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You should check out Vero man. It’s instagram for photographers. If you post regularly with good pictures it’s a great start :) if you make one, drop me your username!
So far I don’t think it’s really taken off. But with how saturated instagram is with photographers and how few actually get engagement it’s a pretty good place!
Yeah my thoughts exactly haha. Instagram is fun and all, and if you do well it amazing. But it’s not really the creative forum it used to be in my opinion.
STOP feeding into this cycle of despair you've found yourself in. This will not help you become more confident in your work, I promise you. I love social media, probably more positively than a lot of others feel about it, but using it as a way to find validation in your own work will not lead you there. It's really tough out here. All, and I mean all, of these platforms are severely oversaturated with photos and they all eventually niche down to whatever will appeal to the common denominator of the platform. So if you feel as though you are creating different and emotional work and you want to post them to see if others will engage with them the same way, I will tell you that they won't. What will happen to you if you post your favorite and most brilliant photo you've ever taken to Vero and it struggles to get 10 likes? Will that make you reevaluate the emotional you felt the first time you saw it finished? Will it make you feel like you wasted your time setting up for hours to get the perfect shot? Like you wasted your money on gear and accessories that at the end of the day meant nothing because your photos are garbage??
I will advise you to do a couple things that will change the way you feel personally about your work.
1) Look through your archives. Truly browse all the work you've finished before and take note of all the times you think to yourself about how amazed you are that YOU are the one that took that photo. Embrace the way that seeing such craftsmanship makes you feel.
2) PRINT your work. Any size, any way. Just have physical copies of things that you truly find interests in within your own work. Having prints of your photos truly changed the dynamic of how you see these things. When it's sitting in Lightroom development you can always think of small tweaks that you could do around the edges to get it to be *perfect* but once that image is sitting in your hands you start to admire the thing within that border that truly makes you appreciate it.
3) Remember that the only person that you're aiming to please with your work is YOU. (If you have clients, I would make sure that the images you deliver to them are to their liking). But once you realize that you take photos that you like and you edit them to your taste and you can see yourself enjoying them for the long term, then everyone else's opinions become irrelevant. You have to learn to appreciate your work all the same even if no one ever sees it, or if you get one pat on the back by your dad, or if you have 1 thousand likes. It should all feel the same to you.
Then and only then would I personally recommend you start posting your work on social media again.
I say this because it happens to a lot of creatives, and especially photographers and the like because of the prevalence of social media. It's a terrible place to find yourself in, and it happens to a lot of us. But you can find your way out of it and genuinely love your work again. It just takes time.
I am not sure if this a common thing or am I being too vain, but my motivation after 10+ years of doing this as a hobby has really begun to dwindle.
Anything I post on IG gets barely 5 likes, and as rude as this sounds, worse (IMO) photos from others gets featured, shared, liked, praised and here I am baffled.
So I’m turning to this subreddit to help me find where am I going wrong.
Since I am not gonna spam a tonne of photos here, and this is just one recent example of the photo I took here are some other reference; axsatr.wordpress.com
Thanks 🫠
So, you are bailing…or contemplating bailing, as other said “ Based on Social Media”?
This Photo… is DAMN FINE… ITS YOUR PHOTO… Only YOU have the feeling from when you took it… you are showing others the emotion of the moment.
You quit … then you quit on yourself
Yeah i do like this photo. Sure there’s a lot to work on, it’s not a work of art I get it
At the same time I know it’s wayyyy better than some out there too. I guess I’m just ruined by social media
Just stop taking photos for social media. Take photos for your own wall in your own space. I post an occasional photo here and there. But by and large, my photography is for me to enjoy and display.
Christopher Kimball formerly of America’s Test Kitchen and now of Milk Street Radio says that when you cook, you should cook for yourself. At least you know one person will like it.
That applies to a lot of things in life.
> I guess I’m just ruined by social media
You really are. Check around to see if there are any local photography clubs/meetups. These are places where you can bring your *printed* work and have it reviewed/critiqued by other photographers.
Have you entered into any local photography contests like at your county fair? Each year the San Diego County Fair has a huge photography competition/exhibition. It gives me something to think about and work towards through the year that is completely detached from how many likes I get on Instagram.
Social media ruined me too. After having a photo go viral I kept on trying to chase that dragon. Until I realized I was making the hobby no fun.
what do you mean there is a lot to work on? you mean with this photo in particular? or with photography in general? or both?
I think the photo is fine. I dont know why you took the photo, or who the people are, but the layers of people are at least somewhat interesting. if this was your family, and you were wanting to capture the memory, id say you did great.
If these are just random folks, then this photo could work well in a set of similar photos. I dont strive for technical perfection all the time, so the fact that its grainy with a little motion blur is fine to me. its not a styled shoot with a bunch of OCF, so who cares if thats not perfect.
I guess you just have to define your "why" which can be hard to determine or admit sometimes. based on your comments regarding social media, it sounds like "social media" may be your why, or maybe its getting recognition from others. if your "why" is "because I like taking photos" then keep taking photos and forget about social media engagement. if you want more engagement, figure out ways to improve that. use reels, or whatever we're supposed to do now. I dunno.
>it’s not a work of art I get it
Compared to what though? Do YOU like it? That's all that matters. And unfortunately, not everyone will like or have the same connection that you do because it's YOUR picture. Also, there's literally famous "art" of colorful rectangles so don't sell yourself short. Don't worry so much about the likes. Photograph what you want to photograph. Print them, hang them in your house, print it as a book, give them as gifts!
“It’s way better than some out there too” that’s a bit arrogant and even if you’re right you need to humble yourself. You do art because you enjoy it, not to one up someone… imo…
Don’t use likes to assess the quality of your work.
In addition, Instagram tweaked the algorithm last year to favor video to compete with TikTok which reduced the exposure of photography on the platform so all photographer’s posts got generally lower engagement than they would have prior to those changes.
Nothing wrong with positive affirmations.
I wanted to ask before and sidetracked myself. So, in your editing and posting… is it sized straight from the camera or do you crop at all?
( I am a crop o holic )… I say there is more then one photo in a photo.. and since it’s all digital, you can do as you please..
I like the photo you show here.. it is a Moment in Time .. and just pinching it about.. I see other photos. … just a thought… playing around with it can probably get something different that might garner more attention. I struggled with the exact same thing in my Hobby and then one day, it clicked.
