I am posting much less often and trying like mad to learn more about cameras, images, formatting, tagging, pimping posts, titles and all the stuff that does not really interest me (titles excepted) and very very rarely do one of the whales or curating accounts notice my excellent posts. It's getting very frustrating.

I understand your frustration. In my opinion, focusing on improving skills which interest you and give you a sense of fulfillment should always take precedence, and the fact that you're focusing your energy in this direction is wonderful. I've had my eye on your blog since you started on Steem, (as an eSteem curator scrolling through the tag.) and there is no question in my mind whatsoever that since you've started your blogging on Steem, your focus has been to improve any which way you can, and your blog has come a long way in this respect, no question about it!

There are some hard truths about how things work in this environment, and many of the large curating accounts are more apt to curate posts which they know will make more rewards. It shouldn't be that way, and is an exemplification of greed at its fullest, but that is just how it is here unfortunately. The ultimate question to the low earning accounts is "well how the heck can I start making more so that I will get recognized and/or curated by these large accounts?" There's no easy answer to that, but I think just continually working to improve is the best any of us can do.

I saw you received a Curie, congratulations, it was well deserved!

In terms of OCDB, they do their best, and I used to curate for them. (I stopped due to time management and having to cut back on my time spent on Steem. I was spending 8-12 hours a day curating at one point for 3 curation teams.) I don't think they intentionally are ignoring you. I know the team and they really are some good people who do their best for the ecosystem. I've gone periods of time not getting their vote, and at times got a little frustrated myself, but they genuinely do their best to curate fairly.

One thing I've noticed bloggers here doing, is timing their post drops to when certain large accounts are curating. It's not something I'm really willing to take the time to do myself, just because I don't want to mold my time around the "possibility" of a vote, but it's definitely an option.

The dust threshold is .02 as I understand it.

Well, hopefully you'll get a payout on the 70% vote I gave your initial comment lol. It's probably not even practical to curate comments unless you have a stake of 10k Steem or better. I should probably just refrain from doing that but I like to give a "token" of appreciation for peoples time you know?..

Either way, I think you're doing a wonderful job. Please try not to let the system here get you down too much. You never know what could happen. One day some new large investor might come in, love your content and start upvoting every one of your posts 100%. It does happen..

I do believe consistency is a good thing here, but there is certainly nothing wrong with the mentality of "quality over quantity!"

Keep up the great work @owasco, and thank you so much for your time and thoughts!