11 ms·

Instagram Ruined Photography for Me

101 points by alvarlagerlof 5y ago

alvarlagerlof 5y ago
I wrote this a while ago but it seemed relevant now with what's coming out about Facebook's internal research.
barrenko 5y ago
Instagram makes most photography pointless, that's the point.
0-_-0 5y ago
I wonder if hiding likes and follower counts would help with this
- myfavoritedog 5y ago
  If we're going there, we should insist that junk food manufacturers stop making their foods tasty.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  Probably. I wouldn't have done it without the comments, because I wanted feedback.
  - prawn 5y ago
    For me, the likes on Instagram were the initial spark that encouraged me to persist with my photography and eventually made it a viable job. But I resent it now and would rather post with minimal feedback on likes/views/etc.
nbzso 5y ago
It is not only Instagram to blame. It started with camera manufacturers marketing towards the semi-pro wannabe and GAS crowd, than moved towards semantic groups in Flicker, than smartphones introduced computational exposure and easy way of taking photos and all of this culminated in Instagram Influencers and Filters. The UX of Instagram is created by default to serve the normies as an outlet of vanity and virtue signaling. The idea that social network has no option of uploading from desktop (unless using webdev browser mode) is absurd and clear design dark pattern.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  What is a GAS crowd? My search yielded nothing.
  - detaro 5y ago
    "Gear Acquisition Syndrome", people chasing more gear and obsessed with what equipment is better than others, ...
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  I ended up using services to upload from my computer in the end.
- GreenWatermelon 5y ago
  Sometimes I wonder what goes in the minds of the devs who knowingly work on these User-hostile features. Project managers are one thing, but don't you have the integrity to refuse to work on such things?
  - nbzso 5y ago
    Nothing. Just another day in the office and collecting the paycheck. It is the same for NSA intrusion teams and countless entrepreneurs, as someone recently shared here "The world is big and complicated".
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
> Both as a cautionary tale to anyone getting into photography, and as an explanation for why I stopped. I think "cautionary tale" is a bit hyperbolic. It seems to me that the author's motivations for getting into photography and expectations of what it would bring to his life have as much if not more to do with his experience than Instagram. If you get into photography for the purpose of garnering attention and praise from others, rather than, say, telling stories you find important/interesting or chronicling your experiences visually, your odds of being disappointed are incredibly high. Everyone is a photographer these days thanks the camera we all carry in our pockets and as a result the supply of photos far exceeds the demand. Note that this is not to say that Instagram hasn't had a negative impact on photography. As an avid traveler, I think it's both sad and amusing that people take basically the same photos of high-profile tourist sites to post on Instagram. But of course that shouldn't discourage anyone from taking photos when they travel if they really enjoy doing it, which is probably the only good reason for the average person to take photos anyway.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  I started doing it purely for fun and intrisic interest. Instgram slowly shifted my motivation to something that aligns more with their goals without me realizing.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > Getting older, I made my account public. Did Instagram shift it, or did you? > What I didn’t know was that for each new like and follow, a little dopamine was sent out into my brain. Every little bit of attention was a hit of a drug I didn't know about. After a while, you get used to it—wanting more and setting ever higher standards for yourself. The line between agency and no agency is quite blurry. But I would say keeping up a pretense of agency is useful, even if only fictional.
    - alvarlagerlof 5y ago
      I did, but with the goal of getting more feedback.
q_andrew 5y ago
Attaching a popularity contest to any hobby can make it soul-crushing.
- arvinsim 5y ago
  It's worse in music.
  - honzzz 5y ago
    Are you speaking from personal experience? Care to share some details?
    - alvarlagerlof 5y ago
      Doesn't your popularity in music largely determine whether you're able to do something as a job or not?
      - honzzz 5y ago
        Sure, but I was interested about that "soul-crushing" aspect.
        rchaud 5y ago
        Many bands have spoke about the disappointment they feel at concerts where they try to play new material, but the crowd mostly want to hear the hits.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  True!
mbreese 5y ago
So what is the main difference between Instagram and something like Flickr? They are both social sites/apps that revolve around photographs. But Flickr always seemed more about photography and less about selfies/influencers/likes/etc… Maybe the author would be better served by a community closer to Flickr than Instagram? It’s no longer as popular, but for the purposes of sharing photos with the world, maybe it’s a better fit? Instead of giving up photography, the author might want to think more about why they got started in the first place. It probably wasn’t to get likes. So maybe there is a different way… or different community that would be a better fit for what they want to accomplish.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  Original community I guess. Flickr was more geared towards pros and amateurs (in the original sense). Instagram was made specifically for iPhone users.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Of course you'll find no shortage of people who will opine that "Flickr could have been Instagram." Which is probably true from a financial perspective I guess. But doing anything along those lines would probably have been fundamentally incompatible with its original purpose. It's OK to be a niche however un-Silicon Valley that is.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Instagram was mobile-first, Flickr was not. This lends to completely different usage patterns, completely different communities. I agree with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550590 here.
  - alvarlagerlof 5y ago
    Yeah this was the reason I ended up there. Wanted to share with my family and friends. They all had Instagram on their phones.
- 5y ago
vletal 5y ago
Faking interest sounds like a great tactic! Is there a book about these? I suspect marketing graduates should learn these tactics during their studies.
puttycat 5y ago
About a decade ago I used to have a Flickr account, and the fact that Flickr was a website originally built for desktop screens gave every photo its right space and size, embedded in a relaxing UI, without erratic scrolling and liking (Flick's "like" functionality was never as addictive as Instagram's). I also used to have a Lomo film camera which I would take everywhere. I really liked the film developing process, having to wait for the photos (digital cameras we already prevalent of course), then uploading them to Flickr, always also printing the photos, knowing that they would remain somewhere even if the website would be taken down some day. The Flickr account is still active, and from time to time I like to visit it, and each time I'm surprised that the website still exists and that their interface is still pleasent and relaxing to use, despite recent redesigns. People dismissing these memories as nostalgia ignore the fact that smartphones had a profound impact on the way everything behaves. Instagram is not simply a "mobile Flickr", it's something profoundly different.