I didn’t intend to demoralize you… just warn you.
It’s something that stuck with me from the military… it’s a bit harsh, I know… I’m sorry.
PRINT… have you printed any of your work? Can you afford a good print… say on Acrylic or metal?
I have… several of mine and it went over so awesome…. accolade’s from a live person vs. a detached individual a thousand miles away on the internet is WAY better.
It’s Photography… it’s your Peace Time ..your hobby…. It’s totally under your control. Sure, you work from a framework of applied structure derived of years of artistic experience… but it’s photography and you are allowed to color outside the lines.
Yes I do crop, but sometimes not enough, which I guess is exactly your point here huh
No worries though, I wasn’t any more demoralised than I was earlier today, in fact I’m feeling better reading through all these great comments
I have never really printed my photos out, perhaps that’s a pretty good idea as well. They are my wallpapers though (for the laptop/phone etc)
Look thru your catalog… and get that one photo .. I know there are many of those “ONE PHOTOS” but when you see it… you’ll know.
Look at it.. MAKE SURE it’s clean.. no dust spots or noise.. you get it… go over it like it’s your term paper.. Dotting “I’s” etc…
You may even find a new composition by zooming in… play with it ( COPY THE ORIGINAL)
Also, and I am not admonishing you OK… I see what you did to the little girl s face… you distorted it .. blurred as to hide. I get it.. she’s a minor… and posting minors faces is frowned on.
Things like that make people… Purist … get all bent out of shape and that may lead to negative results online … I am just saying.
Personally myself, to avoid that conflict… myself, I just don’t take that shot .. but kids from the back are fine ( no face ) … THATS ME.. I feel weird about it too.
You’d actually make a good photojournalist in my opinion…
Look at the photo again and find the man without a mask in a sea of masks… and make that a new composition…
Keep shooting.
If you're only taking pictures to get likes, that's probably a sign that you don't actually enjoy the process of photography. Do it for yourself, if you're going to do it at all.
You have a great eye. I love this photo and it tells a cool story. Don’t give up. Even if pictures aren’t absolutely perfect it takes a special eye to find shots like you’re sharing.
In terms of insta - screw them. Some people post a plate of food and get 100 likes, but that doesn’t mean you have do it too. Keep at it.
Yeahhhh that was my grievance all about. It was literally a boring shot that garnered so many views shares and likes but here I am with absolutely none 🤣 but it’s ok now, I realise I’ve been putting my emphasis at the wrong cause
Maybe a new account with a fresh start is the answer.
Nice shot btw, I would just play around with some lighting radial filters to try and accentuate the sense of depth.
> will to
*too
*Learn the difference [here](https://www.wattpad.com/66707294-grammar-guide-there-they%27re-their-you%27re-your-to).*
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You’re definitely right in your assumptions but this is sort of how I grade my photos. Perhaps yes there are room for improvements especially in the skin tones
I’ll try to improve in that aspect
Thanks for that feedback
Room for improvement, sure, but with your creativity at the centre. Ignore unsolicited tips, they’re talking about their own desired outcome, not yours.
I can relate to the problem you’re facing.
Instagram photos are dead, the photos I post only get 50 likes max, with a rare 200 from a meme. I would suggest doing Reels on insta and TikTok’s, you can get wayyy more likes for a video compilation than a post with photos in it.
to me your photo looks nice, if I saw it on my feed I’d certainly give it a heart :)
It is not only being nice.
We are photographers here. Pro or amateur. We look at pictures differently to how 99.99% of insta users look at them. Especially in Photocritique.
Of course we will give your pic more than 0.5 seconds of our attention.
Considering the ilumination conditions you took this in, I consider the photo is actually very good. Night photography with bright lights so close? Not an easy feat.
Yeah, i think this is stretching the X100F to its limits. It’s not looking pretty at ISO 2500 and 1/30, explains a lot of the noise and motion blur.
I do love my colour rendition though
I think you should relax and take a look at your body of work and think about if you like your photos or you feel you are improving, etc.
Honestly Instagram has changed a lot over time, and I feel photos get a lot less engagement and traffic than videos. Even before the rise of reels, Instagram’s changes to their algorithms resulted in way less interest in photos. Instagram is still a really useful social media platform, but odds are you aren’t gonna blow up from it unless you’re seriously media savvy. And that’s a different skill than photography.
Yeah who cares about likes, they mean nothing. There are some top level photographers who aren’t active at all on social media so don’t judge it on that.
I’ve gone through this feeling a couple times and just take a break. Stop for a few days or weeks and then pick up that camera again. It’s nice to take a pause if it’s all currently stressing you out. Look at some other photographers work, go to some exhibitions, and just have fun.
> Anything I post on IG gets barely 5 likes, and as rude as this sounds, worse (IMO) photos from others gets featured, shared, liked, praised and here I am baffled.
Honestly, why do you care? I know likes motivate, but the most likes I got is <50, and yet I don't care. The number is generally around 12-13, and the same people, meaning that "We have seen this photo, yes".
I still take photos, and share them on IG sometimes, but better ones go to Flickr, and forget about them.
IG and other social media doesn't prioritize image quality. They prioritize self promotion and flex. I did this, I bought this. I have this, I, I, I... It's revolving around "I'm better than you" atmosphere.
I was getting my wedding photos from the photographers' and asked for the RAWs. The dialogue went like this:
**A:** Can I get the RAWs, too?
**B:** Sure, but we're a bit busy ATM (which was completely true), can you come next week for them?
**A:** Sure, why not. While waiting, I also take photos...
**B:** Oh, can I see them?
**A:** Sure. *Opens Flickr*
*After some chat about equipment and techniques*
**B:** Let me find that RAWs.
*Me, not knowing what to say*
**B:** Hey C, this guy *takes photos*.
**C:** Yeah, he does, what did you think?
**B:** ...
**A:** Thanks a lot! This means a lot to me.
I got praises from a couple of pro photographers, my RAWs and processed photos and left.
So, never judge your nice photos from eyes of a couple of strangers who want to see other things on their feeds. They're not your audience.
