UPDATES and CHANGES
And so, it begins.
Hello friends. Happy you’re here. I’ve decided to change things up a bit. Let me explain.
As you probably know, I’m a photographer, through and through. I use my artistic vision and creativity to create photographs. Images. Stills. And what’s the best thing a photographer can do with all their images? Well, share them, of course!
Ah, but there’s my dilemma. How to share them?
It’s quite simple, really. Present the images at their best, and share them with as many interested people as possible.
The first part is easy (with a lot of hard work!). I’ll get to the ‘hard work’ part in future posts, but the ‘presenting’ part is straight forward: high resolution and big. That gives the viewer the best experience.
The second part, the sharing part, that’s getting a little bit tricky these days. Platforms like Instagram are in the business to make money having users view advertisements. That’s it. That’s all they care about. So, if you post something, it has to do one thing: keep users engaged for as long as possible. That way the advertisements get more views, and Instagram make lots of money. Nothing personal, just business.
Pictures no longer satisfy this business model (according to them), only short videos that use every trick in the book to keep the viewer hooked on the platform. Again, nothing wrong with this. Just not my game, and I refuse to play. Why? Because all I want to do is create images. That’s the photographer part. Oh, and taking a 65MB Raw file and throwing away 99% of it to post on Instagram, just doesn’t cut it for me anymore.
But the ‘social’ part of social media does have its place in popular culture, and I’d be a fool to think otherwise. Besides, that part’s fun. Sharing my work and seeing everyone else’s is what it’s all about.
What to do? For now, I’m going to share my images on my website as a blog post, and have a link to it on social media. That way I have control over how they are presented, and I can use social to invite people to view them. And at the same time, I’ll share lots of helpful info along with the images. Works for me, hope it works for you. Hope you enjoy the change. Thanks for following along with me on my photographic journey.
Mike
February 26, 2023
