What do you think of Instagram ?

BADGER.BRAD

BADGER.BRAD

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Hello,

Like most of us I like to share my photos and thought about using Instagram but what do you think of it ?
 
I tend to view other photographers work rather than post my own, mainly due to the fact I don’t take as many “good” photographs. The downside is that most viewing is done on a tiny screen.
 
Like most (all) social media platforms, it is both very good and very flawed. I use it more than any other and nowadays is the only place I share my images, albeit infrequently. I don't post here or Flickr or Facebook any more. I drop the odd one onto Twitter and mostly on Instagram. Even my own website is down at the moment.


The biggest flaw I find with it personally is that you can find yourself looking for images to post that will 'do well' on there, whatever that means rather than your favourite photos. It's a bad route to go down but I do it myself frequently. Images I really like for whatever personal connection they hold do garner many digital heart or comments, yet some which I wasn't sure about do really well. I know it's a lot to do with algorithms and in a lot of ways you get out what you put in, as in if you use it to interact, comment and share work of others, yours will be seen more. Which leads on to the positives from it. I have gained work back when I was shooting weddings which has taken me to Iceland, I have made some really great interactions on there with some great people (a personal highlight was being followed and receiving personal messages from Chris Orwig, one of my favourite modern portrait photographers) and I have found a few people to work with and make portraits of through it. However I am always conscious that I began photography before Instagram yet it seems sad that it is literally my only outlet now for any photos I take.
 
BADGER.BRAD said:
Hello,

Like most of us I like to share my photos and thought about using Instagram but what do you think of it ?
Click to expand...

It's fine, but everyone is different, how you want to use Instagram is up to you.

It is really more like a visual journal. In Facebook, you would update your status to let family and friends know what you're doing, like saying "Going out doing something" so Instagram is more like doing similar with pictures that speaks a thousand words. People tend to post one or two photos a day, some would post a handful of photo but grouped together in one posting.

Kinda like an online postcard for everyone to read,

I use Instagram mostly to upload snapshots of what I'm currently doing, or how I feel.
 
It's probably the easiest to get a following on, but can be the most fickle for the same reasons.

If you go down the road of posting what suits Instagram best (i.e 5:4 verticals, bright saturated colours, popular locations or types of photography) it's very easy to do well there. The more social you are, the more you yourself get seen and more followers etc.

I personally spend a lot of my time on there blocking spam accounts (blocked best part of 1,000 now!) and people who will follow/unfollow at the drop of a hat.

Like every social media platform it has it's pro's and con's, at the moment I feel it's the one I get the most interaction on (and by this I mean comments) so it's the one I spend the most time on currently.
 
it gets people taking & sharing images which is pretty good.
They range from relentless amounts of duckface selfies & shots of yor dinner right through to amazing (although small) shots of epic locations & everything inbetween.
many people use it as a visual journal like mentioned above which can be pretty cool, others use it to push products.
ultimately YOU choose who you want to follow & YOU choose what you upload so its usefulness & appeal is entirely subjective.
Personally i like it :)
 
Personally, I like it.

So long as you post for yourself and not go down the rabbit hole of posting for others it’s a reasonable place to share and interact.

Once the bug bites of trying to chase followers I think it’s appeal lessens.
 
I think it's the best at the minute in terms of interaction although it's a shame Flickr went downhill as that was better for viewing high res images. As with all social media it seems to heavily depend on algorithms and how you use it to build a following, you can post what in your opinion are very good images including ones that have gained awards but they might completely bomb on Instagram, where poorly composed wonky saturated images might get thousands of 'likes'. The thing that really bugs me is attractive young women can post narcissistic selfies and build thousands of followers easily but it's very difficult to do as a landscape photographer, especially if you aren't in that club of well-known top level photographers
 
The other downside to IG is there is quite the culture of people who buy followers to make themselves look better, you can usually tell as they are the type to have 10,000+ followers but only get 100-200 likes on a photo.

You have to be very careful to not believe everything you read on Instagram when it comes to an accounts perceived popularity.
 
I really like it. I have no interest in followers or likes, so I simply follow people who inspire me. There is a huge amount of photography on there and a huge amount of different styles. If you follow the stuff that inspires you, you'll never get depressed by a feed that is clogged with crap.
 
I quite like it
I tend to follow localish photography to see alternative views of familiar places
 
The major annoyances for me are:

- Forced account creation and login just to view, even on the web. You can look at an individual post linked from elsewhere, but you can't easily explore a user's images from their profile unless you are logged in or use some workaround.
- No uploads from your desktop, unless you use a workaround.
- Tiny low resolution images.

It's a real shame the dominant image sharing platform is something with these deliberate limitations, all designed to keep you using it via the phone app where Facebook can more effectively harvest your data, and where it's hard to avoid the more toxic aspects of social media culture.
 
I actually love it. In many ways though it is inferior to Flickr - which I really only upload to as a way to share pictures here and view my images on small screen devices like tablets and mobiles.