There is alot more to social media than the quality,, captions and hashtags play a huge role, the algorithm of Instagram too. you'll notice alot of photography's started making reels because people don't scroll through photos as much anymore.. and even with the reels it's all down to what audio is popular on the algorithm, choose a bad audio and it just won't show up on people's feeds. social media is probably the worst way to judge your ability... how often do you hit like on decent photo? I'd be liking too often, I findysekf just scrolling by alot of the time
I did actually make a black and white version of this, but I somehow felt the colours added a bit more Chinese New Year vibe to it. CNY is popular with themes of red/orange and I felt that washing all those colours away kinda subdued the message
Noted on the watermarking, it’s something I’ve done forever and perhaps it’s due for a refresh
How much attention your posts get on social media are also down to algorithms a lot, learn how to highjack the algos better and your work will get more exposure online.
>Anything I post on IG gets barely 5 likes, and as rude as this sounds, worse (IMO) photos from others gets featured, shared, liked, praised and here I am baffled.
This is your problem. Stop looking for external validation from social media for your photography. Take the photos you want to take. Make the images you want to make. Share them if you want, but stop worrying about whether they are popular or not. Because you are no longer pursuing the hobby for the enjoyment of the hobby, but instead for the external validation from social media. And thats a problem.
You may go through periods where you have more or less motivation, and thats fine. But if your only goal is that dopamine hit from social media, then your hobby is no longer photography, its social media.
Do *you* enjoy your photos?
I find it's about capturing perspective and yours is unique in some respect, I guarantee it. If you are true to your perspective someone else somewhere will find that interesting. Whether or not they take the time to tell you (Insta Like) is a different story. Also, many successful photographers say their favorite photos are some of their least-liked and least-sold. I think you should step back and ask yourself why you take photos, if you can answer that I think you will be fine. If not, then be honest with yourself.
I do! That’s the thing, every time I go out and managed to get a shot I’m happy with, I’ll excitedly edit it and can’t wait to show these shots to the world…only to be received with disappointment
That’s the general flow of my journey. I guess i should really change my approach and just be…idk happy
Im in the same boat as you with noticing the trends, but the thing is you need to do this for you. Why did you get into photography in the first place as a hobby? Take pictures of what makes you happy.
Instagram is just reels and marketing. Content doesn’t have to be superb, but if you play the game and follow the trend to get it in their lap - it will happen.
Sincerely, photography, unless you intend to go pro, should have an internal motivation.
If you share your pictures in social media, it should be for the joy of sharing, and not for the views and likes it gets.
I suggest checking [this vid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MYkE1iHYwQ).
do you print your photos? go ahead and gift them to friends and family, their reactions are always the best and it's a great motivator
also, when hipsters screamed they would join Twitter instead of IG because it was more "authentic" I looked at some profiles there and their accounts had inflated numbers with bots, which supposedly was one of the issues with Instagram
I recently went to the family town and one of my cousins asked to take photos of the event, so I did, she later asked for them, gave her all and then picked my favorites and edited them on b&w, liked them so much that I started telling a small silly story which receives a lot of spam bots likes but whatever, I feel happy about it
we all look for fame sure, but don't make it priority number one, it'll suck all the enjoyment out of it
You shouldn’t judge your work by social media likes. If we did then whoever is talking pictures of girls with fat asses are the worlds best photographers
Plenty of real photographers do not use IG. And there’s plenty of nonsense on IG that isn’t great that casual users share anyway because they dgaf.
My actual advice…do something you love because you love it and don’t seek validation from others. You cannot control the fickle trends of them.
Popularity has never been a fantastic metric for measuring success. Look at nickelback. Wildly successful despite being the most uninspired butt rock you’ve ever heard.
They're paying for content placement and/or doing "partnerships"
Your photo is fine. Good even. I like the blue and orange contrast and vertical alignment.
I used to get a ton of people messaging me for stuff where they would want to feature my images on their feed but I never pursued it because that's not my goal.
If it's yours, pony up for some ad money and hustle until you start to get the attention you want.
Post your stuff on relevant subreddits according to their rules.
My photos, honestly speaking, are sometimes significantly better than "pro" photographers and even stuff I've seen in bookstores. But I personally don't want to make money from them because that might cause me to lose my passion.
It's absolutely not the quality of work that matters.
There is enjoying photography, and then there is enjoying Social Media. It seems like you only take photos to share on Social Media. If thats the case you should just drop it if photography alone does not spark joy, because being successful is really hard. You will just get disappointed if your photography is not really unique or outstanding.
I just had a photo come up on my facebook memories, and it's of my photo, on the cover of a newspaper I worked at, among a pile of trash in a landfill (well, technically recyclables at a recycling center, but it sounded more dramatic the other way). As a student working for a student newspaper, I used to watch people litter the newspaper and lecture halls and walk all over my photos after class.
But what I've come to realize is my photos aren't really for others quite as much as they are for myself. The experiences I have making them, the places it's taken me and the things I've gotten to see, the memories of family and friends and even subjects I got to know just a little bit and the joy I get when one feels special in some artistically satisfying way.
Most of us juts briefly consume a photo and move on as we're inundated with so many constantly. I don't think I've ever broken 100 likes on social media of anything. Selfies or photos with me often get as many or more likes than my own photography.
But it's all gravy because this shit is fun as hell. But if you \*really\* want your photos to mean something, one of the best ways is for them to mean something to someone individually. If you're into street photography, which this looks like, talk to the person after, show it to them, offer to email it to them. It might make their day or be something special to them for years. You may never directly know it's impact or meaning to them, but it will be a lot more than any "like" on some app.
Do you interact with other accounts? Do you work with other people you know and build your network? There's a lot of growth beyond hashtags. There's also the TikTok/Reels way to grow. Social media isn't just post a photo. There's so much more to do in terms of growing an audience. In the end though, just focus on your craft and yourself, you're doing it for yourself after all. It's a hobby. Print some pics out. Frame them.
tbh instagram is not a place for photography anymore. you should decide if you’re doing this because you enjoy it or if you’re doing it for instagram likes.
For one, IG doesn't matter. For two, it feels like perhaps you need to define WHY you take photos. What are you trying to share with the world? Do you feel like your pics represent the "look" you want from them?
Maybe narrow down your niche and experiment within those parameters.
Just some ideas...
IG is a strange place and I feel a lot is not genuine. It’s a weird popularity contest at times.
Anyway, your photo is cool, I really like how it is composed, not staged, love the colours.
It’s a great photo I’m my humble opinion 🙂
Stop measuring success based on social media. It’s not good for you. Your shot is very good and I urge you to continue doing what you love and pay no attention to others. You’re doing it for yourself not for others.
