Instagram is a useful tool for photographers who want to share their work with the world. While this medium can be great to reach out to your viewers, it hides potential traps you can fall into. In this video, Jamie Windsor discusses one of his problems with Instagram and explains how it can negatively affect your work if you limit yourself to it.
Depending on how you use it, Instagram can be a fantastic tool and a pure waste of time and energy. Just like any other social network, for that matter. As photographers, I believe many of you use it to share your work with a wider audience. After all, it definitely is the easiest way to reach out to hundreds, thousands, even millions of people. However, the problem arises when you limit yourself to Instagram only.
Jamie says that most people he photographs in the street ask him how they can find him on Instagram. In other words, it seems like this has become the default way of sharing photos. As photographers, this is the trap we shouldn’t fall into. Instagram can be a good way, but definitely not the only way to share our images.
If you haven’t printed your photos, do it. Make small prints, make large ones, and even experiment with unusual methods like this one. Printing your photos will make it understand your own work better, see new details and observe it from a different point of view. Instagram should be a tool for you, just like the lens or the camera you use – but it shouldn’t be the only way of sharing and seeing your own work. As Jamie puts it, tools are there “to help realize our creative vision, not to define it.”
[The INSTAGRAM PROBLEM for PHOTOGRAPHERS | Jamie Windsor]
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