I find Instagram great for just perusing other peoples work and seeing great pictures of places I would never go to as I don't fly. Obviously accounts like Max Rives make me despair as the processing is utterly and stupendously vile but on the whole there are some great photographers on there. Plus it's quite a friendly platform.
 
As someone who has been using it from the beginning, (I joined 12 November 2010, it started 6th October 2010) it was designed as a phone photography platform. Back in the day, it was seen as cheating if you uploaded pictures from a dslr.
Thats the why The pictures are small and it doesn’t have a desktop app.
Back then, proper photographers would use it as a side project to their normal everyday photography and it was a great creative tool..
Then it got popular and the cat photos appeared, then the food photos, and then the self obsessed “influencers” took over and destroyed it.
Now it’s just full of selfies and s***e, with the odd old timer still trying to keep to the roots of the program.
 
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For a while they had a Windows 8/10 'Metro' app that allowed posting images. Now it's been replaced in the Windows app store by a terrible placeholder app that's even less functional than the web version (no more uploading).
 
Thanks for the replies everyone, I hadn't realized that the photos were low res and the biggest thing for me the fact you cannot post from a desk top seems a bit of a let down. I also use Linux so I'm guessing that would present a problem.
 
You can upload from a desktop in a browser with a free Hootsuite account. Not ideal but possible.

I like it for inspiration, the algorithms do a good job of showing me things I’m probably going to like which for me is great.

If you don’t engage with the platform your photographs don’t get seen, I haven’t uploaded anything for a good 18 months and I don’t get likes at all. In the times when I’ve been liking and commenting on other people’s photographs (that aren’t necessarily anything like my own) I magically start getting likes and comments on old photographs :)
 
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Retune said:
- No uploads from your desktop, unless you use a workaround.
Click to expand...
You can upload from the Vivaldi Browser using the 'panel'.
You can also use Facebook Content Manager (within publishing tools) to upload and schedule your posts.

For my photography genre it has a bigger following than Facebook or Flickr, but does suffer from the low res / needs to be a specific aspect ratio constraints.
 
I started using it recently, mostly because the boy does. To borrow a phrase, the interface for posting sucks donkey balls, but it can be used. I just find the small, low-res images miserable.
 
I would not have anything to do with them as their T&C's do not protect your copyright. I have no need to share images on such sites anyway as I do so at my camera club and through national and international Salons. We even have international club competitions currently with Australia, USA and Germany.

Dave
 
I enjoy following a few photographers on there like Paul Nickeln who I'm not sure I'd have come across otherwise.

I have two accounts, but I'm pretty rubbish at posting, partly because of the interface.
 
I use Instagram, Flickr and 500px as I enjoy viewing other people's work. I think they all have pros and cons. If I could only keep one it would be flickr and if I had to get rid of one it would be 500px, so Instagram sits somewhere in the middle for me. Like others, I find the Instagram uploading issues annoying.
 
A friend made me an account for my scissor sharpening business.... so I could post pictures of problems I came across and finished scissors (hairdressers, stylists, barbers) but the problem I have got is I can't work out how to post a picture. I keep having to ask him. I think I have got 14 pictures on there now, but how do you get them to be seen by people that would be interested (the type of user already mentioned)? My photography is for professional clients, so there is no way on earth I would post 'proper' pictures on there.
 
Lensflare said:
A friend made me an account for my scissor sharpening business.... so I could post pictures of problems I came across and finished scissors (hairdressers, stylists, barbers) but the problem I have got is I can't work out how to post a picture. I keep having to ask him. I think I have got 14 pictures on there now, but how do you get them to be seen by people that would be interested (the type of user already mentioned)? My photography is for professional clients, so there is no way on earth I would post 'proper' pictures on there.
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I’m not a marketing expert but I’d think high quality pictures of hairdressers or barbers using them on attractive clients. You need to use hashtags in your posts but not sure what you’d use for that. Are there any similar businesses you can find on there? If so and they’re successful try and do what they do
 
Scirocco_09 said:
I’m not a marketing expert but I’d think high quality pictures of hairdressers or barbers using them on attractive clients. You need to use hashtags in your posts but not sure what you’d use for that. Are there any similar businesses you can find on there? If so and they’re successful try and do what they do
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I have no idea how to post a picture of my own, let alone find anyone else... I have absolutely no idea how to use it whatsoever. It is completely alien to me.
 
Lensflare said:
I have no idea how to post a picture of my own, let alone find anyone else... I have absolutely no idea how to use it whatsoever. It is completely alien to me.
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It’s not that difficult, to add a picture press the ‘+’ icon at the bottom of the screen then select an image from your phone. To search use the magnifying glass icon and search the terms or user you want to find. Just press buttons and get used to it if it’s something you want to learn
 
Lensflare said:
A friend made me an account for my scissor sharpening business.... so I could post pictures of problems I came across and finished scissors (hairdressers, stylists, barbers) but the problem I have got is I can't work out how to post a picture. I keep having to ask him. I think I have got 14 pictures on there now, but how do you get them to be seen by people that would be interested (the type of user already mentioned)? My photography is for professional clients, so there is no way on earth I would post 'proper' pictures on there.
Click to expand...

