My Instagram is utterly inconsequential. Which I think is how it is designed. Keep trying and watching ads...... You will not gain many followers but you will see lots of ads.
Mine is not used for personal or family pics as much as show casing some of my travel, nature and landscape photography. https://www.instagram.com/chuckcoyne/
I've only just started using it a bit this year. Pretty just misc travel stuff so far. I'd debated using it for friends and family shots too but Instagram's insistence on all-or-nothing Public vs Private profiles prevent me from doing this (I can't get comfortable with posting loved ones' faces on a public profile). IIRC last year they were trialing a simple feature to be able to choose whether any given post would be seen by the general public or just your close friends but apparently they chose not to roll that feature out to everyone.
Yes some really great work. I see lots of original and inspiring work on some of the Instagram accounts I follow.
Forget the cynical posts here. Some of those folks hardly post any of their own work, are just negative in nature or are following uncreative / uninspiring people.
Instagram, for my org and me, has been vital. I run an intl NGO called Photo Start and we use photography to teach life and business skills to kids in really destitute areas (think learning about MS Excel and Spreadsheets indirectly as a consequence of student SD card sign-outs/sign-ins). We have students now across the slums of Nairobi, Kenya and in the township/settlements of Cape Town, SA.
Both my personal IG account and our official account are dedicated to our program. I suppose seeing poor kids with expensive cameras (that they actually know how to use) is rather niche on IG. We’ve been exposed on local and intl media, developed new partners of all types, reached more students, have a steady stream of volunteer applications, in-kind donations of cameras, accessories and tech flood the mail, supporters abound, etc. We work with Sony, Fuji, B&H, RØDE, etc. and aside from the gear donations, we get promoted across their networks, too, which drives more interest in the program and rinse and repeat.
Our website is not our primary platform for discovery and is actually slightly out of date because almost everything happens on Instagram (although a wonderful digital agency in Toronto called JanKelley is building a new website for us pro bono from the ground up which we will pay more attention to with great new features like weekly features, student profiles/marketplace, and online space for distance learning [and homework😂!
The algorithm is frustrating for discovery as it is ever changing and I’m fairly certain that is due to a concerted effort to make you “promote” a post to actually reach more than 25-40% ish of your followers. We do use a social media manager and we think that also has a negative impact on reach (unfounded theory). Also, it is believed that the quality of comments influence reach bc or bots dropping nonsense which we try to clean up.
Anyway, my account is https://www.instagram.com/davidlehmanphoto/ and https://www.instagram.com/photostartgo/. If you’re inclined to view some of the children’s own work, you can check out their galleries on our website at Photo Start. I think we are going to make a new IG account soon to just feature only the student work. Our bottom line is that most of our eyes are coming from IG and that’s why it’s important for us!
glowrider wrote:
Instagram, for my org and me, has been vital. I run an intl NGO called Photo Start and we use photography to teach life and business skills to kids in really destitute areas (think learning about MS Excel and Spreadsheets indirectly as a consequence of student SD card sign-outs/sign-ins). We have students now across the slums of Nairobi, Kenya and in the township/settlements of Cape Town, SA.
Both my personal IG account and our official account are dedicated to our program. I suppose seeing poor kids with expensive cameras (that they actually know how to use) is rather niche on IG. We’ve been exposed on local and intl media, developed new partners of all types, reached more students, have a steady stream of volunteer applications, in-kind donations of cameras, accessories and tech flood the mail, supporters abound, etc. We work with Sony, Fuji, B&H, RØDE, etc. and aside from the gear donations, we get promoted across their networks, too, which drives more interest in the program and rinse and repeat.
Our website is not our primary platform for discovery and is actually slightly out of date because almost everything happens on Instagram (although a wonderful digital agency in Toronto called JanKelley is building a new website for us pro bono from the ground up which we will pay more attention to with great new features like weekly features, student profiles/marketplace, and online space for distance learning [and homework😂!
The algorithm is frustrating for discovery as it is ever changing and I’m fairly certain that is due to a concerted effort to make you “promote” a post to actually reach more than 25-40% ish of your followers. We do use a social media manager and we think that also has a negative impact on reach (unfounded theory). Also, it is believed that the quality of comments influence reach bc or bots dropping nonsense which we try to clean up.
Anyway, my account is https://www.instagram.com/davidlehmanphoto/ and https://www.instagram.com/photostartgo/. If you’re inclined to view some of the children’s own work, you can check out their galleries on our website at Photo Start. I think we are going to make a new IG account soon to just feature only the student work. Our bottom line is that most of our eyes are coming from IG and that’s why it’s important for us!...Show more →
Lovely stuff David. Love your B&W images. Those kids are awesome.
Some great shots !!
Few members have added me, thanks. Though i have no way of relating their IDs over here
Its funny there is no serious platform to curate pictures as everything is plagued by soccer dads and advertising. I guess 99.99% of people put their stuff online in some form, and no longer print or exhibit them, so its a big discrepancy. Websites are dead anyways.
! 