what am i doing wrong? or not doing right? that is what goes through my head every time i look at instagram.
i mean, am i not any good? i see other photographers and fuck just regular people who wouldn’t know how to dial in the perfect shot with intention if there was real money riding on it. i see them rolling in likes and follows. what are they doing that i’m not?
i’m even so pathetic that i’ve stooped to watching videos about how to grow my follows and likes. but the things i hear, well, i think they’re bullshit—dishonest and schemey.
join a pod of people who like each others posts to boost exposure? nope. what’s the point of that?
follow people so they follow you and then unfollow them later? hate that shit.
use one thousand hashtags so that my photos get noticed? doable, but honestly who has time for that?! and also, the people i already have following me hate that shit. just can’t win.
pay for advertisements so that my photos get put in front of more people? could do that but honestly is that going to turn into revenue? probably not.
and with that in mind, does it actually matter at all? not really. so why does it bother me that i don’t get as many likes and follows as i’m seeing on other people’s posts? that i don’t have droves of people fawning over my work?
i guess the short answer is that i am human and i crave validation. i mean, i am getting paid for my work, and receiving rave reviews from my clients. that should be more than enough, and it usually is. except when i open insta and see that i have fewer followers than when i last logged on.
part of me wants to scrap this post. chalk it up to an emo moment of weakness and just firm up. but i think it’s important to talk about this. i know i’m not the only person who stresses over this. just the other day i was watching one of brendan van son’s youtube videos and he said that there are a lot of people out there who think you should get 10,000 followers before you start trying to get paid for your photography.
...10,000?!?!?!
i don’t even have six fucking hundred. how the hell am i going to get to 10,000 when half the follows i do get disappear within a week of showing up? did i mention that i hate that shit? stupid follow unfollow game.
but here’s the thing. you don’t need any followers to get paid for photography. you don’t even need an instagram account.
what you need to get paid for photography is a decent camera, a basic understanding of how to make it work in various lighting and movement-speed scenarios, and some decent lighting—which is wayyyyy cheaper to come by than when i started out six years ago (my new yongnuo 560 flash was about $50, compared that with my canon 430 ex ii, which still goes for around $250).
does this mean you should abandon instagram? definitely not. it’s a platform, and it’s one you should nurture, so that if you ever do get exposure that drives traffic to your page, you’ve got a solid body of work for them to rub up against.
but - and this is me talking to me right now - don’t let the volume of follows and likes tell you how valid you are.
post good content, and the right people will appreciate it.
volume of engagements can’t be the only goal. instead, try placing a higher value on depth of impact.
and remember: