What and Why (Four Photographs) and for WordPress users my comments (bottom of the page) on WordPress’s new Reader

To view more of my photography please click on www.rakmilphotography.com

In this series I  focused on the B&W images and have included the color versions to make a point. There is a lot going on in these photographs apart form the subject itself: detail, texture, normal distortions of old buildings (accentuated in part by the positioning of the camera) etc. In B&W, the impact seems to come from the art as well as the other things I have mentioned. However, in color the impact and details are not as evident. The color shots, were sharpened in Photoshop, detailed in Intensity CK and further detailed in Aurora HDR 2017. B&W conversions were done in Tonality CK.

My comments on the new Reader were posted on the support forum (https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/reader-update?replies=32), you can add your views there or in the WP original post: (https://en.blog.wordpress.com/2016/12/14/reader-refresh-2017/#comment-231978)

The new Reader has some severe consequences for photographers and other artists who have worked hard and are showcasing their work. The cropped format (portrait or landscape) is one problem; a second is minuscule thumbnails (try to see the detail in a landscape, or street scene at such a size or even distinguish between them). Magazines on-line and in print have understood this for a long time, but magazines also get to choose their content, art and photography. The Reader is a forum for people to advertise their work quite the reverse from a magazine. Be it prose, poetry, painting, photography or news people choose what to post, its format and content, they work hard at that and Reader discards all of it when it comes to photography. Moving on to the other “improvements”, as a photographer I might not like the “gallery format” maybe it does not suit my story line – does it even show my photos in order? And why would anyone want to visit my blog or view my post when most of it is there in Reader for him or her to see? How and why is it that Reader chooses from my posts what to advertise at the bottom of my post, what if I am doing a series of posts and the posts chosen by the algorithm have nothing to do with that series. Why not have different formats for “Tag pages” where art/photography is the subject? We all work hard on our content and to have these changes imposed on us hurts. Many of us like WordPress for the community. Reader is a key function in that and having someone decide for us how our work and efforts will be reformatted does not help the community.