motion graphics - PhotoTrice

Where are the responsible adults?

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The distortion field surrounding politics becomes more absurd with each passing day. The question; “Where are the responsible adults who used to make policy decisions?” may not be worth asking anymore. Unfortunately the lack of leadership we are experiencing is not just election season hype. Newspeak and misdirection are practiced with a straight face by our leaders who offer us little beyond “Bread and circuses”, magical thinking.

Government ain’t baseball, something to watch on Saturday afternoon. We cheat ourselves at the peril of our children. Make your voice heard.

Vote for a better America!

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone,

As five or six year-old children we made Valentines cards using construction paper, glue and scissors. Sixty five years ago children made things with their hands. It was how we learned rudimentary manual skills so necessary in the lives of our parents and grandparents. Education is much more forward looking today than in the fifties.

This simple card is muscle memory transformed from paper into something digital. It is an attempt to be somewhat relevant in the present day. My natural demographic is out of step with the future. Today making things with your hands is unnecessary and even frowned upon as a waste of time.

A dubious advantage of age is the ability to interpret the present based upon life experience. I’m cursed by mechanical ability which is the result of the blessings of a visual mind. I can see the most intricate details of the physical world. This mind trick it is always mine to use.

Almost Famous

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Almost Famous

The movie Almost Famous resonates with me because it captures something about the 1960’s Rock music scene that’s close to my experience of the times. In particular the rather tame analog marketing used to sell music in the 60’s has blossomed into the digital online hype of today. The aim was the same then as now. Find the right product; create the right pitch, step on the marketing elevator and ride to the top. Simple or so it seems.

Posting My Work

Here is where marketing gets personal. About three years ago I got interested in motion graphics as a way to make slideshows of my photos. Since then I’ve made more than thirty short videos. Most are posted on YouTube where they failed to reach an audience. Not much of a surprise. All combined they have less than a thousand views.

Finding Pinterest

In the middle of 2019 I discovered Pinterest. As a photographer the visual content there is very appealing. It didn’t take long to create several collections of photographs which generate a few hundred to a few thousand impressions a week.

Pinterest is an odd duck when it comes to standard content format which is vertical rather than horizontal. This is perfect for mobile users who don’t want to rotate their phones. Original content not produced in vertical format pretty much gets ignored.

When I posted links to some of my HD YouTube videos they got 40-50 views each. After reworking them from HD 1920×1080 to 1080×1920 and posting directly on Pinterest they immediately began getting multiple thousands of impressions.

Finding Success and Failure

On Christmas Eve I posted a 30 second animated New Years video which immediately took off. Within three weeks it had more than 150K impressions, 41K video views and hundreds of web site link clicks. I was absolutely shocked. Even after New Years it kept getting one or two thousand impressions a day.

That’s when I decided to post another video for Chinese New Year but it had a flaw so I deleted it. Unfortunately I actually deleted the wrong New Years video and lost my big success. In a panic I re-posted but the deed was done.

Well at least I was Almost Famous. Better luck next time.