Yes I see the quality in your work every time I come to your blog. I love the old barn series!
I also spend hours and hours, sometimes a week or more, to get my stuff up to snuff at my level of very-new-to-all-of-this.
I do it for ME really, honing some writing skills and learning a whole lot about photography, cryptocurrency, blockchain, blogging, delegation, passive income and a bunch of other stuff I don't even care much about, but I have to know just to stay afloat on steem.
I'm finally swimming so I think I will be OK, but my big worry is for the newbies. With an upvote worth zero, they will get zero from curation and even less than nearly nothing from all the work it takes to post even just a single picture when you are new here. WE want people to come to steem, and it seems to me HF21 will bring an end to that. It was hard enough when my posts brought me 1 cent! Now they will bring half of one cent, and next to no reward for curation.
I get a kick out of supporting newbies with little gain for myself - I remember too well how hard it is to be new here. I'll keep doing that.
Thanks for this thoughtful post.