I lost interest in Steemit a year or so ago, but I was thinking about revisiting the site.

My current thoughts are based on Brave, hoping for donations if I set up a photo gallery. I need to see if it is possible to provide an image without a watermark for BAT donations. The alternative is to leave the watermark on the image, and to solicit Bitcoin or BAT donations, and to include various affiliate links on the pages. I'll see what is available in the latest Piwigo CMS.

Was that a joke post? He has done more than anyone to destroy the traditions of one of the oldest parliamentary systems in the world, and also he has attempted to destroy democracy here. And it is all all to help his own fortunes, and those of his Globalist masters and associates.

I hope that his departure will lead to my country being given back to the people, but I doubt if we can get rid of the controllers in the Anglophone empire.

Thanks for looking into this for me.

There is a lot of competition to get listed on Getty, Shutterstock and the like, so I thought it might be easier to start with Steemit and similar sites. They pay in crypto, and this can be exchanged for Bitcoin. It might be easier to get listed and earn revenue on such sites, especially if one associates a story with the pictures. Mobile phone images are a different category, and I see that you can buy supplementary lenses for the cameras. That may be the way to go in the future, but I think it is a bit expensive at the moment for this project.

I've hit a couple of problems, and it looks as if I may need to buy an adapter ring for the FD lenses. I'm expecting one to arrive today or tomorrow, so I'll see how I get on with that. The first one that I purchased on Ebay hasn't been shipped yet, so I've written to see if the seller will cancel the transaction, but I'm still waiting for a reply. Once I have mastered control of these cheap lens, I may decide to concentrate on Macro and night shots with them.

It would be better to fix the problems that cause people to turn to the abuse of drugs, tobacco and alcohol.

Wow - what a load of misconceptions there are in this thread.

Britain built the largest empire the world has ever seen, and it is still in existence. The City of London is a more important financial centre than New York, and over half of the Western World's wealth is controlled through it. Leaving the EU is not xenophobic, quite the reverse. The EU is a restrictive trading structure, with trade barriers that have restricted it's growth, A free UK wants to trade with the whole world, and not just the EU. Part of the reason for Britain's tremendous growth has been a free approach to beneficial immigration, however, recently we seem to be having to support a load of leeches and political activists attempting to destroy centuries of culture and a good political system.

The deals that supermarkets do are against the interests of the consumer. Tesco has destroyed Hovis by forcing them to drive down prices at the expense of quality. This allowed Warburtons to rise, but many people still buy Hovis because that is what they have always bought. Food quality has taken a massive dive since we were forced to accept the lower EU standards. Many traditional apple orchards were burnt, and now we have cheap French pappy apples forced on us. Our fish is caught by EU fishermen, and we are forced to pay for imports of fish caught in our waters, and pay our unemployed fishermen state benefits.

There really is a lot more like this that one can say, but the real problem is not the membership of the EU, but the control that the City of London has over the UK as well as the EU ( and America ). The five eyes partnership has massive control over the world warmongering, and the EU is not a part of that, this is because they aren't part of the Anglophone empire. The Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance between The UK, Washington, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

I think OgNasty may have awarded the merits because he thought the thread might create interesting discussion, and that is something that merit sources should do. Unfortunately being a merit source is quite an onerous and unpaid responsibility, and we don't have time to research  all of the posters we review. The only thing that we can do is to put the posters on ignore, but something has to trigger that action ( such as all caps titles, or quote pyramids ).

Boris and his family are Eton/Oxford bankers, and their Anglosphere empire controls the EU (  and the UK ) , of course he wants us to stay shackled to their empire. I can understand that, but I can't understand why ordinary people want to stay in the imploding EU. Apart from the £39billion "divorce bill", there is a further £30billion obligation to the ECB if we don't get out with a real Brexit, and there is a probable future £100 billion to pay, as they try to keep the corpse afloat in the future.

The only way forward for the UK is a clean break with no political or military dependence ( read "deal" ), followed by 5 or 6 trade deals. Even if Britain can manage to get a clean break, the EU puppet masters in the City of London will still control the judiciary, the civil service, the government, and the education system. It will probably take a revolution to get rid of that lot. I feel sorry for the countries left in the EU. It is controlled by an Anglophone empire ( legacy of Cecil Rhodes ), and they don't speak English, so they are all considered to be lesser mortals, to be robbed and enslaved. ( not my opinion of Europeans ).

And that is why you need an imaging capturing system, and not just as phone with a lens. You get a better base if you shoot in RAW as well, and then do some post processing. I hoped that we could work together to help members to create images that are "really well done", and pick up a bit of regular income. I believe that the money you would need to spend on a high end phone would be better spent on some second hand equipment, but you can't play games on a camera.

