Edit: Dang, the pictures didn’t come through very readable. Sorry. I’m going to leave it like this for now. It’s late and I need to go to bed.
Edit 2: It looks like the pictures can be enlarged for better viewing in Jerboa but not on desktop. Weird.
Interesting. I pulled your .csv into a spreadsheet to tinker a bit (though I really should be sleeping right now). I’m not entirely sure what to do with it, but here are a few basic charts I threw together for kicks. Maybe someone more code savvy than me can create an interactive tool to sift through all the data.
Most subscribed communities across Lemmy:
Here’s a comparison of where the subscribers originate for two of the big technology communities. What are all those lemmy.world users doing subscribed to a Beehaw community? Maybe those are lemmy.world that had subscribed before Beehaw defederated from lemmy.world?
The other comments covered this, but I’ll pile on anyway: start cheap (like your phone). Work on subject and composition rather than worrying about technological features. Find photographs you like, think about what makes those photographs stand out, and see if you can mimic the result. Carry your camera often and be ready when an opportunity arises, or put yourself in a position to get a shot rather than waiting for it to come to you. Old photographers used to joke, “What are the best camera settings? f/8 and be there.”
FWIW I started learning on refurbished manual SLRs from the 70’s and 80’s. No auto focus, no auto exposure, and no zoom. Moving up to modern DSLRs was a mixed blessing: all the automation can be helpful, but can also be very distracting. I still miss my old Olympus OM-G with it’s 50mm prime lens.
What are we supposed to do with a vague post that contains zero actionable information? What are the bad faith and spammy communities of concern? Has OP been reporting rule-breaking posts to bring them to the attention of mods and admins? Has OP tried messaging the admins directly?