My YouTube + growth and negativity

As of today, my YouTube channel, @GuamPhotographer, has approximately 140 subscribers. It’s still tiny, but this growth has been in the past few weeks. My channel has been up for almost 5/6 years, and it had maybe 20/30 subscribers, but as I’ve started posting and exploring where and how, and why what I want to do, it’s had steady growth since I actively pursued it in January, this year, 2023. This video Kamira + Fujifilm X-T5 now has 13k views and continues to grow steadily; according to YouTube analytics, in the last 28 days, I have more than 17.5k views increase, 260.9 hours more watch time, & +58 more subscribers.

My newly posted video of Rhea is growing in views but not to the level the video of Kamira did. Still, I am finding that the more likes, the more viewers it gets, and the thumbnail for the newly posted video is just a name. In contrast, the Kamira vid is of her in a bikini, which is probably what’s also driving viewers there.

The end goal here is to showcase my work and my process when I work. I want to do sort of YouTube photography lessons, what I do, and why I do what I do. I also will do the same thing on my Patreon page, which will be geared toward content that cannot be shown on YouTube.

The thing I have to remember being on a ‘new’ platform, new to me is that I do now have a lot of learning and growth that needs to happen so I can be any good with video recording, and recording audio for that video, then editing, and all the ‘fun’ stuff that comes with that as well as then marketing it. I’ve been comfortable with my photography as it’s been something I’ve done for over 30 years, and now it comes a little more naturally, and problem-solving for that isn’t as tricky. Video, on the other hand, has a CRAZY amount of knowledge!

I received a comment on a video I posted a couple of months ago, and it does pretty well; in the aforementioned Kamira + Fujifilm X-T5 video in it, the commenter writes, “Esse cara é muito ruim de câmera mem” I didn’t know what it meant so I had to use the very trusty Google Translate. It translated to, “This guy is really bad with the camera” Initially, I was 'hurt’ and I think for most, that might be the first reaction and then lash out, but I had to stop and think about it and took a look at it, and he’s right it wasn’t very good at all.

I could go into a whole bunch of excuses about why it was terrible, “I’m new to this…” “it was rushed…” “I didn’t storyboard properly…” etc., etc., etc. But that would only once again appeal to my ego, so after giving it thought, I concluded that he was right. I will take what he said with a grain of salt and use it to improve my knowledge and this craft I am getting into, creating video content for YouTube because that will only help grow my channel. I don’t want to post crap; I want to post good-quality content that people will want to keep coming back to!

I started taking pretty girl photos in the mid to late 80s. I always recall the first photo shoot I did with a young woman named Donna Bullard, whom I went to junior college with at American River College, just outside of Sacramento, CA. She was gorgeous; she reminded me of Cybill Sheperd. I did it in my garage; it was cold; I think it was in the middle of November or December in 1986 or 1987?! I like to show people these images when new shooters come to me discouraged, the photos weren’t very good, but we all had to start somewhere. I included the photos below so you can see and enjoy them as much as I enjoyed creating them long ago!