- barrenko 5y ago
  I have spent months 15 years ago browsing Flickr tags. Beautiful.
- zabatuvajdka 5y ago
  Instagram could be use as a “snapshot” of the real thing. If I were a photographer I would use it to hook folks into browsing the full version on my website (and buy prints if they’d like). The fact is, with huge DPI densities of photos the best way to view something is a very high quality print at scale. Real life > Flickr > Instagram (in terms of visual quality). The limitations of canvas form factor is a huge damper on visual arts. A square canvas is VERY different than a rectangular one, or a hexagonal one. But the humble square is perfect for instant grammification.
  - user_named 5y ago
    Photography isn't about image quality.
    - Hoasi 5y ago
bcraven 5y ago
I love taking photos. But I only take photos for my own enjoyment: not to share with anyone, and not to get any feedback. I only have an instagram because friends in real life have begged me to get one so they can actually see the photos I take with them. No, I take photos for my own enjoyment, and I can recommend the following: - set a photo you have taken as your phone background, or rotate through a folder of them[0] - do the same for your computer wallpaper - buy some frames and stick your photos in, change them every few months You'll now enjoy taking photos for the joy of taking photos, and when you look at them you'll remember the day out or the holiday you were on... not be thinking about whether anyone else likes them. [0]I actually have an Lightroom export folder set at my phone resolution that I can adb sync to my phone, it works a treat
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  I can't get away from somewhere wanting to get a reaction from someone else, I think. It shouldn't really be that many and on a social platform though.
  - bcraven 5y ago
    Do you have a family WhatsApp group or similar? Maybe you could post the pictures in there after you've been on a trip. The opinions of strangers are not worth chasing.
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  I have a similar feeling. I share the photos I make with my wife and daughter but, otherwise they're just for me. My wife used some of the photos with various printing services to make physical articles that we interact with and that increased my enjoyment of the photos even more. I really like interacting with the photos I make as physical articles. She had a couple of coffee mugs made with collages of family pictures. I get a kick out of seeing the photos each time I wash them. She also surprised us with a "memory" card game made with 24 photos from family trips and gatherings. It made a simple game into a conversation about the people, places, and occasions in the photos. She also had a tote bag printed with a larger-than-life print of a photo of my daughter's face om it. There's something particularly surreal, to me, about having an article like that with the face of somebody you know on it. It also, of course, prompted me to immediately photograph my daughter carrying the bag... >smile<
yosito 5y ago
I've been using Instagram since around 2012. It started as an easy way for me to share some nice photos and captions of my everyday life with distant friends and family. Lately all I really see on Instagram is cheap content-farm posts, and my closests friends and family have left Instagram and don't see my posts anymore, so I've been using it less as well. I've got the email addresses of my closest contacts, so I've considered sending a monthly or quarterly email update to them instead. The biggest thing I miss from Instagram is the ability to quickly edit a mediocre photo and make it a little prettier. It would also be nice to be able to create updates spontaneously and have them batched and only sent out quarterly. This is all possible right now, but the workflow to make it happen has too much friction, so when it comes down to it, I don't end up sending these updates at all.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  This has been my experience too. I think people are tired of it. Now they've even started putting random popular from strangers posts on the feed too.
mherdeg 5y ago
It's funny I've really slowed down on taking still photos ever since my kids were born and I've gotten really stingy with my time for any recreation or hobbies. For the purposes of "remembering what the kids were like when they were young and being able to tell them about what they were like and the things we did together", the highest return on effort I've found is from taking a couple of 30-60 second videos daily.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I have a similar mindset. I never shared photos before anyway, outside of siblings and parents. But I prefer seeing photos of people on their trips and whatnot when I visit their home. I see absolutely no point in having a 24/7 feed of other people’s leisure (or non leisure) activities. It kind of makes visiting (or even audio/video calling) others more fun since you already know there is stuff to see or discuss that you have not already disseminated.
jaequery 5y ago
Sounds like his photos were incredibly dear to him. I'd love to see his photos. :) Anyhow, I hope he gets back into it, perhaps with a different mindset towards sharing on social media. At end of the day, it shouldn't be about numbers, it should be simply because you love your work and you love to share with the world.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  https://instagram.com/alvarlagerlof https://instagram.com/alvarlagerlof, and thanks, by the way.
  - jaequery 5y ago
    This is some incredible stuff! You are really talented, please keep doing what you do!
jukabo 5y ago
Put your photos on Opensea.io
kylehotchkiss 5y ago
the people at https://glass.photo/ https://glass.photo/ seem to be coming from a similar background and are trying a new (paid) approach towards photographer centric network. I hope it works out in the long term as I understand your frustration with photo sharing options for people who enjoy photography but don’t want it to become about the metrics
epgui 5y ago
I have a similar experience. I haven’t taken a photo in years because of “creative depression” (looneybros.com).
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  This experience was part of what triggered a real depression for me but I feel you. I found that reducing friction as much as possible helps. Nowadays, if I take a photo, its whith my phone. The quality isn't as high, but there is almost no commitment.
dismalpedigree 5y ago
Instagram has ruined much more than just photography. World heritage sites, national parks, scenic overlooks. People just “do it for the gram”. Don’t get me started on the social problems it has caused as well.
- throwaway5752 5y ago
  It's narcissism incarnate to me.
  - alvarlagerlof 5y ago
    I find LinkedIn worse here
    - mt_ 5y ago
      Linkedin is a parody of itself.
ghaff 5y ago
While the OP's case is somewhat Instagram-specific, people also just get burned out of hobbies. I was very seriously into photography in school, editor of various school pubs, etc. After I graduated I really just shifted to taking slides on vacation for quite a few years. It was really only after digital came in that I did photography more seriously again--and, even then, still mostly when traveling (which is normally a lot of the time).
- martin_a 5y ago
