If you’ve become a street photographer of some sort, then I’m pretty sure that you’re doing this and thinking that social media is the pinnacle of your photography career. But it really isn’t. Beyond that, you can network to have people buy your prints, you can branch out into other genres, and you can even have your work in galleries. What photographers don’t realize, however, is that they should be shooting primarily for internal validation, more so than for external validation. Essentially, just because you got a like on social media doesn’t mean that someone will like your work enough to want to come to see it in the real world.
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The inspiration from this comes from a quote that’s over a decade old from photographer Ronya Galka. It goes:
“I guess before you even get to the promotional stage I think it’s absolutely crucial that people think about what it is that they actually want to communicate. Too often people shoot & share work with the sole objective of getting as many likes/ follows/ reblogs/ stars/ whoops or whatever else it is they are after. In many cases people would be much better advised finding and defining who they are visually and work towards their own voice and style as well as building a strong body of work before sending their images off to the social media sausage factory. It might sound harsh but without a clear vision and consistent ‘voice’ to contribute to the already very crowded photography discussion, many photographers today risk becoming lost in the sea of mediocrity.”
And that’s the big problem: social media has rewarded mediocrity in the name of just putting work out there instead of not putting anything out there that isn’t really incredible. It reminds me of Sebastio Salgado and how he took nearly a decade to put together his work on the stuff he shot in Kuwait. Was it worth the wait? Oh yeah! Those images were absolutely stunning and unlike anything else that we’ve ever seen before.
Honestly, it’s not worth trying to please an algorithm. Work to please humans instead.