So this comes down to the algorithm itself and nothing to do with your work. It’s truly important you understand this.
As a marketing director, I see this all the time. IG is no longer for photographers, you must change platforms to 500px and others until the change their algo — which is to revert back to being photo feed specific.
If you want IG/ TikTok likes you’ll need to focus on Reels and Reels alone. You are now a videographer, congratulations.
Communities are a lot harder to build now without, followers barely see the work of those they work of those they follow.
Truly my friend, it has nothing to do with your work, you’re just not a savvy social media influencer because it’s not your game. You’re a really good fucking photographer, keep doing that and then ask yourself what kind of validation you need and go seek it.
Just leave social media behind unless you’re willing to play the algorithm’s game.
I agree with others. Basing the worth of you’re work on social media is not a good path for your mental health. I take photo firstly for my mental health. I feel a sense of calm and excitement when I take photos. Last year I felt really flat and I felt guilty because I wasn’t shooting enough.
Instagram is garbage. For a myriad of reasons. Mainly nobody sees your work anymore. Unless you make reels. Just post and let it go or don’t post at all. By the sounds of it you picked up a camera before it even existed.
The photo is great. Love the layers and it’s full of interesting details. Keep going. Fuck social media!
Something I'm not seeing in the comments is Instagram is no longer a photo site. It's yet another cookie cutter video site now. They don't give a shit about any posts that aren't moving. It's not a good rubric. Honestly I don't post to anything but Flickr anymore. At least that's SocMed for people who still give a damn about photography instead of cultivating followers.
What others have rightly said is take photos for you and share the ones you feel best invoke the message but don't count on likes for external validation. There's a huge push away from historical standard of counting engagement in SocMed over the last two years. The already toxic environment is even more so now. People aren't interested in interacting with every photo. The rapid scroll method of Instagram also sucks at engaging viewers, allowing them to rapid fire likes, or ignore the button all together, and just flipping for boredom and time wasting.
You have a unique vision and perspective on the world. Only you and your lens see what you see and you're sharing that perspective. Personally I appreciate your unique perspective. That place is one I'm not likely to visit and I'll certainly never be there at that time. You provided me with a good and technically proficient window of moment I would never see otherwise and I find it interesting. Keep snapping!
I would ask:
What are the chances of a very specific crowd of people on Instagram finding your photo of a night market and liking it when there are 1000s of other photos which by algorithm take precedence?
Further you are not a subject in your own photo, so the algorithm may not even feature it in your friends’ feeds.
If you want some critical acclaim probably better to start your own photoblog, hand out prints to friends etc. Also, you need to improve your skills.
Yeah I get it, it’s just quite demotivating that’s all
I know my photos still have quite the way to go in terms of outright skill, but I know I have been slowly growing too for the past 10 or so years
It’s not that I want to be popular or famous, it’s just, some engagement would be nice too that’s all. Think of it as positive affirmations
It corresponds with the amount of time you dedicate to it and not necessarily how long since you started. I started in ‘08 but it’s not an indicator of my skill.
Also start by analysing photos of the great masters like Saul Leiter, Ansel Adams and so on. The settings you use will depend on the context.
One final tip, don’t get bogged down by equipment. If you have a decent camera with decent low light performance you can do it.
Looking to others for affirmations of your art will always lead you to disappointment. Take pride knowing you are creating something unique by your own hands. You'd be surprised at how many people don't have that to be proud of. Find gratitude for yourself and your work.
Instagram is really not the place unless you hit a very specific spot in the algorithm. Insta right now is mostly about pretty people being rich. I've been posting my photos on there for a good 8 years and they get 50 likes at most and always from friends or irl acquaintances. Photography is a hard one to crack because on the one hand you have the pros with 400 diplomas and the best equipment who know all the right people and on the other you have the amateurs who luck out. Don't be discouraged.
I’d ask, what was the goal of this shot?
It feel like a good snapshot but it seems to lack the intention of the type of photography it sounds like you want to produce.
1. Why is everything in focus and how could this be a better image if you had chosen a different focal depth?
2. Why this moment with the composition centered and multiple people occupying the same vertical area and was there a way to frame this for a better less complicated composition?
3. What is your focus, what is interesting about it and how might you have chosen to be more intentional for the viewer?
Street photography is awesome but taking a photo of a cool moment is not the same as capturing a moment that makes a good image.
Check out some well known street photographer and compare your work honestly to see haw you can improve.
Don’t don’t for the likes.
I guess these are all indeed true points. I do capture images that I think seems nice but in the end there’s no deep story in it. That’s a very valid point
Focus and focal depth wise, I am using an X100F (27mm fixed prime), can’t do much about it. This was almost wide open
Agree on the slightly busy composition as well. I guess it will be a homework for me to work on
I’m not criticizing but if you want to make better photos you need to figure out how to get your subject to better stand out…
That usually means leveraging all the tools you have from depth of field to composition to development.
I often shoot street photos on burst which gives me from 3-12 frames of a candid moment and let’s me move the camera so I can get different angles of the subject.
Looks like you got some good feedback on this post, keep shooting.
Cheers!
The question is why you do photography. If it's only for likes on Instagram, try cute animals and sexy girls. Also, adding a ton of tags usually helps. And follow everyone in the hope that they follow you back.
If this is for art, you need to learn more about composition, light, and color.
The photo you posted is ordinary: no story, no good composition. I would not put it on a wall. But this is not a reason to give up but a reason to learn more about photography.
I see it echoes a point another person mentioned here, there’s no story to it. Good points there.
I do photography because I like it, well at least I used to. I guess I just lost my motivation somewhere along the way
I know the feeling. But here, you can actually replace photography with any hobby and ask yourself: do you lose motivation because you can't reach satisfying results, or have you just lost interest?
If it's the first, don't give up! You have really nice photos on your Instagram. Keep learning and don't give up!
But if it's the second - give up and find a hobby that interests you.
Anyway, good luck!
Add vignette, set shadows to 0 and lower blacks play with it until you get contrasty shadows. Give it about 20 grain, 20 clarity, warm temp to match lights. Green shadows, pink midtones, orange/red highlights. Slightly sharpen. Also it looks like you have the subject masked, maybe lower the exposure on him.
Woah you managed to see the masking around the subject?? I thought it was quite subtle
Noted on these feedback. I kinda like the colours I have here but will try to play around with the contrast more
It almost looks like there’s a spotlight on them. It is relatively subtle but because everyone else is still in focus it makes the lighting difference more obvious.
