Bizarre title I know, but hear me out.
Many of the aviation photography community, myself included, are present on social media. Its a great way of sharing our shots from trips out albeit a day to a full blown trip overseas.. it helps us “connect” to a wider audience than just our mates.
I recently took the opportunity to get a new watermark for my pictures, purely on a whim but I’m thrilled at what was produced.
It sparked a series of thoughts in my mind, to the lengths we goto on social media to try and garner approval from our peers and followers, I use that term loosely as I do not want to sound like a prophet or deity.
When we post shots from our day/visit, I think it fair to say we almost look for approval or a way of validating what we managed to take a picture of. In turn I have seen this cause huge stress to some folks that panic that a picture maybe didn’t do as well as they had hoped or that its like count was way down.
I fell into that trap fairly quickly when I started using instagram during the covid lockdown, I was bored and figured i’d see how I went on social media posting my shots. Before I knew it I was fascinated to watch how a post would fare. Did people like it, which people liked it, was it shared and so on and so on. Then feeling the need to post up to three times a day, thus tripling the effort, time and consequently the stress involved of trying to make a post that not only stands out from what Id posted already but what others post.
Eventually I realised the effort and time involved wasn’t worth the stress, it also relied on the variable and shaky nature of the renowned and possibly(?) flawed algorithm used by the social media platform itself.
So what’s the solution to this? Well ultimately its on the individual to decide. I don’t think there is a wrong answer to it. If you have a compendium or back catalog of shots and the time needed to filter through them, maybe edit them and post them, fair play- have at it.
Similarly, if you don’t feel you have the time and or sometimes frankly the energy to do all that, why should you. Post your shots for you, If you’re proud of the shot and the work you put in to get it, why should you be afraid to post it. There is no instagram jury which decides if your shot is amazing, and trying to appease the masses will surely detract from the fun of taking the picture in the first place.
Keep posting and support each other !
T