A month later

Covid is still present and enough idiots are walking around without masks and sufficient idiots have ganged up on governments that governments have bowed to pressure to let people go back to work. All the medical experts are forecasting a second, more deadly wave of Coronavirus in the autumn. I agree. This is exactly what happened with Spanish Flu in 1918.

So this leaves me stuck at home most of the time. I've been doing a lot of those maintenance projects that just got put to one side while I was working full time. I've also been working on growing vegetables. Sure - vegetables are not expensive but they're a lot cheaper grown yourself. A packet of seeds is about a dollar and a half. The potting soil was used last year and is still good. The water comes from a well. What's there to cost money?

So here are two pictures. The first is corn planted as seed, 3 days earlier. The second is the same corn a day later. Quite impressive progress!

Yes, both of those photos were taken with an iPhone. I'm afraid that's as exciting as my photography gets these days. I have no intention of going out unless I absolutely have to due to the risk of catching Covid-19. Sure, I wear a mask and it's a better quality mask than most have but even so there's still a chance of catching the virus.

It will be so nice to be able to go out again to take photos in nice places. The fact is though that because people are not wearing masks and are not social distancing (staying 6 feet or 2 meters apart) the virus is going to keep spreading. There will be a second wave of it in the autumn, just like 1918.

There are certainly photographers out and about. I have noticed though that most are now using cellphones for their pictures and that news TV broadcasters are also using cheaper cameras. The times of plenty are well and truly over. Look at YouTube as an example of that - is it possible to tell the difference between a video shot on a cellphone and one shot on a professional camera? Even the so-called professionals use amateur designated cameras. There has been such a blurring of the lines with equipment quality that it's not really possible to distinguish between the cameras now.

With the low bar to producing high quality output, the difference between professional and amateur is just in sales skills. I have no interest - zero - zilch - nada - in selling photographs professionally as it's a mugs market. Who's going to buy a perfect photo of something when they can download a perfectly adequate version or something similar off the internet? Who's going to hire a photographer when they can take a perfectly usable photo with their phone? We all know where photos end up these days. Not on walls or in galleries but online in costly web albums nobody views or on social media.

Speaking of social media, this blog is my only social media outlet. I used to have automated Twitter bots broadcasting this blog to the Twitterverse. I'd had my Twitter accounts and had never ever managed to have any conversations, just getting ignored or receiving foul mouthed responses. In the end I automated the Twitter accounts. Seriously - if people aren't going to respond to Tweets, there's no point whatsoever in bothering.

I have tried the main social media outlets - Twitter, LinekedIn, Facebook and found them all to be pretty dismal. Twitter just seemed to get no response. LinkedIn after about 12 months demands I send them a copy of my ID and I have zero desire to do that. Who exactly is LinkedIn anyway? I have no financial business with them so their request for a copy of my ID is like some dodgy looking dude knocking on my door at midnight and shouting through my mailbox that he needs a copy of my ID while filling the house with a combination of halitosis and marijuana vapors. Who care anyway? It's just as easy to set up a new account. As for "professional development", pull the other one - the internet's for messing about and not for "professional" anything.

Facebook is the same story as LinkedIn. They're another dodgy dude knocking on the door at midnight asking for information they have no right to have. In fact Facebook is a much nastier proposition. If you have their app on your phone, tablet or computer, it'll be snitching on you to advertisers, targeting you in a very sinister way with advertising. Just about the best thing you can do with Mr Zuckerburg's SnitchBook is press DELETE. I deleted SnitchBook years ago. In fact I can almost name a date. I know it was some time in very early 2011 or very late 2010. I have not missed it.

LinkedIn I tried more recently and just didn't feel like creating a brand new account. For what it's allegedly intended, it's utterly valueless. Like Twitter and Facebook, advertising and harvesting relationships, locations and habits has taken over and become everything the site is about. One day I'll probably even delete my blogs as anonymity is more prized to me now than ever before.