  Hm, interesting... Every once in a while I think about whether I should sell all my photo equipment. I got a Fuji S5 Pro, some flashes, stuff like that, nothing fancy. Really loved using all of it before I went to study and work afterwards, so pre-2015. These days I'm fascinated by the quality of my smartphone camera and haven't touched the Fuji for years (ok, took a dozen profile pictures last year, doesn't really count for me). I feel like I've "burned out" on that hobby and should probably free the space in the cabinet by selling everything. What's your take on this?
  - alvarlagerlof 5y ago
    I find taking photos with my phone much more accessible to these days. Memory cards, editor programs, just too much of a hassle.
    - martin_a 5y ago
      Same goes for me. I also got Snapseed installed which really help with touching up one or two bits, but I rarely use it. Copying files, starting up Bridge and Photoshop... It just feels so... "stressful", when I just want to take a picture to send to a friend.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        While I will share "snapshots" from my phone, I do like to periodically go in, add metadata, curate, lightly edit, organize, etc. photos in Lightroom. It's pretty much the only way to access them in a reasonable way a few years later.
vmception 5y ago
I've managed high follower (100K+), high engagement (3%+) accounts with 99% distinct human followers, and I can tell you that there is no prize for likes. It doesn't matter if your photo is getting 10 likes or 3500 likes, dozens of comments and reshares. It just becomes related to relative performance of the other post. So you shouldn't use instagram for that. Also, you should know that hashtags are not competitive at all for many years now, there is practically zero utility in using them at this point and you should only use them for irony or an extended caption, as they can convey your thoughts without a sentence, you're welcome. Although you can still game hashtags, but even then it is just good for balancing out attrition of followers and maintaining an account size, as opposed to actually growing the account. Going back to the main subject, you can use the overall engagement as a resource to acquire other goods and services though, like a currency that is never spent. People, brands will associate and do things for you for free (or with you, for free) because of the dream of your engagement, analogous to why the same brands and people gamble on ads with all the large tech conglomerates, a potential well of engagement. But you are just the dealer building inventory, and dealers know not to get high on their own supply so you shouldn't either. So by realizing there is no prize offered by the platform, no achievement unlocked, not even a digital sticker, you can short circuit the dopamine hits.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  Yeah, I realized that growing meant nothing meaningful after a while. Kept growing, but nothing changed. This is something that happened 5+ years ago, and maybe three years back. I reckon hashtags were bigger than right? Certainly seemed to work. I could have been able to short-circuit that if I started now I suspect, but I was waay to young.
  - vmception 5y ago
    At the scale you are talking about, 700 followers, hashtags can somewhat help with discovery. But they are practically irrelevant to other ways. Yeah, actually I stand by my first statement, the other ways are too relevant to really harp about hashtags. You're better off just commenting on other people's popular posts and asking for passerbys to look at your profile than spamming hashtags or trying to find a trending ones etc. But unless you are in the business of growing profiles for other people, you shouldn't use instagram for trying to gain ever growing exposure as the dopamine is dangerous. I don't have any solution for making that part of your visual arts display interest. If you tried again, you should go back to private or even keep it public only as a portfolio to show people in person. Or to show an identity when you are communicating with a potential romantic partner over the messaging system.
muglug 5y ago
I’ve always enjoyed taking photos, but much of the enjoyment has come from having other people see and appreciate them. FB & Instagram reduced time between taking a photo and having people see it, and there have been times where I posted particular photos because I knew they’d get more upvotes, not because they were photos I particularly treasured. Though I blame FB & Instagram for a lot, I don’t entirely blame them for my change in behaviour. A decade and a half prior, Flickr had the same basic dynamic. People posted photos with tags, others upvoted them. A feed displayed popular posts. The difference is with the device. Looking at a photo that’s physically smaller than a real-life Polaroid isn’t a massively pleasurable experience, so to compensate the photo needs to go further with its content — closer crops etc. I also end up seeing more imagery, because each viewing is sort of throwaway, than I did using Flickr. I don’t blame IG for that either, even though it clearly benefits them.
fredley 5y ago
> Set on getting more: likes, followers, comments, I soon found ways to improve my metrics: I think the fact that 'taking better/more interesting/more unique photos' is not on this list is telling.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  That's what's underlying always. But the whole app really skewed my motivations.
  - prawn 5y ago
    Can you focus on making sure your contribution to the platform/everywhere is what you want to see more of. If you resent the whole tag game, just ignore it. Post photos and forget the game. (I hate the game too.)
mc32 5y ago
Instagram put 1990s Japanese tourist photography on ultra steroids. At least in its Japanese analogue the prints if they were made were put in an album or photo box and rarely revisited and were private. Instagram wants to prove to everyone you had a really beautiful piece of sushi, even if it tasted like it came from a supermarket. Everything is about proving you were some place and saw some thing hopefully shiny.
stefanos82 5y ago
You started young; please continue with your adventure and stop using social media or at least those that affect your creativity. Spend more time with yourself and your camera, seek for quiet times and places, and take as many pictures as possible. Photography can be like a good book that captivates your imagination; master your craft and eventually you will become a story-teller through your photographs. This one [1] is amazing, I love it! [1] https://unsplash.com/photos/1_zBgojLzvA https://unsplash.com/photos/1_zBgojLzvA
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  Yeah for sure. I'm sad it took me so long to realize what was happening. Still have a very hard time picking up my camera. Taking pictures with my phone is easier. Maybe I should post more unsplash. Those that are there are just for testing, hundreds more on instagram, but I like the idea of sharing for free with the world.
  - therealcamino 5y ago
    Sharing widely is great, but to develop as a photographer, it can be a lot more rewarding to take an in-person workshop class. In a well-run workshop, you can get thoughtful critiques, find fellow students whose opinions you value, and learn about your own priorities by contrast with the other students' styles. For me, it also helps keep the emphasis on developing your own craft -- just launching images into the internet can't help but feel like participating in an awful global popularity contest.
  - prawn 5y ago
