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My thoughts on Instagram

I’m currently following a guy called Daniel Milnor on You Tube– he’s appeared from nowhere quite recently and is an ex photojournalist and big promoter of doing project work and publishing work in book or magazine format. I like his stuff very much. He’s totally anti -Instagram. In his opinion the dawn of digital marked the exponential rise in image generation and exponential fall in image quality. I’m very tempted to agree with him. 

Why is Instagram called Instagram? It has to be called something, but some marketing agency must have spent ages coming up with that particular name?  ‘Insta’ for instant and ‘gram’ as in telegram or message I guess?  Or maybe ‘ Insta in ‘forgotten in an instant’ and gram as something being relatively weightless perhaps? 

Instagram is meant for people who prefer to communicate visually. The problem is that perhaps, for many, it is because maybe they are just too lazy to express themselves properly in words. Instagram is the repository for an entire mountain of visual dross. You have to be prepared to search deeply and diligently to find anything that might be classed as vaguely memorable. It’s like being a demented scavenger on an already infinitely large, but ever growing, landfill site ( thankfully, without the nasty smells) . 

I’ve been on Instagram for a couple of years now for the very reason that I read a magazine article that implied you were crazy not to be on it, as it was a massive source of daily inspiration. I took the plunge and began to follow professional photographers whose work I admired. In terms of my own images I literally had no followers for quite a while as I had not appreciated the requirement of having to use the hashtag to help get your work out there! My daughter had to explain this to me, which was really embarrassing, but she got me off first base after 6 lonely weeks. This lapse corrected, I started to build up followers and, in turn, I was able to follow some people back as I am a very polite person. But therein lies the problem. The more you follow, the more your Instagram in tray fills up with incoming images and the more time it takes you to ‘catch up’. Eventually, you just can’t catch up -there’s just too much coming at you because its way too easy to make pictures and everybody wants to be famous.

 Now, having followers isn’t new. Jesus had followers – 12 very close ones (although one wavered in the end) and he never even had a box brownie. Then, there is this idea that anyone who gathers enough followers and is charismatic enough is in danger of ending up creating their own cult or commune and moving into an old ranch in the desert. I doubt that will ever happen to me. There are no deserts in Northumberland plus I would need a barbed wire fence to keep my Disciples at close hand as the kind of people who follow me are more likely to be ‘wanderers’ rather than ‘followers’. Fast as I move forward in devotees, I rapidly relapse on the Instagram snakes and ladders board. I can have 100 likes a day and lose 5 followers. Partly it’s my fault because I don’t have a single defined style or speciality – if I post images from, say, my allotment project, I build up a following of earthy gardening types, who then drop me as they witness my decent into madness via my next sequence of peeling paint ‘abstracty’ images. I just use Instagram like a visual diary on a day to day basis to chart my course of self -discovery and it can be a very variable ride. I probably wouldn’t follow myself if I’m being honest. 

To lay my cards out on the table, I’m in it for the quality of photographic images only. I don’t normally follow ‘pouters’- people who use Instagram to document their daily lives- drinking cocktails and dining out etc, I only follow people who post images which are meant to be judged as images in a gallery or exhibition. There are two exceptions. One, a lady who wild swims and who posts up a daily picture, normally of the same small bay near to where I live. What fascinates me is that it’s never the same image as the waves or the light change constantly. I’m impressed by her dedication and obvious joy of being in the water. Her images tell a story. The other is also a lady who has moved recently into a nice newly built local penthouse with gorgeous sea views and it’s like getting a sneak peek into someone’s far more luxurious lifestyle complete with exotic houseplants, jogs along the coast, flavoured gin collection and trips to local restaurants. I’m a shameless voyeur in that single example. Instagram, in general, reflects life and the whole spectrum of human existence. Good and bad. In my limited choice of photographers and artists to assiduously follow, I would like to think that I have curated an eclectic collection. I have never unfollowed anyone – first that is! 

You can easily pigeon- hole Instagram photographers into different, clearly defined, categories.

There are the narcissist types who follow you to get followed back then ditch you 36 hours later.  This seems particularly harsh during the Covid pandemic when we should surely all be best of pals and supportive of one another.  I begin each day with two strong coffees as I pull myself around and go check to see if my Insta numbers are down. If so, I then methodically go back and forwards between followers and following until I spot the deserters and ruthlessly remove my patronage with a sip of caffeine and a hissed “ F- you loser” There are people that I would love to unfollow as their work is just repetitious and I am often disappointed, as my finger hovers over the delete trigger, to find, at the last possible moment, that the buggers still follow me. I have around 250 followers and try to follow slightly less than this to make myself look superior to anyone who might stumble across my account for the first time! Go on – we all do that right? 

