I have always believed that the Steem blockchain could do more for photographers than it currently does. I want to be able to go to a single place and see some amazing images as well as read articles from some of the great photographers that create content on this platform without having to find my way through a shed load of spam and plagiarised content. Many others have tried with their own tag, but as one tag gets popular, the spammers and plagiarists move in and yet again it becomes an impossibility to stop rubbish getting to the top of trending.

I have been scratching my head for a while now on how I think this could be done, and I've finally come to a conclusion.

Introducing @photomag

Photomag will hopefully be a place where photographers can come to read and view some great photography content daily without the problems associated with day to day Steem usage. Also, good content will be rewarded well using my curie direct follow up-vote (which currently is worth anything between $5 and $10). This, in turn, should push good content to the top of the #photomag trending feed, turning that into its own collection of great photography articles and images.

But surely vote-bots and massive self-upvoting/circle jerking will still be a problem?

While using Steemit to browse, yes that will be the case - the system is always open to abuse and pushing poor quality posting to the top of any trending tag. However, in the future, I am planning on creating a @photomag specific user interface which will have more of a magazine format and will only show articles that have been up-voted by the @photomag associated accounts. This effectively makes me (and maybe in the future a team of people), the editors of the magazine which you have created and been rewarded for creating. All curation will be manually done and plagiarism/re-posting checked for to ensure the highest quality posts appear in the magazine. In terms of my experience and how I will create this interface - I have nearly 20 years experience in software engineering and support and have lots of experience creating user interfaces so hopefully it will be your go-to place for photography articles on the STEEM blockchain.

So how do I get involved?

For now, just post great content with the #photomag tag as the first tag. If the post is of good enough quality, I'll be dropping my curie direct follow up-vote on it. I'd love to see the following from you all

• Image posts - Show me your best photos. Add some details about what you did when you took them and how you set them up. The more interesting information you put on there the better. Even a short paragraph on what you were trying to achieve with the image will make it more likely that you will get an up-vote.
• Blog posting - Been somewhere cool or interesting where the main focus of your trip was photography. Let me know about that and I'll be sure to drop a vote if it's a good post.
• General Photographic Articles - Fancy writing a bit about how to use ND filters or the theory behind the circle of confusion. Do it! This is exactly the type of thing that I want to see
• Reviews - Have you gotten hold of the latest camera body and fancy telling everyone all about it? Would love to hear what you think.
• Anything else - If it's based on photography (or even videography) then it could well be added into the mag.

One thing to note is that I am not likely to up-vote simple snapshots. This is intended to be a magazine for photographers, by photographers, so high-quality images and posts are what I am looking for. I only have so much VP to spread around so it will be used on the best articles only

How else can I help?

You can follow the vote-trail on steemauto.

https://steemauto.com/dash.php?trail=photomag&i=1

Or delegate SP to @photomag with one of the following links

50 SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.

Who operates @photomag?

@photomag is operated by @markangeltrueman. Mark is a @curie curator who is looking to make use of his direct follow up-vote from curie in order to promote the work of good photographic content creators. He is also an avid photographer and all round STEEM addict.

I look forward to seeing what you guys post.

Thanks