    I've noticed Instagram users develop anxiety about posting (including a full-time Instagrammer who started turning down lucrative offers and gave it up). I'll sound like a shill after mentioning it in another comment, but you could try Later.com as a way to insulate yourself from that process. Take photos. Throw them into the queue. Let Later post them, and just ignore the metrics unless you want to be responding to comments. I take loads of photos and then hardly share them for fear of a shot not being good enough. It's definitely a thing that grew noticeably with Instagram.
maeln 5y ago
I never had an instagram account and nerver used it until recently. I had to create and use one for a project I am working on. I was sadden by how generic most of the photo on the service are. Most of them are either black and white with slightly pushed contrast, or high contrast with a shift to either red or blue. Now those are common photo practice but instagram seems to have really standardized them (I guess the filters have a lot to do with that) in a way that make every photo look like the next one. And when there is a human subject, they tend to always use the same kind of "sensual" pose that you could find on the cover of a fashion magazine. I am definitely sure that in this service use by millions of people there way more originality and diversity than that, but holy molly do Instagram tend to push those very generic profile down your throat and give very little visibility to original content. But I guess thats the issue with anything popular, it tend to aggregate around the most common denominator.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  Yeah, the exploration part of it doesn't reward original stuff. https://qz.com/quartzy/1349585/you-are-not-original-or-creative-on-instagram/ https://qz.com/quartzy/1349585/you-are-not-original-or-creat...
lvl100 5y ago
Truth is that it’s hard to take good photos. Very hard.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  I don't think weather my photos were good or not has anything to do with this
trwired 5y ago
You can replace Instagram with any other social media platform and photography with any other activity, and the post would ring true all the same. What the author describes is exactly what happened to me after I picked music discovery as a hobby and started sharing my findings on Reddit. I am very familiar with every trick to game the system for more likes (well, upvotes in my case) mentioned in the article. I quit cold turkey when I realized what this does to my hobby, but not before I was so burned out, I temporarily stopped listening to any kind of music.
l33tbro 5y ago
> Soon, I started thinking about how my photos would be perceived even before taking them. This was a bit sad. Of course, Instagram isn't the problem. The best creative people have always created work to please themselves. They do not really care about like mechanics and peak times to post. I hope this guy eventually takes responsibility and comes to terms with some of his insecurities. There obviously was a spark that drew him to photography, but it seems he has psyched himself out along the way.
Applejinx 5y ago
I think this speaks to a general principle: you can democratize access to consumer attention (whether that's in editorializing, photography, music, what have you) but doing so forms more of a truly free market. And truly free markets distort themselves, because people seek multiple things when producing stuff for their peers. If there are exploits, they'll tend to win… and there are always exploits. We're not truly rational in the manner of computers (to the extent even they can be said to be rational…) The only way to really avoid this is to define other kinds of values or purposes, and then stubbornly pursue those instead of attention. Which makes you rather a pariah in the modern internet economy… it's pretty weird. There is a 'market' for this, too, though. It's just more of a niche market, but if you signal to that smaller market it does hear. I don't do this as much in art but I do it in other areas, and it's real. (meaning: I don't really HAVE any audience in art, but there are places where I do) To do this in photography, define something you want to pursue outside of just 'audience response writ large', and refuse to pay attention to anything else: in particular, be able to identify when there's an audience demand that's steering you away from the value you're pursuing, and be prepared to reject the sort of audience that's asking you to go against your own wishes. By rejecting one audience you're signaling to another (often this happens quietly and you only find out about it later, or not at all, where the rejected ones WILL be loud and offended about it: be brave) That will work, so long as you're able to define something about the art that drives you, that's more than 'people seem to like it'. Your job is to be telling the AUDIENCE what to like, knowing full well that lots of them will disagree and be mad :)
- silicon2401 5y ago
  This is a great example of why I support the electoral college and don't think democracy always works. The fact that people aren't rational, as you said, allows for self-harm or outright self-destruction in some cases when people are given too much freedom.
krumbie 5y ago
This resonated with me. I refused to open an instagram account because I didn't want to think about what other people might like when taking photos.
fsflover 5y ago
Consider using federated Pixelfed instead: https://fedidb.org/software/pixelfed https://fedidb.org/software/pixelfed.
pbronez 5y ago
TinyBeans [0] is the ideal photo sharing app for me & my family. It is totally focused on empowering you to (1) build a chronological feed of good photos and videos and (2) share it with a tightly controlled group of people. TinyBeans really helped my parents stay connected to their grandkids during the COVID lock downs. We're still using it as things open up because it gives me all the goodness of sharing baby pictures with none of the creepiness of social media. As a bonus, it also acts as a traditional photo book, archiving all our family photos in a searchable way. I pay for it, so I know I'm the customer and not the product. It's happier on this version of the internet :) [0] https://tinybeans.com/ https://tinybeans.com/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thih9 5y ago
It looks like Instagram is actually not about photography. Meaning that photography enthusiasts are at a disadvantage there. I’m surprised that I’m realizing this just now.
t0bia_s 5y ago
Author need find purpose of taking pictures. If he doing it just for faceless audience, he'll never get into creative process of photography. Finding alternative social network like Twitter for picture sharing is pointless. As pro photographer I personally find out that following other photographers won't help me with improvement, it actually shape my work to mainstream. So only place where I decided to put my work is my personal portfolio. I don't care about hashtags, I don't care about how much people like it or not. I just create what I like and talk about my work with others personally. My mind is much more focused on actual creativity then thinking about how others would like it or not.
seoulmetro 5y ago
Instagram also ruined Photography for me. I've asked countless times in many locations if there is a place for good photography to be exhibited and criticized but most people have no solution. I think Photography (the real kind, with minimal edits and realistic captures) is fading away and this Instagram photography style is replacing it. Fake everything, all the way down. The problem is, most photo sharing platforms are too susceptible to theft of property, or they're too susceptible to very bad quality photography.

