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es, it probably is a bit counterintuitive to be writing about YouTube here on Substack, but this platform better suits these sort of think-pieces and when I’m writing I find it much easier to work my way logically through all the arguments, so here we are.
I’ve seen quite a few reflective (navel-gazing my old grandad used to call it) videos in which veteran photography YouTubers (usually ones with decent subscriber numbers) bemoan the death of the niche and point to their dwindling view figures as proof. Most recently I watched a video by First Man Photography – a channel run by Adam Karnacz – in which he argues that YouTube’s algorithm is actively working against the kind of photography content that creators and viewers both value most – the man-in-a-field.
I actually replied to Adam on his channel in the comments section, only to discover that he’d blocked me using the ‘Hide User From Channel’ feature. I’ve never made any negative comments on his content, so no idea why he blocked me, but it gave me cause to think around this subject.
Adam is definitely far from alone in taking to his home studio and doing a talking-head video questioning why the old photography YouTube content formulas no longer work. Christian Möhrle is a top-notch photography content-creator with a huge number of superb tutorial videos on his channel and he did a piece a couple of months ago called ‘YouTube is killing This Channel’ which touched on similar themes. And over the last year or so I recall seeing pretty much all of them address the issue in one way or another.
So what gives?
Too Much Saturation
Everyone’s quick to point the finger at the accursed algorithm and while I do believe it plays a part, I think the main reason that the aforementioned veteran photography YouTubers are suffering is because it’s a saturated niche – particularly for the kind of middle-aged-man-on-location-taking-landscape-photographs-and-spinning-some-hard-won-wisdom-about-an-aspect-of-photography videos pioneered by people like Thomas Heaton, Nigel Danson, Adam Gibbs, Simon Baxter, Mads Peter Iversen and Andy Mumford.
Type ‘landscape photography’ into the YouTube search box and start scrolling – you will find a near infinite number of middle-aged-photographer-in-field style videos. I guarantee you’ll get bored long before you ever reach the bottom. The vast majority of those videos are from YouTubers with a few hundred subscribers, every single video will have a few hundred views and they all follow the extremely well-trodden template laid-down by the aforementioned veterans.
The power of YouTube is that anyone can have a go and the flaw with YouTube is that anyone can have a go.
It must suck if you were one of the originals to do this style of video – but I think a lot of photographers look at the success of Heaton, Fototripper and Popsys – fail to realise that they represent a minuscule proportion of the number of photography creators doing it – and say “well if they can do it then so can I and I can pack in my job working in a paper mill and take landscape photos for a living”.
The problem is that they make absolutely no effort to differentiate themselves from the other thousand middle-aged men doing it and consequently the niche is drowning in near-identical content.
I’m not taking the moral high-ground either, I’m absolutely guilty of it too. The on location middle-aged-man-on-a-beach vlog style videos I make on my channel struggle to reach 1000 views (at best, with a following wind), so I decided that I’d just make them for myself (because it’s simply fun to do so) and if nobody watched them, that was fine. I kind of use them as a reward system – every 10 videos from my ‘lane’ I make a video for myself and I don’t even bother checking the analytics on it because they’re almost like personal diary videos.
Change the Record
Now it would be easy to suggest that the YouTube viewing public have simply grown tired of those sort of videos.
We all know the script.
COLD OPEN. Our photographer pulls on their wellington boots, shoulders a $500 specialised camera backpack and locks the van. They push through a field gate – we follow at a distance. Cut to a couple of wide shots as they walk the trail: entering frame, exiting frame. Hold on a close-up of a leaf catching the breeze. Linger. Cut to the tripod setup – hands tightening knobs, legs extending into soft ground. Once they’re settled, they turn to camera for the introductory chat.
But I don’t believe that’s the case because there are photographers following this template that are still clocking up substantial views. I think what sets apart the more successful photography YouTubers in 2026 is that they bring something different to the mix.
