Captured #02: February 2024

Photographers typically want people to see their work. It’s natural to want to showcase your favourite shots, and it’s rewarding when people say nice things about them. It should motivate you to keep going and improve your craft. This works for me at least.

For many years Instagram has been the go-to place for photographers to showcase their work. While some photographers maintain their own portfolio website (me included), literally every photographer I’ve met, whether that’s a professional (portraits, commercial and whatnot) or a street photographer (funny how we don’t think of street photographers as professionals), is on Instagram.

For all its flaws, Instagram offers a nice, (fairly) simple user experience and it’s easy to discover new photographers. A few years ago Instagram’s focus was on promoting photographers, by which I mean your photos were actively pushed into people’s feeds. If you had followers, they’d see your photo. If you posted a great photo, chances are it would get shared and noticed. Followers would arrive in droves!

These days, not so much. In fact, getting a follower is pretty rare in my experience (unless you pay to boost 💀) and I don’t think this is because people don’t like my photos. The current theory is that Instagram introduced Reels to combat the rise of TikTok, and video is now king. If you’re not posting Reels, forget about traction.

Meta recently launched Threads, but this is essentially a Twitter-clone. It’s a town square for chat rather than a place to create a photography portfolio and share your best work, although ironically the photo experience on there is pretty good and in some ways better than Instagram (it supports 3:2 aspect ratio for a start). Maybe it’s a better photography home these days?

At some level all of this shouldn’t matter. Who cares about followers or likes, just do your thing, right?! Maybe, but I think validation matters. It’s rewarding to know that all those hours spent trawling the streets are resulting in an improvement in your skill, your art. It’s just a shame that Instagram is increasingly not the place to receive this feedback.

If getting your work in front of people and receiving feedback is important to you, where else can you go?

Flickr kickstarted the photography portfolio back in the day but died a death when Instagram came along. It’s still there (it was acquired by SmugMug, but remains largely untouched from what I can tell), but I don’t personally know any photographers who use it. It’s a real shame as it was a really groundbreaking website/app, it just hasn’t moved with the times.

Glass has been around for a few years, but it’s increasingly expensive and, from my limited exploration, it’s a pretty quiet place. It’s certainly a nice UI, but the key thing for any of these apps is traction. Glass doesn’t have that. My view is that unless the product is free (or at least has a freemium option), it will never take off. It also requires a critical mass of people using it, which is a chicken-egg situation that is very hard to overcome. Instagram would have to fall for millions of people to move.

Foto is the newest contender in the ring. It’s a freemium model, but as a bootstrapped company they don’t have the deep pockets of VC-backed alternatives which might hinder them reaching scale. Perhaps they’ll raise money if they can demonstrate early adoption, but traction can only come from photographers willing to put in a fair amount of time and effort to embedding themselves n a brand new community and being committed to it for the long haul. And who, really, is up for that right now?

I had a chance to try out the Foto private beta this week. Its heart is in the right place but the product is very basic (no hashtags, weak search, no customisation). It offers no Instagram import so you have to start with a blank page and re-upload everything, captions included. I fear this is going to be a deal breaker and squander the opportunity.

For a company to succeed in this space, they need to offer a magical experience which makes it super-easy to set up your profile and portfolio, where tens of thousands (millions, even) of people want to be and be seen.

For now I’ll be sticking with Instagram and Threads, for all their flaws.

Photos from February 2024

Although we’re edging towards spring, the February nights are still long. On Tuesday evenings I have a bit of time to kill while on parent taxi duty. I’ve been using this time to walk around the Newington/Meadows/Old Town area of Edinburgh (South Central?!) which is pretty vibrant after dark. I only have around 45 minutes on these walks, so I’m encouraged to move quickly and shoot without dawdling. I like having this constraint, I think it’s pushed me forward and stopped me overthinking.

I haven’t actively done street photography at night in the past, but it’s been really enjoyable. I’ve found locations that you probably wouldn’t consider taking a photo of in the daylight. There’s just something special about the light cast by street lamps, solitary characters moving in the shadows, and neon lights glowing from bars, clubs and restaurants. It is a bit creepy though, no doubt.

Here are some of my favourites from February.

Reading matter

It’s too easy to only use Instagram for photography inspiration. While there’s a wealth of wonderful imagery on there, really inspiring stuff, there’s always a danger that the algorithm doesn’t play in your favour. The more photos you like, the more you’re reinforcing the algorithm to show you the same sort of photos in your feed. This can easily result in a photographic monoculture, like you can see with music in Spotify and movies in Netflix.

I see the effect of this all the time, with desaturated cyan/green cinematic city night shots featuring heavily in my feed. Looking objectively, you can even see the influence of this on my own photography (see above – but admittedly I really do like this filmic style so…).

As a result I’ve been trying to follow a more diverse selection of accounts lately and liking different types of posts to try and train the robots to present me with a better assortment of images. It’s kinda working, but I’m sure most people can’t be bothered doing this.

To counteract this flat uniformity, I’ve started using our wonderful local library to read more photography books and take inspiration from them rather than The Feed. I’m focusing on street photography for now, but it’s such a broad topic there are hundreds of excellent photographers to brush up on. It will take a while! It’s really great to see photos in print rather than on 1080 x 1350 pixels, so I’d encourage you to get out there and support your local library.

Elliot Erwitt - Elliot Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt was an American photographer, born 1928, who I hadn’t heard of before. He’s known for his photos of ironic and absurd situations within everyday settings – a.k.a. classic street photography. This small book is absolutely wonderful, with so many images that make you look twice and think about you’re looking at. These are not purely aesthetic images and they’ve definitely made me want to try my hand at a more candid approach, although I’m well aware this kind of work can take a lifetime.

Side note: Multi-millionaire readers might be interested in Erwitt’s NYC apartment which has just been listed for $11.5m. Or you could snap up his studio for a mere $2.3m.

Craig Whitehead – Find Your Frame

Stephen Shore – American Surfaces

Framelines Magazine - Issue #7

So this isn’t a book from the library, but a magazine from London-based Framelines. It’s beautifully presented and curated, and there’s a cheaper digital issue if you want to save a few quid. I’d say it’s worth paying £16.99 for the print version if you have shelf space though.

Framelines also have a community membership (£5/mo) which gives you access to their Discord chat (it’s rather London-centric) but, more importantly, their monthly photography challenges. The cool thing about these assignments is that they’ll pick a few photos for publication in a future issue, so if you fancy getting your work published in print it could be a good use of £5/mo.

My blog

This month I published a blog post about straight-out-of-camera JPEGs and why I prefer shooting in RAW, including before/after shots. Does this resonate with you?

Viewing gallery

Some Instagram accounts and YouTube videos I’ve enjoyed this month.

• Gareth Llewellyn @withgar takes lovely everyday photos.
• I’m a big fan of Preet’s photos which radiate warmth and sunshine – my kinda thing. He now has a YouTube channel. Check out this chill photography stroll.
• Paulie B is a NYC street photographer who does occasional “walkie talkie” videos of other NYC street photographers. This one with Kat Ku is great.
• Fujifilm X100VI - First Look by Denae & Andrew. I’m not in the market for an X100 but this is a great review.

Listen Up

An Edinburgh Street Photography Meet Up

Listen Up

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Ok, that’s a wrap!

It was longer issue than planned but hopefully there were some nuggets of interest for you. Please do let me know what you think, I do like to get feedback (good or bad!).

As ever, if you know someone who you think would like Captured, please let them know. And if you’re up for sharing it on social media, that would be brilliant! ✨

See you next month 👋📷