Ahoj, This is Zdenka.
I had a completely different video
planned for today to film, but I simply had to do this.
I had to change my plans.
A lot of people are asking me if I'm going to be joining Vero app.
Well, I love photography.
My passion is photography
and I used to love posting photos on Instagram.
But ever since, Instagram
is now dead for photographers and it became more a video platform,
naturally
also my passion for photography was kind of going down.
You get a new lens and you're super excited.
You go take photos
and you want to share them, but you really have no nowhere to share them.
I have an Instagram account because I simply have to have it.
Otherwise, a lot of companies will not even work with me.
That's how it is.
Every time I have to post something there, I'm dragging it.
It has turned into a business platform.
When you scroll, all you see is videos full of ads or someone
trying to sell something.
It has turned into a moneymaking machine with no character.
Every time I look at someone's profile, I mostly see that they are trying to just
sell something.
There is no genuine connection with the audience anymore, but it's still good
if you want to do business, if you want to reach certain companies
because they are all there and they are quite easy to reach.
DMs is a whole different story.
Don't even get me started there.
I had a very good share of receiving highly inappropriate DMs.
That's one of the reasons I don't even open them anymore.
Since everybody's talking about Vero and promoting it quite heavily,
of course I wanted to check it out myself. So I open up
the account and I had a look around and to be quite honest, I fell in love
instantly and I thought, I'm going to make a very positive video, how great it is.
But then today by accident, I found something
which actually terrified me and now I have very mixed
feelings about this app.
I'm quite sure that if it's going to get popular, they will have to change this.
First of all, why
I was impressed by Vero so much.
Once you go to Vero, you will immediately notice
no ads, no automatic videos are played
you don't want to watch.
Although in the settings you can save your credit card information
and a shipping address and see purchase history.
Business also happens on this platform or will happen down the road.
When Instagram first started, it was exactly the same way.
You can take your time.
Look at the photos, look at the profile of the person.
There is this calmness. You can follow, who you want to follow and what you like.
You get inspired there.
You want to pick up a camera and I just want to go shoot.
You feel like there is a space for photographers
again. The online art gallery.
If you're hoping to build business there, it's not the place right now.
It might change down the road as more people are joining
because everybody's talking about it for some reason.
But think about it right now as being inspired from seeing other work.
There is no growth right now.
What is good about Vero is that you can run it
on your smartphone, iPad and even desktop.
You can post your work directly from the computer, which is nice.
When you want to post your photo, you can keep it private
or you can decide who you want to share it with.
Close friends.
Close friends and friends.
Acquaintances and followers.
When you click on the photos, they pop up across the whole screen
so you can enjoy it.
What bothered me about Instagram is that when you are taking photos
for Instagram, you have to think ahead and shoot it
vertically. You have to think that you cannot shoot it in landscape.
Well, on Vero, you don't need to do that.
You can shoot in any format you like and the photos will look great.
And I love taking photos not only in vertical.
This platform is not only for photographers.
You can post photos, videos, links, music,
movies, TV, games, apps, books and places.
I like the way it is organized.
If I want to see only photos, I go to photos.
If I want to see videos, I go to videos and so on.
You can build a big library for yourself. Under search
you can discover many great artists.
You can search for other artists.
You can search specific topics for photos.
Just type in the keyword and tons of photos show up to inspire you.
It is well organized.
You can make direct calls and you can also send a message to someone.
Those direct calls you can control in the call settings.
You can choose
who is allowed to call you. Close friends or close friends and friends and so on.
Under privacy settings
you can decide who will follow your photos.
You can block users.
You can hide posts.
You can turn off notifications or decide which notifications you want to get.
You have quite a bit of a control here. So that was all the positive stuff.
Now let's turn this to the bad stuff.
What is it that terrified me? Now,
first of all,
when I opened up this channel, I told myself, I'm going to be always honest.
I'm going to share whatever it is.
So this is not going to be pretty, what I'm going to say and I'm going to be
using terms
which I'm allowed to say on YouTube.
So you will have to read between the lines quite a lot, what I'm actually saying.
As a photographer, you naturally sometimes search
for local models because you want to connect with them.
So and there's a whole bunch of them on Instagram.
So obviously I was curious if models are also joining
Vero and I typed in keywords.
You know, Toronto models or local models
and a whole bunch of profiles popped up.
Now when I was looking through the photos of those profiles,
I was kind of surprised to see that there are a lot of photos with no clothes on.
There is
quite of a difference between fine art
and not fine art, and some of the stuff
I was seeing is definitely not fine art.
So
I wanted to see
how far this is going because I'm a parent
and if I'm going to be using certain app, I just want to see.
So I went ahead and I typed in
some very specific keywords,
three letter word,
and to be quite amazed,
I was given a list of other keywords which are relative to this keyword.
And when I looked at the content, it was very clear to me that
it's very much not for a minor audience.
It's very much behind 18 plus.
It was very graphic.
It was very graphic
and those are photos and videos.
So naturally I went into settings and I checked if I can block this off
so I don't have to see it again.
I didn't see any options to turn it off.
You just cannot.
You have to simply hope that if you will be searching for some photos,
you're not going to run into it,
especially if you're going to be searching in front of somebody else or God
forbid you have kids around. On top of it,
when you open up account, you can be any age.
They even show in the Help and Support page how to verify accounts
if you're 13 to 17 years old.
I see a very big problem with this since it is so easy to find
and it's right in there that it will be attracting even more people
which are after this and they will be posting even more stuff.
Problem I also see is that right now it is so much talked about.
Kids will hear about this app too, they will want to check it out.
As I said before, I'm quite confident that eventually
they will have to change that.
I remember when Instagram started, it was a wild card too.
There was some stuff there, but they eventually really got rid of all that.
Right now I do have a profile there and I'm going to be adding
a few photos from my portfolio, but I'm going to be cautious.
I'm going to be watching which direction this app is going to go.
By the way, I have created tons of photography tutorials
in a past on this channel.
I created this whole playlist for you.
I'm going to link it below for those interested.
I hope you appreciate the honesty.
This is what I'm all about.
Give it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe for future videos.
Let me know in a comment section below.
If you are on Vero, if you are just put your handler.
If not, what other platforms you are using for photography.
It it'll be great to hear what other alternatives are out there.
See you in the next video Cau... Ahoj....