Courtney Victoria, for instance, is doing very well indeed thank-you and while female photography content creators are stupidly thin on the ground, she’s not doing well because she’s a woman. Check out some of her videos and you’ll find she’s an expert filmmaker and clearly spends a heap of time an effort on making her enjoyable videos easy to watch. It doesn’t hurt that she’s also a) relatable and b) a bloody good photographer. Hunter Scott clocks up impressive views on his videos because he has more original ideas and a real knack for great titles (i.e. How To Take Banger Photos In Boring Places).
Thomas Heaton is an outlier and always has been – he’s probably the most watched photographer-in-a-field on YouTube – but in recent year’s he pivoted away from his tried-and-tested content to combination photography/travel/van-life content. Ditto Fototripper, Todd Dominey, Nigel Danson, Simon Baxter, Mads Peter Iverrsen and Adam Gibbs.
For every successful photo YouTuber there are a thousand wannabes (yes, including me) making videos like Heaton made in 2015. However if you take look at Thomas’s back catalogue, you’ll find that even back then he was making the big trips – travelling to the US, or Iceland or Norway – but the legion of Heatonites don’t seem to travel much further than the end of the road and still haven’t learned to look into the lens and not the LCD screen when they’re filming.
The Algorithm
Now, the usual scapegoat for diminishing views – and the one content creators always point to first – is the dreaded algorithm. And while the cliched middle-aged-man-in-a-field format and the over-supply problem are core issues, Google have definitely shaken things up over at YouTube HQ too. They have also made no secret of those changes, so blaming it on some conspiracy to undermine the income streams of seasoned YouTubers is not a valid argument.
You may have noticed this change yourself in the videos that get surfaced in your recommended timeline on YouTube – subscriber counts simply don’t matter as much as they used to.
As someone who’s active on photography YouTube I check out the competition all the time – I watch their videos – and I look at how they’ve gone about titles, thumbnails and editing. But I also look at their subscriber figures and I compare those numbers to the views they’re getting on their uploads. And in the last 18 months it has become apparent that, while a massive subscriber-base is helpful, if you produce a video with an original theme, strong title and good thumbnail, it will do well no matter how small your channel is.
So here’s my thesis: the photography creators blaming algorithms for their declining views are mostly explaining away their own complacency. If you make the same thing over and over, people will eventually get bored of it. It’s pretty simple really, you can either freshen up your content or accept that you’re never going to get more than a couple of thousand views on your middle-aged-man-in-a-field video.
Photography is ‘Dying’
Far be it from me to suggest that ego might be getting in the way, but I’ve also heard a few of these YouTubers claim that photography itself is dying, as if that explains their poor view numbers. It couldn’t possibly be anything they’re doing – the whole niche must be disappearing down the shitter!
Problem is – camera sales are up. Sales in 2026 are up 120% on last year and compact and mirrorless models in particular are booming. Fewer new models have been released in the last 12 months, that is true, but more people are buying cameras than ever before. Since the arrival of the smartphone camera there has also been a direct upgrade route, as people discover photography on their phones, and then want to improve their photos and move on to dedicated camera systems.
There seems to be a genuine push-back against AI generated imagery – and cameras (and photography in general) are the answer to that. If anything there are actually more opportunities to make engaging videos for upload to YouTube and a massive global audience of photography-loving people who are more than happy to watch them.
The Off Ramp
It’s easy to forget how new this whole content-creation lark is. Twenty years ago, the idea of millions of ordinary people filming their hobbies, jobs and opinions for a global audience would have seemed like a fantasy. Let alone those ordinary people getting billions of views a day. And like anything new, it goes through growing phases, some small, some tectonic.
But based on what I can see, photography on YouTube isn’t dying, it’s just growing up. The pioneers in this space were able to lay down the foundations and create a style of video entertainment that was well suited to its niche and its audience. But niches change and so do the appetites of that audience.
Despite all claims to the contrary, photography YouTube has a perfectly decent pulse. The audience grew up. The smarter creators grew with it. Everyone else is still standing in a field with a $500 backpack, wondering where everyone went.
Also published in RAW & Unfiltered on Substack.
