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How Google Killed My Motivation

Good morning awesome camera geeks! Today’s post is a little bit of a rant but please bear with me as I’ll share some insights and information so that hopefully you won’t run into the same situation. You would think that after getting a (mostly) good response from my last full length video, which is the video about the legend of the Nikon D3, that I would follow it up with something to keep up the momentum right?

Well, today’s article is about how YouTube and specifically mother Google killed my motivation.

Now, before we continue, I’ll admit that I made some mistakes here too, but the majority of the problems came from the YouTube and Google Bots and I’ll explain.

Above you see what my current AdSense situation is. I didn’t know I had two AdSense accounts. I thought that was cleared earlier. So I closed one AdSense account but I have another one that was already linked to the channel but for some reason I am unable to reconnect it to YouTube.

The screenshot that you’re seeing in this posting basically says that I am not currently being monetized. Before we get to the current situation, it’s important to understand the whole situation right from the start.

Ok, so the story goes, in December I was monetized after being accepted into the YouTube Partner Program months earlier. Without making a long story even longer, just know that to be monetized you have to have at least 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours and I reached the 4000 watch hour threshold so they started to monetized my videos.

This is the message I got in December 2024 upon being finally monetized on YouTube.

Now before you think that this can change you from rags to riches overnight, I’m here to tell you that it won’t. We’re talking about literal cents per video.

My earnings through December of 2024.

But the good thing is that it adds up and I enjoyed looking at those metrics. It helped me to see which videos were doing good and what topics people actually wanted to see.

Flash forward to the end of January. I noticed that my monetization seemed to stop and I didn’t know why. There was no clear reason given, no notifications on YouTube.

Here’s the part where I think I messed up. In messing around trying to figure out the problem, I found that I had a second AdSense account. Now if you’re not aware, you can have multiple channels but only ONE AdSense account. Now I had an AdSense account from like 20 years back, of which I had no idea which email it was linked to and this was supposedly cleared when I started the Camera Legend AdSense account so I don’t know how I had this new account.

It is possible that I my panic mode I may have clicked on something that created another account. I don’t know for sure because I messed with a lot of settings.

The sad reality is this…

Through my own research I found out that the monetization wasn’t actually stopped, it was paused. The reason for that is because at some point Google sends a physical snail mail PIN to verify your home address.

Well, dumb me cause I DIDN’T KNOW THAT!! Had I known they’d be sending me a PIN I wouldn’t have messed with any settings. But nobody tells you this! At least I don’t remember hearing anything about having to wait for Google to send a PIN for me to verify.

So long story short, after numerous chats with tech support, I deleted the second AdSense account and am two weeks into the 32 day wait time that the system requires for me to reapply for AdSense.

I’m sharing this story for anyone who’s been recently monetized or looking to get monetized so that they don’t run into the same issues. You will receive a PIN from Google through snail mail at some point. Wait for it.

My real rant comes from the fact that while Google is seen as the cutting edge when it comes to tech stuff, their AdSense system is ridiculously old and antiquated. Anyone who has run into AdSense problems I think can testify to this. When problems occur, there’s no clear explanations, no clear links to correct things. Most “help” links will send you straight to these outdated pages that seem like they were written in the early 2000s.

It reminds me of the US Postal where you go into the post office and still see antiquated machines being used by the most unenthusiastic workers ever. Sorry if you’re an enthusiastic USPS employee reading this 😂 I admire your hard work, this is not about you.

There’s actually a lot more to this story, but I’ll give you a last and good example. When the Bot found that I supposedly had two AdSense accounts it said “You already have an AdSense account. Use that one or delete your other account.”

Fair enough but there were no links, no way for me to put the channel back on the correct AdSense account, which is still open. Since it was already linked to YouTube, one would think the machine would automatically do it or at least give me a link to do it, but no. Nothing.

So I’ll wait out the 32 days. I have no choice. That’s supposedly for security. Ok I get it. But my fear is if after 32 days, if things don’t go smoothly, I’m afraid I’ll be in this cycle of trying to figure out how to get the AdSense account back to my YouTube channel.

This is a major motivation killer. Like I said earlier, I wasn’t making any real money on YouTube but the potential was there. I didn’t start YouTube with the motivation of making money. If I did, I would have done everything I could to get to monetization much quicker than I did.

However, once the Pandora’s box opened, I’d be lying if I didn’t say it felt good to see a little bit of money growing every day.

