Hi, ho. It's episode 18, Saturday, April 7th, 2018, 615 PM, and this is the Daily Key Valve. And so yesterday's post I talked about social media and how difficult it can be some time. And what a difference the day makes.
If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you saw that posted an article that just came out today. I think it's called the 30 top portraits that show the strength of men in low and behold, one of my portraits was featured in that article. So I got notified about that today from Viewbug and you may have heard me mention Viewbug and a couple other podcasts. So let me just tell you what that social media platform is.
Viewbug is a community of photographers worldwide. We all pay different prices to be a part of Viewbug depending on what tier of membership you want. It's almost like the Facebook for photographers. You get a profile, you post pictures, and then your fellow photographers around the world get to critique your work.
They can give you awards based on your work. You can enter contests, you can win money, you can win cameras, lenses, other photography gear, etc. So it's a pretty unique type of a platform. And it's very much unlike Facebook where Facebook is family, friends, people that follow my photography because they like it and I may not know who they are personally.
But they like my work and that's fine. And Facebook people can like it, share yourself, comment, so on and so forth across the line. So Viewbug differs in the fact that the people that are seeing my work are fellow photographers of all levels of expertise from amateur all the way to professional photographer. So it's pretty rewarding whenever you post pictures to Viewbug and you get that kind of positive feedback and to have one of my portraits go the whole way through one of their contests and get featured in the top 30 article such as the one that came out today that I shared already.
It's pretty cool feeling that it's definitely some very positive validation and I humbled by it and I appreciate that more than you all can imagine. And again, it's just such a unique thing when I sit back and I think of the thousands of pictures I've taken from family members and friends and work colleagues and professional models and I look at the ones that get the most energy and the ones that have the most fuel on social media and it always surprises me which ones are in it for the long haul which ones do the best in this picture that made it into the top 30 article is no different. And it's my friend Doug Dering who's also a professional photographer. He comes to my studio a lot.
He's used my space a lot. He and I have done dozens and dozens and dozens of photo shoots together and there's also been dozens of times when he and I were bored and we would just call each other up and say, hey, did you want to shoot each other tonight and we practiced a technique with cameras and lenses and lighting and this was one of those nights where we were just kind of playing around in the studio but we were definitely just working on some different aspects of photography together and I took that portrait of him. Smoking his pie, pulling his camera with his hat, with his beard, with his sunglasses and I love this picture. The minute I pushed the shutter on it and it was a very easy one to edit and I thought it was a great capture of him that really represented him well and he liked it too and he used that on his social media as well but just kind of neat again to sit back and watch thousands of different images of different people and run its course on social media and that's the one that sticks out and wins a bunch of awards and stuff like that.
So again, pretty cool. What are the difference 24 hours I was talking yesterday about how difficult social media is and trying to get the likes and trying to get the shares and then 24 hours later I get notified that one of my pictures is being featured in this article and the cool thing about that if you read the article, that photography contest was judged by a professional photographer from Milan, Italy who went to their big photography academy over in Italy. So this isn't just some random person saying I like this one and I like that one so I'm sure these pictures have to meet certain professional photography criteria and expectations to get featured in advanced through this contest and I'm sure in the coming days or weeks they'll announce who wins the contest but hey look at the end of the day when I log on and see that there's over 80,000 people that entered that particular contest and for me to make it down to the top 30, man that's a big enough victory for me. I don't need to go any further.
It would be nice to share a win contest but again to just get that kind of nod from the professional photography community worldwide is absolutely mind boggling and amazing to me. So I'm going to leave it there for tonight and it's now 6.20pm Saturday night and I hope you guys have a pleasant remainder of your evening. Oh and to my friend, Aaron, I'm in California who's also a fellow paramedic and EMS guy. I've heard my podcast yesterday sent me a very nice voice mail.
Sorry I didn't get back in touch with you. Love you too brother and hope to see you soon and talk to you and get back in touch with you here very shortly. Anyway, daily P5 signing off over on our Roger 10-4 on the Great Week NCEOP.