101 points by alvarlagerlof 5y ago

alvarlagerlof 5y ago

I wrote this a while ago but it seemed relevant now with what's coming out about Facebook's internal research.

barrenko 5y ago

Instagram makes most photography pointless, that's the point.

0-_-0 5y ago

I wonder if hiding likes and follower counts would help with this

myfavoritedog 5y ago
If we're going there, we should insist that junk food manufacturers stop making their foods tasty.
alvarlagerlof 5y ago
Probably. I wouldn't have done it without the comments, because I wanted feedback.
- prawn 5y ago
  For me, the likes on Instagram were the initial spark that encouraged me to persist with my photography and eventually made it a viable job. But I resent it now and would rather post with minimal feedback on likes/views/etc.

nbzso 5y ago

It is not only Instagram to blame. It started with camera manufacturers marketing towards the semi-pro wannabe and GAS crowd, than moved towards semantic groups in Flicker, than smartphones introduced computational exposure and easy way of taking photos and all of this culminated in Instagram Influencers and Filters. The UX of Instagram is created by default to serve the normies as an outlet of vanity and virtue signaling. The idea that social network has no option of uploading from desktop (unless using webdev browser mode) is absurd and clear design dark pattern.

yoz-y 5y ago
What is a GAS crowd? My search yielded nothing.
- detaro 5y ago
  "Gear Acquisition Syndrome", people chasing more gear and obsessed with what equipment is better than others, ...
alvarlagerlof 5y ago
I ended up using services to upload from my computer in the end.
GreenWatermelon 5y ago
Sometimes I wonder what goes in the minds of the devs who knowingly work on these User-hostile features. Project managers are one thing, but don't you have the integrity to refuse to work on such things?
- nbzso 5y ago
  Nothing. Just another day in the office and collecting the paycheck. It is the same for NSA intrusion teams and countless entrepreneurs, as someone recently shared here "The world is big and complicated".

LurkingPenguin 5y ago

> Both as a cautionary tale to anyone getting into photography, and as an explanation for why I stopped. I think "cautionary tale" is a bit hyperbolic. It seems to me that the author's motivations for getting into photography and expectations of what it would bring to his life have as much if not more to do with his experience than Instagram. If you get into photography for the purpose of garnering attention and praise from others, rather than, say, telling stories you find important/interesting or chronicling your experiences visually, your odds of being disappointed are incredibly high. Everyone is a photographer these days thanks the camera we all carry in our pockets and as a result the supply of photos far exceeds the demand. Note that this is not to say that Instagram hasn't had a negative impact on photography. As an avid traveler, I think it's both sad and amusing that people take basically the same photos of high-profile tourist sites to post on Instagram. But of course that shouldn't discourage anyone from taking photos when they travel if they really enjoy doing it, which is probably the only good reason for the average person to take photos anyway.

alvarlagerlof 5y ago
I started doing it purely for fun and intrisic interest. Instgram slowly shifted my motivation to something that aligns more with their goals without me realizing.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > Getting older, I made my account public. Did Instagram shift it, or did you? > What I didn’t know was that for each new like and follow, a little dopamine was sent out into my brain. Every little bit of attention was a hit of a drug I didn't know about. After a while, you get used to it—wanting more and setting ever higher standards for yourself. The line between agency and no agency is quite blurry. But I would say keeping up a pretense of agency is useful, even if only fictional.
  - alvarlagerlof 5y ago
    I did, but with the goal of getting more feedback.

q_andrew 5y ago

Attaching a popularity contest to any hobby can make it soul-crushing.

arvinsim 5y ago
It's worse in music.
- honzzz 5y ago
  Are you speaking from personal experience? Care to share some details?
  - alvarlagerlof 5y ago
    Doesn't your popularity in music largely determine whether you're able to do something as a job or not?
    - honzzz 5y ago
      Sure, but I was interested about that "soul-crushing" aspect.
      - rchaud 5y ago
        Many bands have spoke about the disappointment they feel at concerts where they try to play new material, but the crowd mostly want to hear the hits.
alvarlagerlof 5y ago
True!

mbreese 5y ago

So what is the main difference between Instagram and something like Flickr? They are both social sites/apps that revolve around photographs. But Flickr always seemed more about photography and less about selfies/influencers/likes/etc… Maybe the author would be better served by a community closer to Flickr than Instagram? It’s no longer as popular, but for the purposes of sharing photos with the world, maybe it’s a better fit? Instead of giving up photography, the author might want to think more about why they got started in the first place. It probably wasn’t to get likes. So maybe there is a different way… or different community that would be a better fit for what they want to accomplish.

yoz-y 5y ago
Original community I guess. Flickr was more geared towards pros and amateurs (in the original sense). Instagram was made specifically for iPhone users.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Of course you'll find no shortage of people who will opine that "Flickr could have been Instagram." Which is probably true from a financial perspective I guess. But doing anything along those lines would probably have been fundamentally incompatible with its original purpose. It's OK to be a niche however un-Silicon Valley that is.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
Instagram was mobile-first, Flickr was not. This lends to completely different usage patterns, completely different communities. I agree with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550590 here.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  Yeah this was the reason I ended up there. Wanted to share with my family and friends. They all had Instagram on their phones.
5y ago

vletal 5y ago

Faking interest sounds like a great tactic! Is there a book about these? I suspect marketing graduates should learn these tactics during their studies.

puttycat 5y ago

About a decade ago I used to have a Flickr account, and the fact that Flickr was a website originally built for desktop screens gave every photo its right space and size, embedded in a relaxing UI, without erratic scrolling and liking (Flick's "like" functionality was never as addictive as Instagram's). I also used to have a Lomo film camera which I would take everywhere. I really liked the film developing process, having to wait for the photos (digital cameras we already prevalent of course), then uploading them to Flickr, always also printing the photos, knowing that they would remain somewhere even if the website would be taken down some day. The Flickr account is still active, and from time to time I like to visit it, and each time I'm surprised that the website still exists and that their interface is still pleasent and relaxing to use, despite recent redesigns. People dismissing these memories as nostalgia ignore the fact that smartphones had a profound impact on the way everything behaves. Instagram is not simply a "mobile Flickr", it's something profoundly different.