There are the truly faithful followers who like each and every image that you post within minutes and with whom you might even exchange comments and have some playful banter. There are the people, far superior to me, whose work fits that original bill of being an inspiration and who you long to like one of your images as it would actually mean something and be a boost to your moral. This has happened a few times to me and caused me much excitement but then the thought that it probably wasn’t even them who pressed the ‘like’ button but one of their ‘assistants’!  Mainly, there are the vast majority of people whose work is rather predictable and stereotyped (note to self – just like your own Mr Big Head?) who you follow because they follow you and …..old habits die hard. BUT, it’s time consuming! Scrolling down all those images and pressing the ‘like button’. Like, like, like, like…..How much time do you devote to looking at each frame – perhaps under a second? This is what photography has become- reeling through thousands of tiny images on your phone almost like playing a fruit machine in an arcade where, all to infrequently, you win the jackpot and find an image or a person whose work is actually amazing. It’s reducing the image down to being almost worthless? The photographer may have spent hours and hours of time and money in preparation or waiting for the right moment or in traveling and all that effort is gone in a split second, straight past your eyeball and into oblivion. That image meant so much to them and within a few hours it’s disappeared far enough down the Instagram list that it’s out of scrolling reach of most people on the planet. ( Tip – just keep reposting  it every two weeks – nobody will notice ) 

You meet all types on Instagram. There are the alpha dominant types with no doubt about their own ability (even if they have none) and the people who are clearly in a very fragile mental state. Like any form of social media, you are putting your head above the parapet by posting and asking to be abused by someone with differing views to your own. (Facebook is worse I feel as, with words, it is easier to misinterpret one’s intentions than images?)

It’s easy to be tempted into liking someone based on one or two images only to find that the next 500 are pretty much identical. There are people out there who seriously think they can walk the streets and fire off their shutter every 15 minutes and capture something that’s worth posting up on Instagram. Friend, let me tell you, it’s hard enough living my own life without having to live yours at the same time. 30 images a day is excessive. Go see a therapist and show your pictures to them.

Then there are the filterers. The people who cover every image with some kind of orange filter to make their lives look sunnier or a grey filter to make their shots of their local environs look really glum and reflect their traumatic upbringing and mental insecurity. The grey images sort of caught my interest initially, as they reminded me of old analogue colour prints that, over the years, slowly fade and discolour. But the sheer repetition of grey on every post soon grew tiresome. 

There are the wall photographers. Any wall. Every wall. 100 walls a day. Walls in Chile and Portugal feature heavily in my daily image diet currently. 

There are the beautiful people. The ones who only post images of themselves looking gorgeous in gorgeous places always at sunrise or sunset. The ladies with 6 posts and 6000 followers, 3000 for each breast. These ladies predominantly seem to live happy lives in Eastern Europe and always want to ‘send you a message’ which is extremely friendly of them. Delete.

Then, there are the world travellers. Every image from a different country as they circumnavigate the globe try to find themselves. The never -ending gap year. The attempt to prove that they are global citizens. These people are literally melting the icebergs with their vanity.

What about the google street mappers?- reposting screen shots from some neighbourhood 300 miles away from where they live and have never seen (in monochrome or with the dreaded grey or orange  filter- normally grey). What are they getting out of that? 

  Then we have the ‘blur will save the world’ types. Every shot a blurry fuzz with a frustratingly low percentage of either point of interest or compositional success. 

Hang on, let’s make space for the water ripplers, the cloudscapers, the macro flower -stamenists and the funghi -fetishists. The over saturationists, the psychedelic tripists and the ‘here’s a painting I did earlier’ -ists.

Let’s not forget the dog owners- a dominant force in the world of Instagram and who sometimes have accounts for the dogs themselves. My daughter’s greyhound, Elvis, has three times the following of my human account and, to my knowledge he has never operated even a point and shoot camera in his entire, retired from the racetrack, canine life. 

Finally,  there are the big boys and girls- the professional You Tube photographers They can pretty much post any old tosh and get thousands of likes, particularly if they shoot film,  live in Los Angeles ( and have a cute dog ), the Nevada desert ( and have a massive pick-up truck ) or anywhere near Soho or the Southbank in London. Strong light and shadows appear to be the current vogue thing with a person stepping into/out of the light so their body is split in contrast. Bitch, bitch- yeh; I’m still envious and still follow every word of these divas all the same!