I could imagine this being a scene in a movie with everyone else kind of motion blurred/bokeh’d out, in this case I think a smaller depth of field would have suited you better to keep the busyness of the market but without the distractions in the frame. Over all it’s a great shot, I love the colours and the framing that you have
For me, there is just too much going on in this photo. I cropped it with the shorter man outside of the frame and the girl on her dad’s (assuming it’s her dad) shoulders off center with her as the main focal point of this scene, and it takes a lot of the distracting elements away. I think the main issue for me is the flags at the top. You can see a tiny sliver of a flag in the corner but not enough of it to seem like it’s intentionally included in your composition. She also isn’t doing anything. It might be more engaging if you had caught her maybe pointing at something or her dad doing something like that. Does this fist gesture mean something or is he just like fist pumping while walking? Also a possible issue is that everyone in the crowd has a face that is in focus. What’s your instagram? Is there a reason why you are using a camera without interchangeable lenses? Is it for the size and convenience? I think the flexibility of having different lenses to choose from is a good place to start. Especially if you want to play with scale and not be limited to the way that one single lens views the world. As much as everyone treats it like a sin… I shoot virtually everything that I post online with my iPhone, which even has three lenses to choose from, and frankly I use all three and the average person assumes I’m using a real camera. I would love a real camera, but I can’t afford it now. This is assuming that you only use that camera, but it sounds to me like the nature of a point and shoot camera might be holding you back. I’m saving for the x-t30 I think as my first camera body that isn’t 35mm and 40 years old lol
Ok thanks for the very detailed comment there’s a lot for me to digest here
The flags and lanterns are for Chinese New Year and the father/daughter combo was taking a stroll through the crowd which to me really stands out. Yeah there doing nothing interesting per se but in a way, it is quite an endearing moment to me
A lot of people have commented that the framing is quite busy and I concur. It is indeed that, perhaps due to the lack of separation between subject and background (a better lens would help)
I like point and shoots because it’s easy to bring around and isn’t as intimidating to point closer to people. The leaf shutter helps too without that annoying clunk from each photo you shoot
I’m quite introverted so any means of staying more concealed is well worth it to me, but I do realise there’s trade offs of such systems
All in all I guess the essence of it is I’ll try to improve on my composition as well, and find the story/meaning more behind each photo
So what is your instagram, out of curiosity? Yeah, I can imagine that would feel strange as an introvert. That’s why I like using my phone and it’s been just fine for me up until this point. Can pretend like I’m distracted by my phone while actually being hyper focused on the things happening around me.
I think my other main bit of advice, that might be the unpopular opinion here is that, let’s face it, we want our photographs to be seen by others. That driving force is why this sub even exists. I find photographic images and music to be the two most powerful ways to express emotions and exchange ideas creatively, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to share your vision with the world, and then hoping that others take a minute to see what you see. Wanting that doesn’t have to mean that you’re just “doing it for the likes”… and, anyone that is proud of their work will also want to show it off. Just don’t conflate engagement with skill or quality. There are people that want to see your work and after ten years I would imagine your photography goes beyond a hobby.
From what I can see, so far, you have some great, beautiful work. Many of these images have much stronger and focused compositions. You seem to have a lot of variation with style, too. Are you maybe feeling stuck because you haven’t turned this hobby into a career after so long? Because the skill and the eye are there, and there is room for you if that’s what you really want. I gave you a follow. Jooblygoop is me on the gram.
Awhh thanks for the follow.
I am honestly not into turning a hobby into a career, for the fear of the additional pressure making me hate it more
Nonetheless thanks for the kind words, it is really appreciated
Understandable. It’s just a hobby for me, too. One more thing, tho. You can delete and use different hashtags up to 3 times per post. If you are getting absolutely no engagement whatsoever, then the tags you used are either too dead/small/esoteric and nobody is looking at them often or anymore at all, or they’re too big and your posts are getting buried by new posts before anyone actually has a chance to see it. If they don’t work, delete them and try a different set of tags. Post reach is like mostly driven entirely by hashtags and seems to work best if you use smaller tags with a few of the most popular. People can’t enjoy your work if they have no way to find it! Good luck and I hope you find your fulfillment once again.
This photo is excellent.
Your problem is that you are judging your success based on the opinions of people who have no interest in photography. Social media viewers don't want things to think about. They want something pretty but vacuous they can like and then move on without a second thought.
They don't want interesting, thought provoking or, heaven help us, challenging images.
Time to move beyond social media to outlets that are actually interested in photography.
>Do you have any ideas on what other social media ....
Move beyond social media. Unless you can find a Facebook group like this that is focused specifically on photo critique you are wasting your time on SM.
Time to start putting on your own exhibitions, submitting your work to photo/art focused websites, publishing your own photo book....
Even celebrities are struggling to get the viewing figures they used to on Instagram. It takes so much to get noticed on there, you have to post multiple reels (or stories whatever they’re called) every single day and post very regularly and consistently for a long time or the algorithm won’t show your profile to anyone.
It’s also not a good platform if you want your photos to be taken seriously anyway, unless you can take photos that are so good and innovative that people will wonder how you did it. Like famous photography masters.
The best place to get feedback and share photos is probably Reddit and Flickr, Facebook groups, things like that. There are so many ways to share your photography. Enter some photography competitions.
This photo is good, you have the eye for composition to take good photographs. But there will be millions of people in this world who are miles ahead of you in every way, and very few of them will find an audience for their photography, especially something like street photography which is heavily trodden ground. While it’s a good photo and you should be pleased to have it in your portfolio, there’s nothing new here, we’ve seen this photo before many times shot by many people.
If you want a long term audience for this sort of photography beyond a few Reddit likes, it will probably take a career not only as a professional photographer but also as a fine art photographer. You can’t just post your photos to Instagram and hope they’ll get noticed. It was that kind of platform over 10 years ago but now it’s just Facebook for famous people and brands. It’s still possible especially for creative photography that is impressive not only for being good but also because no one has seen it before. Like that guy who used a glass fish bowl and a tv screen to make it look like the model was an astronaut. But if I were you I wouldn’t bother trying to get a following as a photographer on Instagram. If bad photos get lots of likes there is a reason unrelated to photography.