barrenko 5y ago
I have spent months 15 years ago browsing Flickr tags. Beautiful.
zabatuvajdka 5y ago
Instagram could be use as a “snapshot” of the real thing. If I were a photographer I would use it to hook folks into browsing the full version on my website (and buy prints if they’d like). The fact is, with huge DPI densities of photos the best way to view something is a very high quality print at scale. Real life > Flickr > Instagram (in terms of visual quality). The limitations of canvas form factor is a huge damper on visual arts. A square canvas is VERY different than a rectangular one, or a hexagonal one. But the humble square is perfect for instant grammification.
- user_named 5y ago
  Photography isn't about image quality.
  - Hoasi 5y ago

bcraven 5y ago

I love taking photos. But I only take photos for my own enjoyment: not to share with anyone, and not to get any feedback. I only have an instagram because friends in real life have begged me to get one so they can actually see the photos I take with them. No, I take photos for my own enjoyment, and I can recommend the following: - set a photo you have taken as your phone background, or rotate through a folder of them[0] - do the same for your computer wallpaper - buy some frames and stick your photos in, change them every few months You'll now enjoy taking photos for the joy of taking photos, and when you look at them you'll remember the day out or the holiday you were on... not be thinking about whether anyone else likes them. [0]I actually have an Lightroom export folder set at my phone resolution that I can adb sync to my phone, it works a treat

alvarlagerlof 5y ago
I can't get away from somewhere wanting to get a reaction from someone else, I think. It shouldn't really be that many and on a social platform though.
- bcraven 5y ago
  Do you have a family WhatsApp group or similar? Maybe you could post the pictures in there after you've been on a trip. The opinions of strangers are not worth chasing.
EvanAnderson 5y ago
I have a similar feeling. I share the photos I make with my wife and daughter but, otherwise they're just for me. My wife used some of the photos with various printing services to make physical articles that we interact with and that increased my enjoyment of the photos even more. I really like interacting with the photos I make as physical articles. She had a couple of coffee mugs made with collages of family pictures. I get a kick out of seeing the photos each time I wash them. She also surprised us with a "memory" card game made with 24 photos from family trips and gatherings. It made a simple game into a conversation about the people, places, and occasions in the photos. She also had a tote bag printed with a larger-than-life print of a photo of my daughter's face om it. There's something particularly surreal, to me, about having an article like that with the face of somebody you know on it. It also, of course, prompted me to immediately photograph my daughter carrying the bag... >smile<

yosito 5y ago

I've been using Instagram since around 2012. It started as an easy way for me to share some nice photos and captions of my everyday life with distant friends and family. Lately all I really see on Instagram is cheap content-farm posts, and my closests friends and family have left Instagram and don't see my posts anymore, so I've been using it less as well. I've got the email addresses of my closest contacts, so I've considered sending a monthly or quarterly email update to them instead. The biggest thing I miss from Instagram is the ability to quickly edit a mediocre photo and make it a little prettier. It would also be nice to be able to create updates spontaneously and have them batched and only sent out quarterly. This is all possible right now, but the workflow to make it happen has too much friction, so when it comes down to it, I don't end up sending these updates at all.

alvarlagerlof 5y ago
This has been my experience too. I think people are tired of it. Now they've even started putting random popular from strangers posts on the feed too.

mherdeg 5y ago

It's funny I've really slowed down on taking still photos ever since my kids were born and I've gotten really stingy with my time for any recreation or hobbies. For the purposes of "remembering what the kids were like when they were young and being able to tell them about what they were like and the things we did together", the highest return on effort I've found is from taking a couple of 30-60 second videos daily.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
I have a similar mindset. I never shared photos before anyway, outside of siblings and parents. But I prefer seeing photos of people on their trips and whatnot when I visit their home. I see absolutely no point in having a 24/7 feed of other people’s leisure (or non leisure) activities. It kind of makes visiting (or even audio/video calling) others more fun since you already know there is stuff to see or discuss that you have not already disseminated.

jaequery 5y ago

Sounds like his photos were incredibly dear to him. I'd love to see his photos. :) Anyhow, I hope he gets back into it, perhaps with a different mindset towards sharing on social media. At end of the day, it shouldn't be about numbers, it should be simply because you love your work and you love to share with the world.

alvarlagerlof 5y ago
https://instagram.com/alvarlagerlof https://instagram.com/alvarlagerlof, and thanks, by the way.
- jaequery 5y ago
  This is some incredible stuff! You are really talented, please keep doing what you do!

jukabo 5y ago

Put your photos on Opensea.io

kylehotchkiss 5y ago

the people at https://glass.photo/ https://glass.photo/ seem to be coming from a similar background and are trying a new (paid) approach towards photographer centric network. I hope it works out in the long term as I understand your frustration with photo sharing options for people who enjoy photography but don’t want it to become about the metrics

epgui 5y ago

I have a similar experience. I haven’t taken a photo in years because of “creative depression” (looneybros.com).

alvarlagerlof 5y ago
This experience was part of what triggered a real depression for me but I feel you. I found that reducing friction as much as possible helps. Nowadays, if I take a photo, its whith my phone. The quality isn't as high, but there is almost no commitment.

dismalpedigree 5y ago

Instagram has ruined much more than just photography. World heritage sites, national parks, scenic overlooks. People just “do it for the gram”. Don’t get me started on the social problems it has caused as well.

throwaway5752 5y ago
It's narcissism incarnate to me.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  I find LinkedIn worse here
  - mt_ 5y ago
    Linkedin is a parody of itself.

ghaff 5y ago

While the OP's case is somewhat Instagram-specific, people also just get burned out of hobbies. I was very seriously into photography in school, editor of various school pubs, etc. After I graduated I really just shifted to taking slides on vacation for quite a few years. It was really only after digital came in that I did photography more seriously again--and, even then, still mostly when traveling (which is normally a lot of the time).