Now I already had the monetization paused by YouTube when I posted my latest full length video on the Nikon D3, which was (for me) a well received video, so that video would have earned a little but I put it out anyway because I thought people might get something out of it.

But honestly, making these videos take a lot of time and effort. Not to mention a lot of research and editing. Especially harder for a family man with two growing kids. Without the motivation, what’s the use in putting precious time and effort into this?

If anyone of you guys reading have been in this situation I would love to hear from you. Maybe you could help me in a way the Google customer service reps simply couldn’t or wouldn’t and I’d greatly appreciate it!

Sorry for the rant but thank you all for taking the time to read it! 😍🙏👍

Digital Manipulation Part I: Should You Use Digital Filters?

A few postings back I showed a color image from the Leica M8 and said that with some post processing and treatment, I could maybe, possibly turn the photo into something more dramatic. Well, I had some time to play with it and here’s the before and after:

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Now I know it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it’s certainly more “dramatic” than the first photo!

Ok the color shot on top was a straight out of camera jpeg from the M8 with a 50mm f/2 Summicron attached. The bottom b&w image is the same image processed through Google’s Analog Efex using a wet plate filter. It’s basically a digital filter attempting to emulate the look of a wet plate film print.

Seeing the image from a photographer’s perspective, I would certainly choose the “Plain Jane” straight out of camera color shot, but I do have to say that I did like the b&w conversion too. But that’s probably me being partial to the subjects 🙂

Anyway, it got me thinking this…if this image was a true wet plate photo, I’d wager that most photographers, even analog only photographers would accept it, maybe even think it was cool with all its grit and drama.

But since it’s a digital manipulation, they’d probably dismiss it. I can understand this. First of all, a true wet plate print requires a lot of work and people can respect the process. And most will give your props for that. Digital manipulation, digital filters, etc, are much easier in comparison.

Digital photography “purists” may not accept it either as using filters seem “fake” and especially now when people are on the “no filter” wave. Technology has made life easy, but people still seem to prefer hard.

So you get no respect from analog photographers and no respect from digital photography “purists.” So who would be the audience for this kind of digital manipulation? Why I’d bet my money on social media! Your friends on Facebook, Instagram, etc. I think images using these filters would be perfect for social media.

Why? You might think I’d say that the audience there don’t know any better, but I’m not saying that. Being on social media for many years, I can honestly say that while there are a lot of non photographers posting photos, there are also many, many hardcore photographers posting there as well. And many of these folks are very knowledgeable and would know that the photo has received some kind of “artificial” treatment.

The wonderful thing about social media though vs the photo forums is a general sense of acceptance for almost anything. The folks tend to view images on a broader scope, accepting the image as it is first. The process too sometimes helps to get the votes, the likes, etc, but if you didn’t mention it, they probably wouldn’t care and they’d probably accept it as is. But we photo geeks care about the process, don’t we? 🙂

On the negative side, there’s also a drive for votes and likes, so your followers will likely “like” your image anyway, whether they really like it or not.

Please understand, I am just using this image as an example, not because I think it’s a great photo or not. I love the photo because of the subjects, but I’d honestly say that to the general public it’s probably not a very interesting shot, even processed.

If it were me looking at this from an outsider’s eye, I would say there’s no way this is a real wet plate photo. Real wet plate photos are rarely ever this clean nor this sharp, though I have seen some sharp ones. They do tend to be dark, and the Analog Efex did a good job there.

In the end though, it has always been my belief that digital b&w started out of a desire to emulate film. As things evolved, it was no longer just about film but about achieving a look that is unique and different from everyone else. The incredibly high saturation of photographers in today’s world drives this desire even more.

All I can say is…

If you shoot film, continue to shoot it. You will always be a little different in today’s world and part of a wonderfully amazing and passionate brotherhood. But film can only take you so far in and of itself. Content is most important.

Content to me is subject, composition, and the overall “interesting-ness” of the photo. Technical quality is usually second. You can have a technically perfect photo that’s boring as hell and not many people will like it.

If you shoot digital, that’s awesome too but try to make your mark by content first. Again content is key. Interesting photos will always win over filters. And if you want to use filters, I have nothing against that. Just know that filters get old pretty fast so use them sparingly.

There is room for everybody and every style in the wonderful world of photography so let’s not lose any sleep over this. As long as you’re having fun, I’d say that’s good enough for me and it should be good enough for you 🙂