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| Small Field on the Isle of Skye, Scotland - 2015 |
The last few weeks have seen me search for new sources of photography news after significantly reducing my use of social media these past couple of years. With the removal of Twitter (X) from my day-to-day life, I suddenly realised that I was feeling rather cut off from photography news. No news. No new photography. No sources of information at all. It suddenly dawned on me that needed to do something about that.
A couple of weeks ago I found an old OPML export file in a Dropbox folder, made in late 2013. The file contained a list of all of the websites and blogs that I followed starting after 2007. I have to be honest. I wasn't sure if the file would work or if the RSS feeds listed were still active! As it turned out, around 80% of the feeds were either no longer of interest, no longer active or had just disappeared completely. There was, however, a core of photography blogs that were still active.
The process of creating a new feed list has, though, been a great insight into the state of blogging in the world of podcasts and social media feeds. It certainly seems quieter but the dedicated blogger activity is still there. Several veteran blog names stood out on the RSS list, and to my amazement, these feeds were still active over a decade later. They may not post as often as they used to, but then that is probably to be expected.
So far the new list seems to be working well. It needs building up a bit but the core feeds I'm interested in are there. If following these feeds also boosts my own blogging, I'll be happy with that too.