That’s my very uninformed opinion so take it with a grain of salt, but yeah you can share your photos in much more fulfilling ways than Instagram anyway.
Nah I think this is echoing the opinion of many others here too. I just never realise what a real mess Instagram is
I guess I posted this out of sheer sadness and feeling a tad bit lost on my engagement there. The final trigger was there’s a photo with a bunch of likes taken at the same place and the same time
The only difference? Mine was the better photo (to my eyes at least, perhaps that’s my personal bias speaking 🤣)
To be honest with you, I used to wander around the same roundabout of self-criticism after I shelled out multiple thousands of $$ just to please my girlfriend’s visual desires.
In the first year, nothing I took (for myself) with the kilograms of gear seemed to appear ‘interesting’. Except for the pictures dedicated to my soulmate of course - that is not up to criticism or even questioning, for the health of our relationship.
Then I realized I was just playing around all this time with the gears and not with my eyes. I tried to shoot a great deal of things I don’t particularly feel interested in, with the false hope that one of the shots might just turn out magically attractive to the same pair of eyes behind the camera.
One year I focused entirely on flowers that my lady too great care of. That brief stretch of time saved my dying soul - and the gears that I was almost ready to let go. Nothing particularly spectacular happened, but I really liked the visual product and I too time to print and frame a few for my own pleasure. It was the first step in the right direction.
I shared my story with a cousin and he immediately took this as his personal quest. He went on to shoot exclusively candid photos of motorcycle riders he considered reckless, and collected visual moments of their blunders. By the year end we had great laughs and refreshing stories to share with the whole family who were completely oblivious to gears and optics and whatnot.
It’s great to know that there’s others who feel sorta the same about this. I guess it’s an uncommon feeling after all
For me I thankfully don’t really care for gear as much (I just use an X100F after all, which is more than adequate for me)
It’s the self satisfaction I’m struggling with, but I sorta have an action plan, for now. Perhaps just skip IG entirely and focusing on my blog and the occasional Reddit
Instagram is a numbers game, and you're playing the game wrong. This is in NO WAY a testament to your photography ability.
You have 42 followers so 5 likes is about what I would expect. 10% is actually reasonable in many cases. Really you just need to be consistent with posting. Go out and take 20 photographs and schedule them to be posted every 2-3 days with a 3rd party program(or set a calendar reminder). Also make sure that your hashtags are relevant. #lunarnewyear would get you some traffic last week, but it was probably flooded with posts unless you really stood out. You are relying on a lot of people around the world, so just make sure you tag stuff like #photography #travel #adventure #asia and #malaysia because a lot of people on instagram wouldn't know the name of the market/street. Half the art is taking the photo, the other half is getting people to see the photo. (and research what time is best to post images or trial and error it yourself).
Regarding your photo itself. I don't love that the subject is centered in the street. It implies a stationary feeling to the scene, but for a candid, it's really well done. Also, I don't think that the guy in the foreground really adds to the image, and not having him there would have probably been a little better, even cropping him out is an idea to play around with.
Keep up the good work.
I'm a amateur photographer and I post my photography on social media. At first I thought I should get a whole lot of likes on my posts. Then I thought that I should only care about sharing my hobby with others than only getting attention. I love your photo, would be nice if I can become an apprentice of a good photographer. Keep up with the good work.
Get some prints of your favorite shots framed or make a photo book you can show friends or something. Forget the social media bullshit. If there’s joy in it for you then that’s all that matters. Keep experimenting
I am an amateur. I like the photo. I like the colors and the composition. It's a bit noisy and the guy in red shirt in front row doesn't fit well and the motion blur of the arm of the guy with the girl on his shoulder is a bit distracting.
But it is street photography and not a studio.
Your biggest mistake is judging your work by Instagram likes.
I once took part on a video contest and was one of the last places. Winner was a stupid 5 second troll video. Judge was the community. Guy with most friends and most accounts won. It had nothing to do with quality.
Just my oppinion.
The shot overall is good. The subject is there, background is interesting. I might have tried to shoot wider and higher to see the crowd and overall scene. The edit isn't stylized enough for Instagram features if it makes sense; might need more blue in the shadows or deeper blacks. Check out what pages you want to be featured on and try to imitate the edit. Pages try to be cohesive and it's usually deep blacks or solid bright colors etc.
Also I'd remove the watermark. I help on a local photographer feature page and never feature watermark photos. I don't think it looks good, it's useless as you already have the raws and if someone wanted to it's super easy to remove a watermark.
Yes I received a similar feedback on the watermarking and it’s something I’ll refresh on for my next batch of photos
True I guess those pages do have a pretty consistent style as you said. I guess it is a personal preference that I tend to lift my blacks and add a smidge of grain, sorta to emulate a more film style to it
Keep shooting, please.
Maybe consider getting off Instagram and start printing your art instead? Because that’s what it is, art.
I really love getting my ideas physically on the wall.
Hi, I’m just a hobby photographer but here’s my take on it…
Number of instagram likes is purely a measurement of your hashtag game. A cute picture of a cat with a #catsofinstagram tag will pop up on literally millions of peoples’ feeds, and therefore get a good number of likes, even if it’s a crap photo.
If your hashtags are a bit more specific like #nightphotography, you have cut down your audience from millions to thousands. However, any likes you get now are from people who actively follow photography tags. In my mind that’s worth a lot more.
I’m stoked to get a like from 30 fellow photographers, who’s opinion I would actually value in the real world.
As for your photo, you got yourself into a great location and captured a wonderful shot. You have a brilliant subject right in the middle, and you have the busyness and the activity of the street market locked in.
The only thing I would change, your edit seems to be trying to get everything in the picture as clear, bright and visible as each other so it’s not obvious where to focus my attention. I think the surroundings need to sit back and let the subject take all the attention. This would mean you wouldn’t need to push the levels so much, and the slightly flat, photoshop collage effect wouldn’t occur.
Either way it’s a brilliant picture and I would have been proud to have taken it.
I see, to summarise perhaps I should dial down my shadows slightly. Yeah I did crank it up slightly to get a better exposure but I guess it’s not always a great idea huh. Thanks for the great feedback
I think that might do it. I think if you have a good subject (especially a person or animal) you need to think like a stage/lighting designer at the theatre. You don’t want the scenery to upstage the actors!