martin_a 5y ago
Hm, interesting... Every once in a while I think about whether I should sell all my photo equipment. I got a Fuji S5 Pro, some flashes, stuff like that, nothing fancy. Really loved using all of it before I went to study and work afterwards, so pre-2015. These days I'm fascinated by the quality of my smartphone camera and haven't touched the Fuji for years (ok, took a dozen profile pictures last year, doesn't really count for me). I feel like I've "burned out" on that hobby and should probably free the space in the cabinet by selling everything. What's your take on this?
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  I find taking photos with my phone much more accessible to these days. Memory cards, editor programs, just too much of a hassle.
  - martin_a 5y ago
    Same goes for me. I also got Snapseed installed which really help with touching up one or two bits, but I rarely use it. Copying files, starting up Bridge and Photoshop... It just feels so... "stressful", when I just want to take a picture to send to a friend.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      While I will share "snapshots" from my phone, I do like to periodically go in, add metadata, curate, lightly edit, organize, etc. photos in Lightroom. It's pretty much the only way to access them in a reasonable way a few years later.

vmception 5y ago

I've managed high follower (100K+), high engagement (3%+) accounts with 99% distinct human followers, and I can tell you that there is no prize for likes. It doesn't matter if your photo is getting 10 likes or 3500 likes, dozens of comments and reshares. It just becomes related to relative performance of the other post. So you shouldn't use instagram for that. Also, you should know that hashtags are not competitive at all for many years now, there is practically zero utility in using them at this point and you should only use them for irony or an extended caption, as they can convey your thoughts without a sentence, you're welcome. Although you can still game hashtags, but even then it is just good for balancing out attrition of followers and maintaining an account size, as opposed to actually growing the account. Going back to the main subject, you can use the overall engagement as a resource to acquire other goods and services though, like a currency that is never spent. People, brands will associate and do things for you for free (or with you, for free) because of the dream of your engagement, analogous to why the same brands and people gamble on ads with all the large tech conglomerates, a potential well of engagement. But you are just the dealer building inventory, and dealers know not to get high on their own supply so you shouldn't either. So by realizing there is no prize offered by the platform, no achievement unlocked, not even a digital sticker, you can short circuit the dopamine hits.

alvarlagerlof 5y ago
Yeah, I realized that growing meant nothing meaningful after a while. Kept growing, but nothing changed. This is something that happened 5+ years ago, and maybe three years back. I reckon hashtags were bigger than right? Certainly seemed to work. I could have been able to short-circuit that if I started now I suspect, but I was waay to young.
- vmception 5y ago
  At the scale you are talking about, 700 followers, hashtags can somewhat help with discovery. But they are practically irrelevant to other ways. Yeah, actually I stand by my first statement, the other ways are too relevant to really harp about hashtags. You're better off just commenting on other people's popular posts and asking for passerbys to look at your profile than spamming hashtags or trying to find a trending ones etc. But unless you are in the business of growing profiles for other people, you shouldn't use instagram for trying to gain ever growing exposure as the dopamine is dangerous. I don't have any solution for making that part of your visual arts display interest. If you tried again, you should go back to private or even keep it public only as a portfolio to show people in person. Or to show an identity when you are communicating with a potential romantic partner over the messaging system.

muglug 5y ago

I’ve always enjoyed taking photos, but much of the enjoyment has come from having other people see and appreciate them. FB & Instagram reduced time between taking a photo and having people see it, and there have been times where I posted particular photos because I knew they’d get more upvotes, not because they were photos I particularly treasured. Though I blame FB & Instagram for a lot, I don’t entirely blame them for my change in behaviour. A decade and a half prior, Flickr had the same basic dynamic. People posted photos with tags, others upvoted them. A feed displayed popular posts. The difference is with the device. Looking at a photo that’s physically smaller than a real-life Polaroid isn’t a massively pleasurable experience, so to compensate the photo needs to go further with its content — closer crops etc. I also end up seeing more imagery, because each viewing is sort of throwaway, than I did using Flickr. I don’t blame IG for that either, even though it clearly benefits them.

fredley 5y ago

> Set on getting more: likes, followers, comments, I soon found ways to improve my metrics: I think the fact that 'taking better/more interesting/more unique photos' is not on this list is telling.

alvarlagerlof 5y ago
That's what's underlying always. But the whole app really skewed my motivations.
- prawn 5y ago
  Can you focus on making sure your contribution to the platform/everywhere is what you want to see more of. If you resent the whole tag game, just ignore it. Post photos and forget the game. (I hate the game too.)

mc32 5y ago

Instagram put 1990s Japanese tourist photography on ultra steroids. At least in its Japanese analogue the prints if they were made were put in an album or photo box and rarely revisited and were private. Instagram wants to prove to everyone you had a really beautiful piece of sushi, even if it tasted like it came from a supermarket. Everything is about proving you were some place and saw some thing hopefully shiny.

stefanos82 5y ago

You started young; please continue with your adventure and stop using social media or at least those that affect your creativity. Spend more time with yourself and your camera, seek for quiet times and places, and take as many pictures as possible. Photography can be like a good book that captivates your imagination; master your craft and eventually you will become a story-teller through your photographs. This one [1] is amazing, I love it! [1] https://unsplash.com/photos/1_zBgojLzvA https://unsplash.com/photos/1_zBgojLzvA

alvarlagerlof 5y ago
Yeah for sure. I'm sad it took me so long to realize what was happening. Still have a very hard time picking up my camera. Taking pictures with my phone is easier. Maybe I should post more unsplash. Those that are there are just for testing, hundreds more on instagram, but I like the idea of sharing for free with the world.
- therealcamino 5y ago
  Sharing widely is great, but to develop as a photographer, it can be a lot more rewarding to take an in-person workshop class. In a well-run workshop, you can get thoughtful critiques, find fellow students whose opinions you value, and learn about your own priorities by contrast with the other students' styles. For me, it also helps keep the emphasis on developing your own craft -- just launching images into the internet can't help but feel like participating in an awful global popularity contest.
- prawn 5y ago
  I've noticed Instagram users develop anxiety about posting (including a full-time Instagrammer who started turning down lucrative offers and gave it up). I'll sound like a shill after mentioning it in another comment, but you could try Later.com as a way to insulate yourself from that process. Take photos. Throw them into the queue. Let Later post them, and just ignore the metrics unless you want to be responding to comments. I take loads of photos and then hardly share them for fear of a shot not being good enough. It's definitely a thing that grew noticeably with Instagram.