I have 900 or so images on Instagram. In theory 250 would be ample. I could just keep re -posting my images from the bottom row to the top and gain new followers as nobody ever scrolls down all the way through your images as nobody has the attention span! Sometimes my images appear elsewhere on the net and that proves that your Instagram images aren’t really copyright. Someone can search by hashtag and download your image and re -post it as long as they include your Instagram account reference. They don’t have to ask permission. You are effectively giving your work away – because, truly, it’s worthless.

To end on a positive note- there are people on Instagram who aren’t professionals and whose work is simply breath taking. Out of the 200 people I choose to follow maybe 6 are in that category. They tend to post infrequently, and every image is astounding. I have taken the time to contact these people and say how much I admire what they are doing. They’ve all replied politely. If they occasionally like my own images I’m thrilled.  On that basis, the average person has a three percent chance of being truly admired on Instagram which is about right. My main problem with Instagram is that it forces you into posting regularly so you can take advantage of whatever algorithm they use. If you don’t post – you die. So, you post stuff that maybe isn’t all that amazing but it’s all you happen to have on that particular day. Quality is diluted as a consequence. It’s a competition- like life. We’re all fighting each other for fame and glory? To make things worse, I try to post 3 images daily as I’m an idiot and like to keep some kind of symmetry in my 3 image ‘Insta’ horizontal layout. I should wait 3 days before each triple posting, but, no, that damn algorithm again!  Also – do you really think your posts are reaching the entire world and that your followers find you entirely randomly? No way. Facebook/Instagram (one and the same) just target your posts in certain directions. That’s why if someone follows you – guess what?  – it turns outs they are already following or being followed by people you already know. It’s a con.

So, I definitely have a love/hate relationship with Instagram. It’s based on Andy Warhol’s idea of 15 minutes of fame. We all want to be unique individuals and stake our claim to existing on earth. Instagram is like a graveyard headstone. They came, they photographed they posted – and they buried themselves. If Instagram  has any use it’s that it does represent a timeline and, by scrolling down you can see how much you have developed and improved and how much pretentious tosh you posted that, at the time you did it , you thought was wonderful. It should be like a sketchbook of developing ideas from which you develop more meaningful bodies of work that actually might be worth looking at. It’s on your phone. It’s there in your pocket. It’s what you thought were your best images.  You can find and show images easily to others and you can analyse your work when you have a quiet moment and look to improve. But it’s a treadmill and a stress in many ways. I’m tempted to listen to Daniel Milnor, delete my account- and focus on longer term projects where multiple images act to reinforce each other and tell a story. Until then, check out my Instagram account  – AND LIKE ME!

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You Tube photography channels

You are spoilt for choice my friends. Analogue or digital-there are hundreds of enthusiastic people vlogging their little hearts out on topics based on photography. It’s amazing that I managed to get to the level of competence I have without the benefits of the advice from these grand masters.

I now watch YouTube videos of young photographers who shoot nothing but analogue roll film rather than digital.  The circle is complete. To them digital is too clinical and too brash. They eulogise about the look of film and the tonal palette it provides. True. There are some good ‘young buck’ photographers using film on You Tube but mostly it’s not about film itself it’s about their own image, about being different and about being ‘trendy. Many of them shoot the most boring images in a rather lovely way. It’s actually hard to find an interesting photographer on You Tube which kind of worries me. Most are male, lots are nerdy (-and, that lurks in the back of my head, as maybe that is a pre-requisite and I don’t want to be tarred with that brush, thank you). They don’t tend to look sexy either. 

The bottom of the You Tube ladder is to do ‘unboxings ‘. This is where you watch someone getting animated about unpacking the camera and bits and pieces from the box it arrived in. What’s that about? These are presumably the same people who write lengthy reviews of electric toothbrushes for Amazon?

Then there are the types who actually test cameras and lenses and tell you what aperture is the sharpest (oddly, it’s always f5.6 or f8 – that thrill is gone, sorry!). They compare the edge sharpness of a lens with the centre. Who spends much time looking at the edges of a photograph? A consequence of all of this frantic media exposure regarding old equipment is that it keeps driving up the price of, once affordable, cameras and lenses. Find a vintage lens, say it’s amazing and how you picked it up in a thrift shop for £6 and now sleep with it under your pillow and, overnight, the price on E- bay goes stratospheric for the rest of us. 

There are the ‘Is the XZ5 better than the XZ4? -let’s look at the differences..’ I’m guessing these people are largely paid by the camera companies to encourage constant up- grading? (I’d always go for the XZ4 as its probably just halved in price….)