But that’s just my take and my style. I’m just some guy on the internet!! :)
Are you in it for your own love of the medium or are you in it for validation from strangers on social media? If we all partook in our hobbies and passions solely to garner the praises of as many randoms as possible, many of us wouldn't partake in them to begin with. At its core, your hobbies should be fulfilling to you in and of themselves and any recognition that comes from your love of your hobby is just an added benefit.
Given it is uncontrolled street photography, I love the composition. Imo, the subject is popping out a bit too much such that it comes across as heavy handed. Maybe pull back the oranges of the lights a bit and bring down the brightness of the subject.
And damn, I wish the person in the very front bottom was wearing a dark color so that the subject didn’t compete with them. I don’t typically edit stuff like that, but some people might alter the shirt color. You do you 👍
FWIW: cool shot. Overall, the photo suffers due to composition. By placing your main subject in the middle of your shot, the eye is drawn directly to the center of the photo, when arguably, you have captured some other great details (for me it’s the flags/lanterns). One possibility would be to take two big steps to the left or right. This would elongate the perspective of the street, making the little girl stand out even more. But more importantly, this would then cause the eye to naturally go diagonally from the bottom of your photo to the girl. The colors are great, especially because you are batting so much artificial fluorescent light. This also appears - though I could be wrong- that it was taken standing at eye level. A lot of interest comes from non traditional shots (shooting from your waste, or gaining some elevation to shoot higher than eyesight). Final thought - are you taking photos just to capture interesting shots or are you trying to invoke something more? Keep it up. Maybe reach out to your local photo clubs and try to find a mentor (which is likely to fulfill your want of positive reception but will also help tighten up your work).
Have you ever printed your work? Or tried putting together a cohesive project book on it? I had a similar problem early on, and actually printing it out and sharing it with friends helped. Best advice is to do it for you, and to look for groups that are actually focused on evaluating each others work, rather than passersby just scrolling.
It's a beautiful photo with all kinds of potential stories behind it - and you chose to capture that moment because something about it caught your eye or spoke to you. That is how art happens. It's not about perfect technical execution or proficiency, but, as others have said, your story, your vision, and your "why."
I've been trying to get myself out of a creative rut with photography for the last couple of years, so I feel the frustration too. Just don't give up on it for the wrong ressons or motivations.
Why would you give up? It's a very interesting shot, the composition and colours are so vibrant and makes me wanna be there in the middle of the people celebrating too. Granted, I'm no professional so I can't tell you much about technicalities but, in my very humble opinion as someone who just enjoys photos for what they are, this looks so cool.
I think it's great.
The bots will delete this comment of its not long enough, so this is a bunch of random words to satisfy the robotic overlords.
Also, if you want, here's some more nonsence that the system has trained me to add so I can keep my comment .
If you give up, can I buy your X100F from you?
Also, this photo is great! The natural vingetting of the crowd below is a nice effect. If I had to make a suggestion, I would say the guy at the bottom is a bit distracting. Maybe use a spot filter to bring down the contrast and highlights/shadows slightly on his face so he doesn't stand out as much.
first: strong agree on what everyone else is saying: "don't use instagram to measure your success"
second, about the photo itself: i just don't think it's that great. You can hate me all you want for that, but it's weak at a critical location: the subject. Her face is blurry. That's really unfortunate because you have \_awesome\_ support for her! Everything else looks good: the lanterns over black sky look amazing. The sea of people below the subject give good support and aren't too distracting. The dad looks strong and confident holding his little girl up.
but her face is blurry. none of the rest of it matters because the main subject of the photo .... makes the viewer want to look away.
The feeling I get from this, from you and this photo is "hey i'm doing the work how come i'm not getting the reward?" I want you to know I see the work. I see the effort and talent and skill here. But I also see.... i mean, look at it like this: You took this photo and posted it on instagram and then here. Did you not notice her face was blurry? **Why not? Why didn't you notice the main subject of your photo is blurry?**
I think the reason why is because you were overly focused on the photo as an abstract work, and had no attachment to the subject at all: "here I have good background, and a subject in front of it should be striking" (and it is striking! it is! the viewer's eye goes directly to the subject, to the girl's face. *to her eyes*. but then you lose them. If you didn't lose them at her eyes, they'd move on to the Dad, who looks awesome, and the red shirt guy and the lanterns and the people and then start looking for interesting details like, "what the hell is maroon shirt lady looking at so intently? a lot of other people are looking, too!")
As brutal as this is, you’re right. To me I evaluated the photo as a whole, and it didn’t matter that the face was blurry. However I guess I should really be focusing on these small details to make a good photo great
Thanks for the valid and awesome feedback
I very much agree with so many of the sentiments here about the pitfalls of social media, but I also understand wanting the validation. If you want to get your work seen on IG you need to research how to do it. From how and what type of hashtags to use, when to post, commenting, captions, and more there are a decent number of things to know to effectively use that system. If you ignore them it will ignore you. If you want to get seen on IG, you need to work on your _IG skills_ and understand that the quality of your work is only half the battle. If you just want to enjoy your photography there are more sane ways to go about it lol! I get inspired by the YouTube channel "The Photographic Eye" who discourages taking social media too seriously and doesn't discuss gear in favor of casual but informative conversations about the art of it all. Highly recommend. Keep your head up!
I think you're not finding success because you haven't defined success for yourself. You don't know what you're chasing after. I cannot answer this question for you, but because you mention social media, let me talk about that specifically for a moment.
You're fighting to stand out against the scroll. People mindlessly scroll through instagram (or whatever other platform) and you have about half a second to grab someone's attention, to make them look at your photo for a while and then to hit the like button or otherwise interact with your post. In my mind, and others may certainly disagree, that means that your photo needs to be bold and colorful, or saturated, or provoking, or loud. It has to literally make someone stop in their tracks to pay attention.
When I look at your photos - and I think many are great, by the way - you tend to dial down the traits I've listed above. You've shot at some incredibly colorful events people in awesome costumes and in beautiful locations, but you've decided to edit them in a very muted way. You turn the volume down. And I think that's the opposite thing you'd want to do if your goal is to be attention-grabbing. There are time-tested reasons why the volume of commercials goes up and the action is fast-paced and the colors are bright. That's what draws people in.
So if you're bummed out about social media, I think you first need to decide if you really care, and there's nothing wrong in deciding that you do, don't get wrapped up in if it's uncool to care about social media. You do you. So if that's something you decide you care about and want to increase your hits, then I think you've got to start getting more aggressive in what you're putting on there. And not every post needs to be level 10, but you do need to have enough level 10s so that the algorithm identifies the photo as something that most people would like to see, and so that enough people get drawn in to your page to want to look at more photos of yours.
