Olly Headey Photography
How to create an audience for your photography without social media
There’s an increasing amount of evidence that social media has a detrimental effect on our mental health. Whether you use X, Instagram, Threads, Snapchat or Bluesky, it’s better for your brain if you don’t.
If you’re a keen photographer and want to get your work in front of people, what options do you have if you’ve taken the decision to depart social media?
I’ve been thinking about this question a lot recently, especially in light of recent events with the big players. I like sharing my work, but am I doing it for reasons of ego, like number of follows or likes, or for some better reason?
Ego is probably part of it at some level (we’re all human), but there are more fundamental reasons why sharing your work is important. Sharing is an important part of an artist’s growth journey. It allows you to receive feedback, which can increase confidence in your ability (or motivate you to improve). It can make you feel part of a community, by finding like-minded people who you can join on your journey. It can also be a catalyst for finding new opportunities that you may never have thought you could achieve.
So there are many benefits of sharing, especially if you can find the right outlet – ideally one that doesn’t cause you suffering! Fortunately there are many options out there, and I’ve listed some of the most interesting ones (to me, at least) below.
YouTube
Being Gen X, I was late to the YouTube party. It’s also, sort of, a social media platform but one that feels quite different from Facebook et al so I’m including it in the list. In recent years there’s been an explosion of YouTube content from photographers, young and old. Making videos and being in front of camera isn’t for everyone, but if it’s something you enjoy then it’s a platform that could get you work in front of a huge (and younger) audience.
Flickr
Flickr is the OG of “web 2.0” photo sharing. I joined Flickr in 2005! I loved it, but it lost its way. It was acquired by SmugMug in 2018 but nothing much seems to have happened since then. It’s very much the same user experience as it always was, which isn’t a bad thing, but unfortunately it’s now an online ghost town. Maybe it’s due a renaissance? I’d like that!
Glass
Glass is an independent, paid-for ($40/yr right now) platform aimed at photographers. It’s fairly slick with some decent features. It does seem geared towards creating an online portfolio, but I’m not an active user so perhaps there’s a lot more to it. $40/yr feels like a reasonable price to pay for an independent service, especially if you get a lot out of? That’s certainly a lot cheaper than Squarespace.
Check out this example page. I think it looks great! I also really like that you can search photos by camera type, or lens – this might be very useful next time you’re looking to buy some new year and want to see some real sample photos.
I could see myself using Glass. I think this depends on how Foto progresses though, speaking of which…
Foto
Foto is another independent app aimed at photographers. Their goal seems to be to build a new Instagram, like it used to be before Reels and ‘The Algorithm’. And also without filters (although maybe they should change their stance on this - filters are great!). It’s not yet publicly available but will be soon, but they have managed to get 10,000 people on iOS alone using the beta (I’m one of them) which is very impressive. They’re clearly doing something right.
It’s actually very similar to Glass, yet some way behind in terms of features and usability. It’s a tiny, bootstrapped team who seem very dedicated, and it’s clear where they’re going. I’m a fan, and I actually ponied up $50 for an annual subscription to help support the development of the product. Writing this, I’m not sure why I went with Foto over Glass. I guess it’s just a vibe thing – I get better vibes from Foto for some reason.
I can’t share my page because they haven’t yet developed a web version yet, although that’s coming this year. My username is @olly if you happen to be on there.
Refrakt
Refrakt, like Glass and Foto, is an independent app but a web-based one (as opposed to native apps you download from the App Store or Play Store). It’s pretty slick, especailly considering it’s actually a side project run by Sam King. Not being a full time, team endeavour might have an detrimental impact on potential audience size and longevity of the platform, but that’s just a hunch.
500px
500px has been around for a long while now. It’s a bit like Flickr (you can like and comment on photos), but it’s also a bit like Unsplash because you it allows you to license your photos. Perhaps this is more geared towards professionals? It just feels so… busy, and it lacks any sense of personality or warmth. It leaves me cold, basically.
Your own website
If you want a portfolio site to showcase your work, why not run your own website on a domain name that you own (like this one!)? There are many ways to do this, some cheap (or even free), others more expensive. It depends on what you want your site to be.
If you watch any photographers on YouTube, you’ll have had the Squarespace hard sell. I actually started this website on Squarespace and it’s pretty good, but I found it (A) super-expensive after the first year, and (B) a bit too restrictive. Take this with a pinch of salt though – I’m a techie so I’m able to build and run my own sites, which I appreciate not everyone can do. The DIY approach allows me to run this site (portfolio, blog, email newsletter and store) effectively for free – but this is a bit more time consuming, for sure.
A domain name generally costs around $10-20/year and some free options to create a site are Adobe Portfolio (free for Lightroom users) or Canva. There are plenty of paid-for options such as Format but, like Squarespace, these appear to be more geared towards the professional photographer rather than the hobbyist with pricing pushing $100/yr or more. That hurts.
Perhaps a better website option is to create a blog. A blog doesn’t have to be words and articles, you can just post images if you want! There are hundreds of different blogging options out there, some free and some paid. A couple of good examples to call out are Pika and Pagecord. Now, I’m biased because I run it, but I think Pagecord is pretty interesting in this regard because you can post images simply by sending an email, and they’ll appear as a formatted stream of photos kind of like Instagram. People can subscribe to your Pagecord blog via email and they’ll receive a weekly digest of all your posts. You can also attach your own domain name to your site. The cost for this is $20/year which is pretty good considering what you get (but, like I say, I’m biased! You tell me! 😅).
Email won’t go away. It’s an open protocol and everyone has an email address, but how can email be useful for photo sharing?
Easy - newsletters!
Over the past few years email newsletters have gained enormous popularity. A lot of this can be attributed to Substack, which is really popular and there are plenty of photographers using it effectively. It’s not just Substack though, Squarespace does email newsletters (used by the likes of James Popsys or Roman Fox), or you can do it yourself with a freemium option like EmailOctopus which is what I use for my own newsletter.
With all that said, email newsletters might be better for long form content rather than posting daily photos, but maybe I’m wrong!
Hopefully that’s a pretty useful primer if you’re considering ditching the socials and trying something new. There will be many more options, so do tell me what I’ve missed and I’ll update this post.
If you’re going down this ‘anti social media’ path, or even just thinking about it, please do get in touch as I’d love to hear how you’re approaching it.