There are the cool ‘street shooter’ types who video themselves harassing people in the street armed with a Go -Pro camcorder on their head and a camera (normally a slick little Fuji or Ricoh) in their hand. This must happen more in the southern counties in the UK as I’ve never seen this type of behaviour in the northeast of England? They would be quickly mugged and dispatched back to Jessops via their insurance policy.  

There are the ‘landscapers’ who drive into the wilderness in luxury campervans, cook tinned soup and wander into nature armed with a massive tripod and a telephoto lens in search of the perfect tree or water reflection. A lot of these people seem young and suspiciously well off- they upgrade their cameras and lenses constantly and  always advertise their You Tube sponsors ( normally ‘Squarespace’ – the perfect website building platform ) so there must be money in it if you reach the top of the vlogging pyramid? I’d love to see the back story of some of these people? They seem to live in nice houses and presumably need to make mortgage payments? Is vlogging that financially lucrative? Did they inherit money or marry rich people? Photography is meant to be one of the hardest professions to get into and make money from. 

Some Photo-Vloggers use humour and have pet dogs – I like those types best. Lots of them live in California or the Nevada desert. There can’t be an abandoned gas station, motel or a cactus left in the USA which hasn’t been photographed at dawn or dusk by these guys. They must be queuing up and taking turns?  

There are trends particular to the UK. Currently it is to shoot people walking into /out of shadows. These images have to be really contrasty with absolutely no shadow detail and, preferably with strips of bright light straight across the face of the subject. It helps if you live in London ( South Bank or Soho best ) as there seem to be no shortage of suitable shadows down there. Up in the Northeast we tend to get a lot more boring muddy greyness. Shooting people through steamed up windows comes a close second, preferably with as much neon lighting as possible- Chinatown is ideal.   Most You Tube pros are now reverting back to using roll film and they even show themselves loading film into the camera and you are meant to gasp in awe at the sight of this. 

Lastly, in terms of categorization, there are the philosopher types who discuss the deeper meanings of photography as a social tool and how to ‘find yourself’ and then motivate yourself to reach photographic Nirvana through a Zen approach. I guess I find this type of thing more interesting to me personally but there is often more than a whiff of pretention about it all.

Most photo-vloggers are male. Off the top of my head I can’t say I’ve seen many female faces? One or two maybe but very low key? It would be nice to think that females, being more sensible, are too busy actually taking images for themselves and not their followers. Less ego maybe? 

Sometimes one vlogger recommends the channel of another- without fail this other person is far inferior. I watch and I think “Am I missing something here?” But no. Is it just to make you appreciate that the bottom of the barrel is a lot deeper than you thought?

In truth, I often end up just giving up on watching photography vloggers mid vlog as I find myself just not caring. It’s just boring. You need to find something interesting to shoot and not just rave about the tonal palette of the film you’re using.

I prefer to unearth interviews or documentaries with real tried and tested pro photographers who share their ideas and approach. The video quality is often awful as they were shot back in the 60’s and 70’s on tape but at least these people have a track record and something to say for themselves.

I suppose that anyone who vlogs must originally have had some ego to feed if making money or getting freebies from camera companies wasn’t their sole intention? I’ve had to make a few videos myself and I know the time that it takes to shoot, edit and post online. 

You must want to reach that higher ground of being an ‘influencer’ then your lifestyle really can go stratospheric. If you follow such people then, by definition, you are an ‘influencee’. I wouldn’t ever want to be an influencee and be told what toothpaste to use or which deodorant is best which pair of designer jeans is in vogue. You are just a sheep surely? What was it Andy Warhol said about everyone wanting 15 minutes of fame? If only 15 minutes were enough? Some of these young social media lifestyle influencers have committed suicide when their followers drop- that is truly a sign of how ridiculous our world has become- truly tragic. Don’t think any photo vlogger has ended it all to date – too boring and too ugly or maybe taking photographs takes away the pressures of daily postings.

Hang on – all this content comes to you for free so it seems harsh to be critical. You are been subjected, nay bombarded, to subliminal advertising before, during and after each clip which is what You Tube is based on, unless you pay a substantial amount to upgrade. Have you met anyone who has up-graded? If you want my advice ( and that would be a first ) just have a ‘dabble’ into the You Tube photo vloggers if you are a recent starter to photography but what you want to presumably do is create your own unique images and not follow your peers. Time spent glued to your laptop is time you could be out with your camera. Also, too much time looking at your laptop is bad for your eyesight and, given time, you might not be able to actually even see through a viewfinder properly – be warned!

You Tube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest- I’m on them all for fear of missing out more than anything else and so are you. 

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