An Alien Abduction?

As if this week was not already off to a rotten start, I must begin this post, already an apology, with another apology. This brief explanation for Tuesday’s invisible livestream was intended to be a humorous piece with plenty of colorful, educational and entertaining photographs, selected to illustrate the points I was trying to make. SQUARESPACE, however, had a different idea . An idea that did not include images. The platform has, apparently, disabled the mechanisms by which photographs can be inserted into the body of a text post - like this. You will just have to take my word for it when I tell you that there were a dozen photographs collected for use in this article, not one of which appears below.

Good evening all,

This is a late entry, added one day after the “Focus Rails” post was added to my blog page. It was written at 10pm on Tuesday, September 29, 2026 after I received a phone call from Paul, one of my friends and a regular livestream attendee. Paul was calling to check on me after patiently waiting for a full hour for my scheduled program to begin. He was not alone. Several other regulars joined him and together the group chatted and, from time to time, checked YouTube to see if I had shown up. Surprisingly (perhaps), I had not.

So what had I been doing for the hour between 8 and 9PM?

I had been doing exactly the same thing I have been doing every Tuesday evening for the last five years. I was talking. Talking about macro photography. I had spent most of the afternoon putting together the Focus Rail table ( a gift for you) in my previous post and spent the livestream hour telling you everything you need to know about 15 of my favorite focus rails. I announced the upcoming events, explained why we were taking a break from AfterStack, and reminded everyone about the competition that is ending at midnight tonight. Then I took a deep breath and started talking about macro rails. I stopped talking at 15 seconds after 9PM, thanked everyone for coming, and closed the stream.

I immediately started working on the Laowa Aksen video edit, though I did take a few moments to acknowledge that I did a pretty job of the livestream (a relatively unusual luxury) and was feeling energized as I opened Premier Pro and the Aksen file. Then my phone rang. It was Paul, checking to see if I was OK and informing me that my livestream, (the one that I thought was good enough to pat myself on the back for) was MIA. I was completely taken aback and had no idea what possibly could have happened. In ll the years I have been doing this, never have I become disconnected from YouTube, had no idea it had happened, and continued to broadcast. Because I was not connected to YouTube, the stream was not recorded - I had literally talked to myself for a full hour.
Laying awake in bed at 2AM, going over every move of the evening, trying to find out what had happened and how could I have missed it, it suddenly occurred to me what must have happened. Back in the studio, I tested my hypothesis and was satisfied that I had the answer. To explain it, I need to give you a little background information.

When I start a livestream, I open the YouTube studio and select the scheduled livestream. While it loads I go to my other screen and open OBS, my broadcast software. In OBS I select the correct stream and check all my feeds and settings. When I am sure everything is in order I select the “GO LIVE” button in OBS (While also starting the slideshow and intro music). At about ten minutes before the hour I turn back to YouTube and read my messages, responding if time permits. As this is happening I also go to the top of the livestream page and click on the “TAKE LIVE” button. This connects OBS to YouTube and starts broadcasting whatever is received from my OBS feed. The music runs through to the top of the hour, when the feed goes live and my smiling face appears on your screen.

There was only one step at which a mistake could lead to me seeming to broadcast when, in fact, I was not. That step was the activation of the “TAKE LIVE” button in YouTube Studio. But how could I possibly miss this most important step? Well, how about covering the button so that I could not see the status of my broadcast - that would do it. My 2AM descent into the studio confirmed my suspicion to be correct. This is the location of the button that connects my stream to YouTube - at eye-level on my left screen.

When this button was pressed there were some changes to the layout of the screen, not a problem unless the video will contain a bunch of still photographs (like this one did), in which case the Preview app would completely cover the YouTube Audio app, cutting me off from the analytics page and the all-important chat window.

A couple of days prior to this I had stumbled upon a way for getting a clear and reliable audio feed during my livestream and it involved the placement of a webcam microphone off-axis and suspended from my ceiling. Here is that microphone in the position that solved my audio issues…

The extra webcam was now completely covering the button and the red “live“ light that replaces it when pressed. My feed was not received by YouTube last night because I never sent it to them. What an embarrassing mess. But it is my mess and I needed to clean it up. And clean it up I shall, On Thursday, tomorrow, at 1PM, CentralTime, I will present Macro Fundamentals, Chapter 22, (Focus Rails). Immediately after that I will go straight into Chapter 23, in which I will present a series of questions, the answers to which will form the skeleton  of a detailed, customized plan for your first/next macro rig. We will walk through every decision you will want to make before you take the first step in building your dream macro platform.

Thursday is going to be a long day, but I will plan on keeping it as short as possible - by pressing the correct buttons at the correct time. I apologize for the mess on Tuesday and hope to see you tomorrow for the marathon focus stacking platform workshop. Allan