Where are all these good posts that deserve merits? I don't find very many, ad I've got a lot of sMerit to awatd. OK, I've got some strange ideas - I don't open threads with all caps titles, and I don't merit posts that misuse quotes, and I have a few other things that cause me to skip posts. I've lost interest in discussing merits, activity, bounty, reputation and such topics. I'd like to discuss Bitcoin, economics, politics and other crypto issues, but it is difficult to find good discussions. I've tried to start a few, and to create a few projects, but they don't seem to generate any interest, so I end up letting them decay.

Maybe I'm getting old or something, but I'm finding it hard to read the boards and retain interest. Bitcoin and crypto are going through an exciting period, and the forum should be vibrant, but we seem to be stuck on comparisons with gold, and other topics that were relevant 5 years ago. I've got moths in my merit purse, give me some topics and posts so that I can unzip it.

A Bligh (sic) on the bounties, it sounds as if there is mutiny afoot.

Mobile phone cameras have improved a lot, and even my cheap Huawei can take useful pictures. They are limited by the lens and sensor size, and it is only recently that depth of field control has been introduced. A modern phone with 3 lens and advanced features is going to cost well into 4 figures, and that is above the budget for this project. Whilst some have received large payments for shots taken with a mobile, they tend to be opportunistic rather than planned stock photos. To build a portfolio of several thousand images, and to differentiate your photos from the millions of others that are available, I believe than one needs to have a fair degree of control over the image capturing process, and also it is useful to store them in RAW. This helps with the post processing.

@ NeuroticFish
Thanks for the comment, and I decided things were going too slowly, so I gave in, and I have bought a 4Gb card, and a couple of lens online. I'm waiting for delivery at the moment. The Chinese option is cheaper, but I didn't want to wait a month for the free delivery. The max memory size I can use is 8Gb, and maybe I will order one in the future. It might help as I want to record in RAW. There doesn't seem to be much interest in this on Bitcoin Talk, so I'm moving away from a cheap camera system acquisition into an experiment in reverse lens macro photography. Things get really interesting once you go to 10 or 20 times magnification. As long as you can focus of course.

@Saisal

I don't have any problems with making money, andif you had really read my posts, you would have realised that my project was aimed at helping people to build their photographic skills on a low budget. I hoped that this would help them to avoid the predatory scams that seem to be abundant on Bitcoin Talk at the moment. I haven't clicked your link, but you text follows the same tired old formula, so I would encourage others to ignore it.

The whole situation is extremely complex, and you need to talk to an accountant. It depends on your status - are you a trader or an investor, the way your government regards Bitcoin - is it a currency for example, and the way you dispose of your Bitcoin - did you use it to buy a car.

In the UK, holding legal tender is tax exempt. A gold Britannia is legal tender, so its increase in value in step with gold does not give rise to a tax liability. It isn't too clear how Bitcoin is rated, but profits on trading through an exchange, will probably give rise to an income tax liability.

If we have to increase merit awards above 1 or 2, then in my opinion the forum has a problem. There should be enough reasonable posts to soak up all of the merits available. The problem may be a paucity of interesting threads and posts to encourage senior members to spend more time in the forum. The senior members tend to be the ones with sMerit to award, and if we start to allow them to drift away, then the forum will be the poorer for it. I think that stats on the changes in activity and merit receipts for senior and long standing members of the forum would be an important metric to gauge the health and future prospects for the forum.

There is an important difference between use of signatures for personal sites and projects, and their use for paid signature campaigns. Signatures are an important privilege - it's their abuse that is the problem.

I sometime find that sites are blocked when using public WiFi. It's easy to circumvent this.  I use a Tor window in the Brave browser.

It seems to link to the fbi.gov site.

Maybe we should have some sort of encouragement for good behaviour. I've just bumped my photography project with a new purchase report, and I deleted the previous post, so that I didn't have 2 consecutive posts. I think it keeps the thread cleaner, but I suspect that many bumpers don't care about this. I guess deleting a post reduces activity and sig views, so that is a disincentive.

I've just bought a wide angle zoom lens 24-40mm, but it is stuck at f3.5. The lens id usable, but it will be interesting to see if I can repair it. It comes with the caps and a filter, and it looks to be in reasonable condition apart from the aperture setting. It is manufactured by Sun, so, as a cheaper lens, it may be harder to repair than a Canon. I only paid £10 fr it, so it is an interesting experiment.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Canon-FD-fit-Wide-Angle-Zoom-24-40mm-working-but-Stuck-at-f3-5/401922682467?hash=item5d94756e63:g:1ZMAAOSwCH9dpd2g&autorefresh=true

Now I need to find a compact flash card.

The merit system is a doorway to higher ranks, and a way to gain additional benefits from participation in the forum community. If you don't like it, then just close the door quietly behind you on your way out.