I recently added some stats to my photo blog: https://florian.photo/stats
I was surprised to find out, that the current streak (117 days and counting) is not the longest to date. Turns out that between 2016 and 2017 I managed to post 151 days in a row! I did not track it back then and that’s probably why I missed a day – and then continued to post for another 25 days straight.
I bought a ticket for WordCamp Europe 2023 in Athens! After missing last year’s #wceu, I am looking forward to exploring a city I have never been to and meeting many of the people I haven’t seen since 2019!
I got a friendly email yesterday from a reader of my photoblog (or is it viewer, because there is not that much to read… well, I digress), which made my day! I stopped tracking views, so I have no idea how many people are looking at my images. I generally post for myself, mainly to keep me making more, new photographs. But getting a compliment from a complete stranger still feels nice! Thanks!
In 2022 I archived1 21,469 photos, 4,846 of which, I marked as favorites. (2021’s numbers for comparison: 22,097 archived, 4,809 favorites. That is pretty consistent, I’d say.)
35 % of images are tagged “home”, which means I took them at and around my home. (46 % in 2021). 45 % of all of my 2022 images have at least one of my daughters in them, which further indicates that documenting my family is by far the most important part of my photographic practice.
Last year I got a new camera, the Fujifilm X-E4, which I used for roughly 34 % of my images. The Leica M is still number one at 49 %, the Q accounts for 13 % of photographs taken in 2022. (The remaining 4 % are various cameras I only used for testing, etc.)
I took the most images in May, 2,948 to be exact.
(See 2021)
(See books I created in 2021 and 2020)
I am not a fan of consuming photography online. Which probably sounds weird, coming from someone who just finished 100 days of posting daily to his photoblog. I should probably clarify this a bit:
I do not like looking at photographs in a feed like application like Instagram or Mastodon (as I learned just recently, when I tried to follow some photo related hashtags).
My main issue is with presentation and image size: Photos are way too small to appreciate them really and they are all in the same format and context.
Also I am missing intentionality. I am not looking at photographer X’s work, I am just looking at everything at once – and whatever some algorithm deems right for me at the moment. (Not on Mastodon, but following hashtags feels pretty much the same.)
Don’t get me wrong, I do not have an issue looking at photos on a screen – although nothing – nothing! – beats the printed image – but I would rather go to peoples’ websites, where they present their images in a way that they think fits their work best and that they put a little bit of effort into.
So I guess, what I am trying to say is this: Create a dedicated place for your photography online. Get a website going, start a photoblog and share your images in a format that they deserve.
If you already have a photoblog, please share it with me. I’d love to follow along.
A couple of my wrestling images have been on display at collective.ruhr for almost month now. It is always so nice to see my work printed and framed!
Still very much enjoying our Tern GSD (cargo e-bike). Used it today to haul some stuff to the recycling yard. (I am always the only one on a bike. 😂)
Watching Die Hard and working on my website. (I usually watch it around Christmas, but didn’t find the time.)
I added a notes feature to my blog using WordPress’ status post format.
At some point I might create a separate RSS feed for those posts, but for now I wanted to exclude them from the general RSS feed, to keep it somewhat clean, containing only proper blog posts.
This is how I implemented it:
function my_theme_exclude_status_posts_from_feed( $wp_query ) {
if ( $wp_query->is_feed ) {
$status_posts = get_posts( [
'posts_per_page' => -1,
'tax_query' => [
[
'taxonomy' => 'post_format',
'terms' => [ 'post-format-status' ],
'field' => 'slug',
'operator' => 'IN',
]
],
'fields' => 'ids'
] );
$wp_query->set( 'post__not_in', $status_posts );
}
return $wp_query;
}
add_filter( 'pre_get_posts', 'my_theme_exclude_status_posts_from_feed' );Please let me know, if you know of a better/cleaner way to achieve this.
Update: After some input from Mark, I rewrote it, with one query less:
function my_theme_exclude_status_posts_from_feed( $wp_query ) {
if ( $wp_query->is_feed ) {
$filter = [
'taxonomy' => 'post_format',
'terms' => [ 'post-format-status' ],
'field' => 'slug',
'operator' => 'NOT IN',
];
$tax_query = $wp_query->get( 'tax_query' );
if ( is_array( $tax_query ) ) {
$tax_query[] = $filter;
}
else {
$tax_query = [ $filter ];
}
$wp_query->set( 'tax_query', $tax_query );
}
return $wp_query;
}
add_filter( 'pre_get_posts', 'my_theme_exclude_status_posts_from_feed' );Since Mastodon is really taking off (this time around), I was thinking about how to use it and integrate it into my general publishing workflow. (Not that I am posting much, but still.)
I have always been a fan of posting to my blog first, then to social media second.
A couple of days ago I activated post formats, more precisely the “status” format, to publish short notes, which do not warrant a proper blog post.
I also wanted to share those notes on Mastodon automatically. When looking into how to achieve that, I found the Share on Mastodon plugin. It is pretty straight forward to configure and it just works.
Jan, the developer, has added some well placed filters, which you can use to define exactly what is being shared. Have a look at the documentation with some examples on Jan’s website.
I made some adjustments using the share_on_mastodon_status filter, so that the post on Mastodon contains different things depending on the post format:
add_filter( 'share_on_mastodon_status', function( $status, $post ) {
// Share only the post content if it is a status post
if ( has_post_format( 'status', $post ) ) {
$status = wp_strip_all_tags( $post->post_content );
}
// Share title + tags + url, if it is a regular post
else {
$status = wp_strip_all_tags( get_the_title( $post->ID ) );
$tags = get_the_tags( $post->ID );
if ( $tags ) {
$temp = '';
foreach ( $tags as $tag ) {
$temp .= '#' . preg_replace( '/\s/', '', $tag->name ) . ' ';
}
$status .= "\n\n" . trim( $temp );
}
$status .= . "\n\n🔗 " . get_the_permalink( $post->ID );
}
return $status;
}, 10, 2 );Let’s connect on Mastodon!