For the past few years, many have felt changes to Instagram have moved the platform away from photographers. According to recent comments by Instagram’s CEO, Adam Mosseri, those fears appear well-founded.
If you want your Instagram feed and ability to reach people with your photography to work as it did from 2015 to 2020, sorry, it won’t. According to Mosseri, those days are likely gone forever. Does that mean you can no longer build an audience or presence on Instagram as a photographer? No, of course not. Does it mean that you will have to change your approach and adapt to what the platform is focusing on in order to have a similar impact as others have had in the past? Absolutely.
Evan Ranft breaks down what this shift in direction means for photographers who still want or need to use the platform to showcase their work and connect with current and future clients. He details his thoughts on how and why this is important and provides a five-step process to help anyone create content that will get attention going forward.
Ranft begins with a critical first step: move on. Change is almost always difficult, especially when you have no say in the matter. While we can debate whether or not these changes are good, the bottom line is that they exist, so it’s best to accept them and move on. He then discusses what he sees as the main driver of these shifts: artificial intelligence. The rise of AI-generated content has cast doubt on the originality of final, well-edited images. Too many people question the authenticity of what they see now, and Instagram recognizes that as a problem. That doesn’t mean your work should look amateurish; rather, it means it’s important to show your authenticity.
For Ranft, the key to being authentic with your audience is telling your story — the story of how you created an image, how you edited an image, or your process. You can include these stories with your finished work to align with what Instagram is trying to promote, while also working for you. To him, the easiest way for photographers to be authentic and prosper on Instagram today is with Reels. He discusses several ways to do this, regardless of the equipment you have available, and shows his process of shooting and editing an Instagram Reel.
Ranft provides a framework that any photographer can adapt. It is up to you to determine how much work you want to put into the final product, but even basic behind-the-scenes storytelling can be valuable for showing people your story and why they should pay attention. This approach could be the difference between your posts being prioritized by Instagram and put in front of potential clients or not being seen at all.