I mentioned is the appropriation of content, and that’s discussed on next Wednesday’s show.

Just…stop already

A note totally unrelated to anything: Politicians can stop sending me emails now. You’re approaching “We can help you with your extended auto warranty” territory.

Rebundling The News

The great Dave Winer:

The news industry product needs to be re-bundled. I believe the rewards will be huge for the first publication that bets on this idea. They wouldn't be the first, btw -- My.Yahoo did it in the 00's. Have the guts to point to your competition. And if you have a paywall, send them some money and some readers. Now that Jeff Bezos is retired, and owns such a platform, I would stand up and applaud if they had the guts to try this out. I'd also line up to hook my blog into such a network. Not because my writing depends on making money from it, it doesn't, but to help disrupt the news industry that's daydreaming itself to death over distribution, competition and economics.

What I wouldn’t give to be able to subscribe to one feed with what I’ll call an “a la carte” option of news and editorial options. That was one of the great things about RSS Readers at the outset, but content is increasingly siloed or anything more than an excerpt is behind a paywall. I’ve learned never to click on an LA Times Article Link for example, because I know I will never see the story, I’ll get a splash page instead. Same with WaPo. Would I pay some money for the a la carte option I just mentioned? Possibly. Would you?

Some Links Of Interest…

From the Beeb:

Ms Khing, an aerobics teacher, posted her exercise video to Facebook on Monday morning.

At the time, Myanmar's army was in the process of a military coup, detaining Aung San Suu Kyi and other democratically elected leaders from her party.

I don’t think you could be blamed if you were reminded of Baghdad Bob watching this.

Matthew at SLR Lounge is never buying another Sandisk SD Card:

Unfortunately, I’m done buying Sandisk SD cards. and I think you can see why. They seem to be more flimsy than any other memory card (make or model) I have ever had. Inevitably, they split open and spill their memory chip guts.

After looking at these pictures and my stash of Sandisk Memory Cards, I don’t have what you would call a Peaceful Easy Feeling about this. I have more than a few of these, and while I don’t put them through the paces, a professional photographer does, I would like to know they’re gonna hold up. It doesn’t look good, I’ll tell you that much.

From The Verge, Casey Newton talks about Clubhouse’s ‘South By Moment’:

The only social-networking moment I can compare it to in recent years would be the 2015 South by Southwest festival, when the streets of Austin were briefly overrun by people broadcasting themselves on Meerkat. Then, as now, the once-stable field of social networks hummed with a fresh sense of possibility.

I have an account at Clubhouse, which as of right now, lies dormant. I have a habit of opening accounts at different apps with my preferred handle so that no one else takes it and gets a taste of the app before passing judgment (Yes, including THAT one). Newton calls Clubhouse the ‘Medium of Podcasts’ in that it appears to democratize audio in a way that Anchor didn’t, and the experience is as clean and ‘radiant’ as Medium. I agree. I’ll be interested to see how the app is used as time goes on. The funny thing about democratizing media is that everybody is ‘the media.’ The downside to that is that everyone—including me—is ‘the media.’ Open source guys will love it. Matt Deegan over at Matt on Audio might be a bit skeptical…

At it’s worst, I’d say the content is basically the annoying self-promoters from LinkedIn given a microphone to talk to their echo-chamber. At it’s best you can say it’s a place for like-minded people to get together and have a discussion in a screen’s-off environment.

Matt seems to think this might lend itself to more of a panel or conference vibe, and I can see it. The trouble with that is I also see the self-appointed ‘gurus’ and marketers taking it over much like they’ve tried to do with podcasting the second they see money in it. (Rule One: Marketers. Ruin. Everything)

Happy Lensday, kids! It's Roley, how ya doin', welcome to the show.

Today, I want to talk a little about street photography and the hit and miss nature.  If you're keeping an eye on my Buy Me A Coffee page, you know I've been heading down to the Virginia Beach Oceanfront about once a month to take pictures of life on the beach because I want to capture the side of a beach town that you don't get to see.  Having done that for a couple of months now, I can see a few things I need to improve.   The first thing is the variety of shots I should be taking.  Most of the shots of people are off doing the things you usually see people doing, like walking a dog, riding a skateboard, or riding a bike.  I think a few shots stand out; one that springs to mind is of a young lady looking out the door of a cafe at something off the frame.   However, there's really not a lot of variety because, in the age of COVID, there aren't many people out and about.  Even in the dead of winter, there is at least some action.  

