How to use Instagram to improve your photography

Many photographers use Instagram nowadays to showcase their work. But if you need some inspiration and boost to your photographic skills, Instagram can be a good place to get it. Joe Allam shares a couple of tips for making the most of Instagram to get inspired and improve your photography.

1. Use it for location scouting

If you’re planning a trip or visiting a certain location in your hometown, Instagram can serve as a location scouting tool. Search by location or hashtag of the place you want to visit. You’ll find plenty of photos showing you possible viewpoints. What’s also good about this is that you can also discover how seasons, weather and times of day affect the location. This way, you can plan the time of the shoot more effectively.

 2. Follow locally

Following photos from locations all over the world can show you tons of beautiful photos. However, it can make you feel disappointed. So, Joe suggests you use Instagram to follow the users and content from the city you’re living in. Alternatively, you can follow the content from locations you plan to visit next, which is in a way related to the previous tip.

3. Improve your feed

If you want to improve your feed and make it focus mainly on inspiring photos, Joe suggests unfollowing your friends. Sure, it’s a touchy topic, but snaps of someone else’s pets, selfies or meals won’t do much for your inspiration. Of course, if you still want to have an insight into your friends’ daily lives, you can make a separate account to follow them.

Now, when you follow only the photographers who inspire you, you can do more to get the best out of their posts. You can turn on notifications so you can see their posts as they publish them. Personally, I wouldn’t do this because push notifications drive me insane, but it’s your call.

You can also explore the people they follow because there can be equally good photographers among them. Interact with the photographers and the photos you like, so Instagram will recommend the posts you might like based on your activity. Revisit the images you liked to get inspiration, and you can also browse through the likes of the people you follow. Make sure you follow content that’s relevant to you and unfollow those that become irrelevant in any way. Otherwise, your feed will get too cluttered.

4. Take advantage of Stories

I still don’t really get the point of Stories, but photographers could take advantage from them. If you need inspiration, you can see BTS shots from the photographers you follow. They often share before and after shots, the gear they’re using, more info about the locations. All in all, in stories, you can learn more about some of the photos you like.

5. Organize images with Collections

Setting up collections can help the better organization and sorting the images for a specific type of inspiration. You can organize the photos based on locations, or emotions they cause you to feel. Another suggestion I’d add is to organize them based on genre.

Although I use Instagram for a completely different purpose, these tips sound reasonable if you want to use this social network for inspiration and improving your own work. What do you think? Do you use Instagram to get inspired and boost your skills? Or Instagram has another purpose for you?

[5 INSTAGRAM TIPS — Take Advantage & Improve your Photography via ISO 1200]