The hashtags you use are really important. For maximum visibility use as many and everything you can think of. So on every post you’d want to put something like #scissors #barbers #barber #hairdresser #hairdressers #sharpen #sharp # sharpening etc.

As you start typing them in it will suggest some that start with those letters. This enables you to see similar ones and also how many other pics are posted with the same hashtag.

Edit: also, next time you have to ask him, write it down, drawing pics of the screen if necessary so next time you won’t have to bother him.
 
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I like it. It's the main place where I share my images these days. I don't have much of a following at all, and it's tempting to shoot in a way that increases followers, but i think it's important not to do that.
I find the main strength of Insta is the quality of other photographers on the platform, I'm slowly tweaking those accounts that I follow so that my feed is full of inspirational images.

I just wish they'd let you search multiple hashtags, or even hashtag + location
 
I used to like it very much. I had it for years to follow some inspirational accounts. I have shared some photos, gained 35 followers and 10 likes per post.

Then in May last year I have asked myself, Instagram is a photo platform, could I succeed as a photographer? Could I gain 1k followers until end of the year?

I read some tips about Instagram success, added an avatar, have written my profile that was empty, entered a "photography" to a profile name, so I became @ergas_photography and I became active. Under activity I mean, I posted regularly, reviewed work and followed other photographers, liked, commented.
I gained 1k followers in two months. It was magical to see account growing. Pretty fast I spent photos from my archive so I need new shootings. I found that it is pretty easy to find a model when I show them my account. I found it great, how easy is to find a model if you have a good Instagram.

But Instagram has some complicated algorithm. They have problems with boots, bought followers and likes. It seems that they can't distinguish between boots and active users. Or they want to be paid to enable growth. On one presentation I learned that you have to pay if you want that your post reach all of your followers. It has sense if you have 1M followers and earn a lot of money, but it seems they also apply that to small accounts. So, they are slowing down fast growing accounts.

In a phase of growth I liked Instagram very much, but after they slowed me down, I almost vegetated next half a year, posting occasionally. There were weeks I didn't log in. All magic was gone.

Recently I reactivated, but my opinion about Instagram is heavily divided. I like it, and I don't like it.
 
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benc98 said:
I like it. It's the main place where I share my images these days. I don't have much of a following at all, and it's tempting to shoot in a way that increases followers, but i think it's important not to do that.
I find the main strength of Insta is the quality of other photographers on the platform, I'm slowly tweaking those accounts that I follow so that my feed is full of inspirational images.

I just wish they'd let you search multiple hashtags, or even hashtag + location
Click to expand...

I'd echo pretty much all of that. For me it's quite comfortably the best place to visit to see quality new work on a regular basis. As an example from a motorsport/automotive perspective you get the likes of Darren Heath (top F1 photographer) posting loads of stuff that you'll never see in the press, through to people like Amy Shore whose (deserved) success has come about from building a following on Instagram, and then lots of awesome amateurs who quite frankly shoot stuff that is as good as many pros but who may only have a few 100 followers etc.

It's taken some fine tuning to get a balance of finding the right people to follow etc, but I genuinely enjoy having a look each morning at what has been posted. A lot of people are more than willing to supply info on technique, gear etc as well and many share basic EXIF info, which is cool.

From a business perspective (I'm a wedding photographer) I'm somewhat intentionally terrible at it, in so much as I don't worry too much about curating my feed or posting regularly, and I'll also post a good 60%+ stuff that has nothing to do with weddings! I'd hate to turn yet another platform into work, quite frankly.

And yes, absolutely the search function could do with some work. hashtag + location would be wonderful for a start.
 
I use Instagram, but not heavily. I post a mixture of finished work and also behind the scenes stuff and other items that amuse me. I want it to retain some personality rather than just being a portfolio.
 
Never used it at all simply because I'm 99% a desktop Windows PC user. I just don't get on well with touchy feeling little handheld devices what with my fading eyesight and sausages for fingers, not to mention can't be doing with yet another social media outlet to obsess over. But a small part of me do wonder how my doodles/cartoon drawing would fare on that mobile-based platform, probably because I'm too lazy to transfer files from my PC into a mobile and then onto instagram. Could my doodles even fit in their square format as I've always done them in "A4 landscape" mode.
Like I said, I can't handle looking at too many social media, as things stand my main online diet is Facebook, Twitter and a weather-related web forum (and this one too, of course) the rest is just left over noise.
 
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BADGER.BRAD said:
Hello,

Like most of us I like to share my photos and thought about using Instagram but what do you think of it ?
Click to expand...

Can be good for the photographer and if you have a business/youtube channel.

I signed up some weeks back and got followers even though I hadn't any photos on:thinking:

Couldn't use my phone to upload images, so I used THIS addon on Firefox.
 
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I think Instagram is a great tool to showcase your work. However I do understand that the review that you get on the pictures might not be from experts. All social medias but especially Instagram also serve as a inspirational tool. You will see things photographed in a way not seen before....
 
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