Just finished the post and saw your frustrations came from art/photography. That's tough. It's very subjective, and the, ahem, lower-brow the taste in general, the more popular it is by volume. I would also say that natural photos are perhaps over-saturated with places like Reddit Earth Porn always a click away. That may make it even more difficult to judge the tastes of your prospective audience, because they can see a range of 2000x or higher resolution photos of world wonders that would require a helicopter to recreate, in 3 seconds.
PS - The last photo looks like Cades Cove.
Yeah, you've got a really good point there. For nature photography, there is a huge amount of competition all over the internet. It's why I never gave real thought to trying to make it my profession. Part of my pictures do okay here on Steemit, so I can't complain too much. Seeing bad quality pictures gaining well into the hundreds can sometimes be quite frustrating though. In some cases, it just seems to be about who you know, but I guess that's with everything in life!
Here's another issue. Compare it to, say, automotive photography.
Every good nature photo ever taken is still relevant, even black and white photos. You're competing with over 100 years of photos and displaying the same thing they are. Have you really taken anything close to the best "misty field" picture taken in the last 150 years? I wouldn't know, I'm not an art critic. Is it more reasonable to assume you may not even be in the "top 1000 best misty field pictures", or maybe even "top million" out of 10 million? Possibly.
The photographer snapping a 2018 Ford Mustang isn't competing with anything except maybe (at most) a picture of the same generation of Mustang, and there sure aren't 150 years of them. 2-3 years, tops. In a few years, there will be a new and totally different looking Mustang, and 99% of previous Mustang photos will be rendered irrelevant, aside from niche collectors. There is a whole new, untapped subject to photograph that nobody has ever photographed before, the 2019, 2020, etc Mustang.
Same with technology, movies, music, new construction, etc.
The same issues apply to some types of articles, too. History is a good example - it's all been said before, and likely better than (the proverbial you) could. I'd be writing more about it otherwise.
They aren't really making any new nature these days.
Haha, yeah you're right about that. I would never suggest mine are the best, not by a long shot. Here on Steemit though, there are definitely worse aswell. Its hard these days to find something unique though! So many things have already been done. I'm happy I found Steemit so early on in this particular game :-)
Seems? 8-)
Okay, that might just be the biggest part of things here :D