Something else I feel a little guilty about is shooting the homeless.  There's a significant homeless population down there, and I have a pretty good idea of when and where I can catch them.  I feel a little uneasy about photographing them, but that is part of the story I want to tell, so I need to figure that out.   I am sure I need to make this happen is a change in my lens choice.  For the most part, I've been using my kit 18-55mm lens for this, but it's possible I need to use a longer lens for this.  So, I'm thinking about using my 55-250 lens and taking my 24mm lens for wider shots of the street and architecture, things like that.  

Varying the times of day, I get down there may also help because I'm usually finding myself down there at midday.  I need some early morning and early evening shots, especially in the winter.  Of course, as we get into the summer months, night time shots with all the colors and lights will be part of the game, but then the streets will (hopefully) be full of activity.  Right now, the name of the game is the seedy part of the beach in the offseason.  I've been making a point to make all the winter shots in black and white, and when we move into spring and summer, we'll change to color.  That's just an artistic choice to help tell the story, but it's something I might need to rethink as we go forward.  

I've also been wondering about portrait shots of people down there, but I'm not sure how to go about that without pissing people off.  Cameras do tend to make people nervous now and then.

The most important thing I want to pass on to you is that nothing I've mentioned in this podcast is a dealbreaker for whether or not I continue.  Even if this project is largely a 'failure,' I can't consider it one.  Street Photography is something I have wanted to experiment with, and anytime I can take the camera out of the bag, I've already won because I'm learning every time I do it.   That's the big lesson out of this.  Just shoot.   Consider what you have, and iterate every time you head out.  Everything is practice.  You can't take the good shots unless you take a mountain of bad ones, and trust me, I've taken some bad photos, but I've got some outstanding ones out of this that I'm proud to share with all of you.  

If you've found this helpful, I would appreciate it if you'd share this with someone you think could use it. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, and I'd really appreciate a review of the podcast if you have the time.  Also, if you find this episode or any of this podcast to be of value to you, how about being me a coffee?  You can go to buymeacoffee.com/krisroley, and...well...buy me a coffee.  Now, I've mentioned this at the end of the podcast since the beginning of the year, but I haven't really gone into a lot of detail about what you can find at the BMAC site.   Over at Buy Me A Coffee, I have three tiers:  Free content, content for supporters of my work, and membership content.  I'll always put up free content at the site because I realize some people can't part with a buck right now, but I still want you to have something.   Supporters get a weekly dispatch, a sample of my photographic work, and what I call 'One Sheets,' which are one-page tutorials on how to do something.  For example, January's one sheet had to do with how I process voices for audio.   Members will get all the Supporter content, a special podcast, and any video tutorials I do.   You can support my work for as little as a dollar, and memberships are 5 bucks a month or 50 dollars a year.  

There are two other ways you can support my work. The first is by going to krisroley.com and clicking on the photography link in the menu.  The photos I've posted there are available for purchase, and more photos will be posted there as we go.   The second is by hiring me to edit your podcast, provide show notes, or write for you, and you can check my rates by going to krisroley.com and clicking on the services link.

The website HQ for all this madness is krisroley.com, and you can go there to see the latest and connect with me on all the social mediasssss.  

Try as I might, I’m just too enamored of one post a day with some thoughts of my own followed by some curated links. I realize the SEO may not like this very much, but I had to stop ad consider whether I really gave a toss about it. I don’t. So, the general idea is for me to do this every day if I can, and post it before the close of business every day. Besides, you never know, there may be a podcast player at the top of this sooner than you think. Maybe make this the show prep for a pod? Why not?

I received a question from my friend Jennie that I’d like to share with you. She self-hosts her own podcast, ad she asked me if I was familiar with any inexpensive solutions for Dynamic Ad Insertion. I’ve not done a lot of research into the topic, so I went digging around and there doesn’t appear to be any solutions for a self-hosted provider. The least expensive solution I could find was Podbean for 39 bucks a month or about 350 a year. Anchor offers some monetization options like setting up a Patron account and Sponsorships, and they appear to be free to set up, but having your podcast on Anchor might be a tad problematic. I found an episode of Ask the Podcast Coach, and they go into a little detail:

The thing I see with anchors is, again, my biggest beef is they have that whole thing Oh, click here to let us submit to Apple. And then you lose all your control in Apple and Google and Spotify.

