If you put a movie up against photos, the movie will be more engaging. The movie will appeal to our hearing and our vision. But if someone holds a print, the photo will engage their touch and vision. In both situations, two senses are being activated. If you put them against your phone, the video will win. You’ll activate your touch, sight, and hearing when engaging with a social media app. But if you’re just looking at a photo, you only activate touch and vision. So how do you win with a photograph? Well, it’s done by getting rid of the phone.
The problem is that so many photographers only know what they see on the phone, and they must work harder to make more prints. So, for the past few months, I’ve been putting tons of Polaroids into an album. People then engage with the album and stare at the images. They’re interacting with the physical album, engaging their brain, and engaging their eyesight.
Albums and printing your images out are a completely different way of making your images pop. More importantly, though, it builds an organic chance for people to place their own value on you. If someone is looking at your images on social media and looking at your interactions, then all they care about is the number. The number isn’t authentic to yourself and it is no longer authentic to how good your work is. The reason for that is because of how algorithms work. The truth is that more people might like what you’re doing, but you can’t reach them. Meanwhile, in person, you can reach them because they’re right in front of you.
Ultimately, you have to become more engaged with your audience and the people who like your work in person.
Now, here’s a very hard truth. Do you want to be a photographer or a social media content creator? The big part of being a photographer is making images and the social part of it all in person. Things about you can be realized in person that can’t be experienced through a screen. And you should embrace this. To be a better photographer, you have to put the work in to give your photographs every advantage that they can have. So, you’ll have to set up more in-person experiences where your images aren’t fighting for someone’s attention via a screen.
If you’re introverted, this probably sounds like a nightmare. But by giving all of your attention and energy to a phone instead of people, you’re more or less just working for a social media company. In reality, you need to be working for yourself.
So where do you begin? Here are a few ideas:
- Make an album of your images printed on Instax
- Make actual prints and put them in a portfolio
- Try printing your images with an alternative process of some sort
- Bring the prints with you to places when you talk about your work and what you do. Let people experience them in person. It’s a new experience that so many people haven’t had in a while or at all
We wish you the best of luck when trying to be an ambassador for yourself and not for another brand. When you stop giving all your energy to social media apps, you’ll start giving more of your energy to yourself and the art you want to make.