maeln 5y ago

I never had an instagram account and nerver used it until recently. I had to create and use one for a project I am working on. I was sadden by how generic most of the photo on the service are. Most of them are either black and white with slightly pushed contrast, or high contrast with a shift to either red or blue. Now those are common photo practice but instagram seems to have really standardized them (I guess the filters have a lot to do with that) in a way that make every photo look like the next one. And when there is a human subject, they tend to always use the same kind of "sensual" pose that you could find on the cover of a fashion magazine. I am definitely sure that in this service use by millions of people there way more originality and diversity than that, but holy molly do Instagram tend to push those very generic profile down your throat and give very little visibility to original content. But I guess thats the issue with anything popular, it tend to aggregate around the most common denominator.

alvarlagerlof 5y ago
Yeah, the exploration part of it doesn't reward original stuff. https://qz.com/quartzy/1349585/you-are-not-original-or-creative-on-instagram/ https://qz.com/quartzy/1349585/you-are-not-original-or-creat...

lvl100 5y ago

Truth is that it’s hard to take good photos. Very hard.

alvarlagerlof 5y ago
I don't think weather my photos were good or not has anything to do with this

trwired 5y ago

You can replace Instagram with any other social media platform and photography with any other activity, and the post would ring true all the same. What the author describes is exactly what happened to me after I picked music discovery as a hobby and started sharing my findings on Reddit. I am very familiar with every trick to game the system for more likes (well, upvotes in my case) mentioned in the article. I quit cold turkey when I realized what this does to my hobby, but not before I was so burned out, I temporarily stopped listening to any kind of music.

l33tbro 5y ago

> Soon, I started thinking about how my photos would be perceived even before taking them. This was a bit sad. Of course, Instagram isn't the problem. The best creative people have always created work to please themselves. They do not really care about like mechanics and peak times to post. I hope this guy eventually takes responsibility and comes to terms with some of his insecurities. There obviously was a spark that drew him to photography, but it seems he has psyched himself out along the way.

Applejinx 5y ago

I think this speaks to a general principle: you can democratize access to consumer attention (whether that's in editorializing, photography, music, what have you) but doing so forms more of a truly free market. And truly free markets distort themselves, because people seek multiple things when producing stuff for their peers. If there are exploits, they'll tend to win… and there are always exploits. We're not truly rational in the manner of computers (to the extent even they can be said to be rational…) The only way to really avoid this is to define other kinds of values or purposes, and then stubbornly pursue those instead of attention. Which makes you rather a pariah in the modern internet economy… it's pretty weird. There is a 'market' for this, too, though. It's just more of a niche market, but if you signal to that smaller market it does hear. I don't do this as much in art but I do it in other areas, and it's real. (meaning: I don't really HAVE any audience in art, but there are places where I do) To do this in photography, define something you want to pursue outside of just 'audience response writ large', and refuse to pay attention to anything else: in particular, be able to identify when there's an audience demand that's steering you away from the value you're pursuing, and be prepared to reject the sort of audience that's asking you to go against your own wishes. By rejecting one audience you're signaling to another (often this happens quietly and you only find out about it later, or not at all, where the rejected ones WILL be loud and offended about it: be brave) That will work, so long as you're able to define something about the art that drives you, that's more than 'people seem to like it'. Your job is to be telling the AUDIENCE what to like, knowing full well that lots of them will disagree and be mad :)

silicon2401 5y ago
This is a great example of why I support the electoral college and don't think democracy always works. The fact that people aren't rational, as you said, allows for self-harm or outright self-destruction in some cases when people are given too much freedom.

krumbie 5y ago

This resonated with me. I refused to open an instagram account because I didn't want to think about what other people might like when taking photos.

fsflover 5y ago

Consider using federated Pixelfed instead: https://fedidb.org/software/pixelfed https://fedidb.org/software/pixelfed.

pbronez 5y ago

TinyBeans [0] is the ideal photo sharing app for me & my family. It is totally focused on empowering you to (1) build a chronological feed of good photos and videos and (2) share it with a tightly controlled group of people. TinyBeans really helped my parents stay connected to their grandkids during the COVID lock downs. We're still using it as things open up because it gives me all the goodness of sharing baby pictures with none of the creepiness of social media. As a bonus, it also acts as a traditional photo book, archiving all our family photos in a searchable way. I pay for it, so I know I'm the customer and not the product. It's happier on this version of the internet :) [0] https://tinybeans.com/ https://tinybeans.com/

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

thih9 5y ago

It looks like Instagram is actually not about photography. Meaning that photography enthusiasts are at a disadvantage there. I’m surprised that I’m realizing this just now.

t0bia_s 5y ago

Author need find purpose of taking pictures. If he doing it just for faceless audience, he'll never get into creative process of photography. Finding alternative social network like Twitter for picture sharing is pointless. As pro photographer I personally find out that following other photographers won't help me with improvement, it actually shape my work to mainstream. So only place where I decided to put my work is my personal portfolio. I don't care about hashtags, I don't care about how much people like it or not. I just create what I like and talk about my work with others personally. My mind is much more focused on actual creativity then thinking about how others would like it or not.

seoulmetro 5y ago

Instagram also ruined Photography for me. I've asked countless times in many locations if there is a place for good photography to be exhibited and criticized but most people have no solution. I think Photography (the real kind, with minimal edits and realistic captures) is fading away and this Instagram photography style is replacing it. Fake everything, all the way down. The problem is, most photo sharing platforms are too susceptible to theft of property, or they're too susceptible to very bad quality photography.