What Dave means here is that you don’t have access to your stats. Michael Mignano wrote on Medium back in 2018 an article called “No, Anchor doesn’t own your podcast”, addressing some ambiguities about Anchor’s TOS. Dave responded to it with the following:

What about when you submit my show to Apple “for me”? (and then later I can’t check my stats because you control (not own) my show in Apple? Have you made that painfully OBVIOUS in your platform?

Mignano responds:

Hi Dave! Thanks for the question about distribution. Having Anchor distribute to Apple Podcasts on your behalf is completely optional. If you do choose to have us do it for you, and you’d like to access your Apple Podcasts connect account and analytics, just contact us and we can easily transfer your podcast to any Apple account.

Regarding your question about monetization. Right now Anchor generates revenue by sharing in value created for podcasters through the platform, like through our Listener Support feature. In addition to that, we’re backed by some of the best investors in the world, like Google Ventures and Accel. This is a great opportunity for the entire community, because it means the podcasting industry can innovate and move forward in ways not previously possible!

Thanks again and hope you’ll give Anchor a try if you’re not already using the platform!

There does appear to be a question about the RSS feed. Who owns it? Good Question. From the Medium Article:

When you host your podcast on Anchor, you allow us to do things like generate your episodes for you, put them into RSS feeds for you, and optimize your audio and its file formats to make sure your audio always sounds amazing.

This tells me that Anchor is creating an RSS feed of their own ‘for you’, and they distribute that feed, not anything you may already have. Admittedly, if you’re podcasting on Anchor this may not be an issue for you. You may not have ever had a feed anywhere else, or rolled your own. But if you’re a person that would like to be in control of your podcast in total, this may not be the option for you. Lots of nice shiny monetization options, but I’ll leave it to you if those options are worth what you may be giving up.

Some Links of interest…

From the Independent, a photographer was arrested after covering a protest:

Freelance photographer Andy Aitchison, 46, attended a demonstration outside Napier Barracks, in Folkestone, on Thursday morning and took photos as protesters threw buckets of fake blood at the gates of the site. The images were later used in local press reports.

…

More than six hours after the demonstration on Thursday, five police officers arrived at the home of Mr Aitchison, who has worked as a photographer for 26 years, and arrested him under suspicion of criminal damage of a dwelling. They seized his mobile phone and the memory card from his camera, and instructed him to accompany them to the local police station.

That barracks is housing asylum seekers, and the protest was over the conditions of the camp. Aitchison was there to cover it, and they arrest him and take his cameras. Not AT the protest, but six hours later. Outrageous. Don't let that go down the memory hole. Send more photographers.

Blubrry has come out with some rules for using Twitter if you’re a podcaster:

If you are not promoting your podcast on Twitter, it’s worth strong consideration. And don’t just wing it, either. Following these rules will help develop your strategy and make you the most effective Twitter-user possible.

For me, the hardest part about promoting on social media is wrapping my head around the fact that only a fraction of your audience will see your tweeting about your podcast more than once. So you can feel a little better about retweeting it at several points during the day.

Staying with the Marketing for a moment, Rachel at DIY Photography had a call with a media expert from the Instagram Partnerships team, and she shares some insight as to why your Instagram engagement might be tanking at the moment:

The most important thing I learned was that Instagram’s algorithm will either reward or punish you based on your usage of the app as a whole. There are over 500 different factors, but it takes much more into account than just the likes, views, comments, etc of a specific post. The algorithm ranks your specific post by taking into account your use of Instagram as a whole.

Instagram would like it if you'd live in their app. Reading this, I don't know how realistic their ideal schedule is. Still, some good ideas here. The new algorithm appears to reward you for consistent posting around the same time over a long period of time, so that's something to consider.

If it’s a day that ends in Y, some podcasting website has a mic roundup. Today, it’s The Podcast Host.

I mentioned some potential reasons you might want a mic for your computer. Differing needs means there's no single “best PC microphone” option. There's rarely a single “best” option when it comes to anything in audio. However, we'll break this guide down into use-cases and give you our favourite options for each one. That'll hopefully help you to make a more informed choice.

My take: Gear is not going to make the difference if your content sucks. Upgrade your message before you upgrade your mic. That said, I’m a big fan of the Samson Q2U because it’s got XLR and USB inputs, it’s got a headphone jack onboard for monitoring, and it’s quality for a good price. I use a Rode Podmic for my work, but that’s a bit higher-end than some can afford. I avoid headphone mics like the plague; they have never worked well for me. Also, I would not use a condenser mic. They sound great, but if you’re not in a great recording environment, a condenser mic will pick a lot of that up.