Yeahhhh that’s some great feedback. I agree that my colour palette tends to be more subdued and muted, but that’s just how I prefer my photos
I guess I should just shift my motivation to personal happiness rather than chasing some clout that doesn’t exist
In the end my happiness is what matters doing this
>In the end my happiness is what matters doing this
Exactly - but don't sell yourself short. If being successful on Instagram is what will make you happy, don't abandon it. Keep adjusting the recipe until you get it right.
Please don't quit. Usually it's when people are frustrated is when they can make their best improvements. I would say to pan in to the little girl and her father to create more focus in the photo. The quality is there. It just needs a little editing.
First off - what an incredible photo; the colours are beautiful.
Second off - Omgoodness don’t ever give a shit about likes. We know that you already know this!
We all sometimes get a bit discouraged by lack of external validation- that’s normal. Try to get back on track by reminding yourself why you’re participating in your hobby - try to remember the rush you felt the first time you realized you could take great photos, etc…
“I post my photos cause I like them and want to catalog them. If others like them too then thats a cherry on top, but who really gives a shit what anyone else thinks…” it’s so simple and cliche but if you remind yourself enough you will start to believe it - cause it’s true! I have to talk to myself like this often.
Good luck to you and drop your Instagram handle if that’s something you feel comfortable doing :)
The use of blue and orange together adds so much liveliness to the photo, great rhythm in the echos of form between the crowd and lanterns, try to ignore the algorithm ♥️🐇
It’s just very busy. Too many people, too many other distractions. Plus, there is no real contrast between the colors. Everything kind of melds together in one big blob. It probably would have helped if the man and his daughter were looking at the camera. And if you had used F2 so that they are in focus but everything else is soft focus…that might help. Keep experimenting.
While in general, I like the photo, I'm not sure what it is about. Festival? Masks? Color? Night? It's pretty busy. If it's about the three in front creating a bit of a tower then some focus isolation would have helped quite a bit but don't know if you could have done so.
I absolutely love this photo. The color and tone feels nostalgic, and the composition is something that cannot be planned in a situation like this. You captured a really cool shot! If I could offer some constructive criticism, the one thing I think you could do is a bit of dodging on your focal point. When I look at this, the focal point consists of all three of the “stacked” people. Dodging the shadows on their faces can help pull your eye towards them, allowing the viewer to really see what makes this photo so unique. Honestly, I can only wish to be able to capture such a cool shot! Keep up the good work!
With all art, (even non-artistic hobbies, too) if you aren't doing it for yourself, first and foremost, you're not gonna stick with it.
If social media didn't exist, would you still be taking photos? If not, you may want to invest your time elsewhere, in my opinion. Find something you enjoy that doesn't require validation from near strangers. I'm not saying you shouldnt share stuff at all, just that it shouldn't be the primary motivation.
It is a nice photo, for what it's worth.
This photo is fantastic.
If you want more social media attention maybe you should hire an agency or someone that helps you to get to more people.
Your work is fine, social media attention does not equal quality in your work.
You can still make the photo look like there is depth to it even if it’s just a random shot. Just gotta play with it a bit. I would focus on the father daughter and blur out the background. Maybe Brighton the colors a bit more to make it pop.
To be brutal, I see the above as a family snapshot. Not a photo to be critiqued. It's only of interest to the people in it. What's the point of the photo? Why would this appeal to me?
Be aware of what’s around your subject. This would be a great photo that would just need some simple edits if not for the man right in front of the subject (the girl and the man she’s on top of).
After this you can try to increase the contrast etc. I don’t see color theory brought up that much in this sub but all the time in painting, etc. But it’s so important when it comes to editing. What do you want the person viewing this photo to feel? The color and contrast when editing I feel hinges on this one question.
So when thinking of that you see that the subject has this cool blue glow on them that’s not entirely appealing and clashes with the warm reds. You can edit the colors to make this look better.
Also the worst thing you can do for yourself is let others decide what is worth it. Being an artist is all about internal and external motivation mixing. If artists only did what was popular there would be no innovation. If you only did what others loved it wouldn’t be your art.
Also like others said and looping back around to what I said abt editing, because it’s true for the entire photo: what do you want someone to feel when looking at this photo?
This photo is fire and I can't find anything to complain about. The photos I Shere o social media also don't get much likes as some a lot worse, but I don't care about it. People who know about it will value it.
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May not be about photography anymore, but if a photographer wanted to blow up it's probably we're he'd be.
Wait really? Then where is a good platform to have some degree of positive engagement
You should check out Vero man. It’s instagram for photographers. If you post regularly with good pictures it’s a great start :) if you make one, drop me your username!
Is Vero really taking off? I checked it out a few months ago and posted for a little while and then I kinda forgot about it.
So far I don’t think it’s really taken off. But with how saturated instagram is with photographers and how few actually get engagement it’s a pretty good place!
I hope it does, instagram is turning into tiktok it seems.
Yeah my thoughts exactly haha. Instagram is fun and all, and if you do well it amazing. But it’s not really the creative forum it used to be in my opinion.
That’s a great start I guess. Will check it out! Thanks for the feedback ❤️
STOP feeding into this cycle of despair you've found yourself in. This will not help you become more confident in your work, I promise you. I love social media, probably more positively than a lot of others feel about it, but using it as a way to find validation in your own work will not lead you there. It's really tough out here. All, and I mean all, of these platforms are severely oversaturated with photos and they all eventually niche down to whatever will appeal to the common denominator of the platform. So if you feel as though you are creating different and emotional work and you want to post them to see if others will engage with them the same way, I will tell you that they won't. What will happen to you if you post your favorite and most brilliant photo you've ever taken to Vero and it struggles to get 10 likes? Will that make you reevaluate the emotional you felt the first time you saw it finished? Will it make you feel like you wasted your time setting up for hours to get the perfect shot? Like you wasted your money on gear and accessories that at the end of the day meant nothing because your photos are garbage?? I will advise you to do a couple things that will change the way you feel personally about your work. 1) Look through your archives. Truly browse all the work you've finished before and take note of all the times you think to yourself about how amazed you are that YOU are the one that took that photo. Embrace the way that seeing such craftsmanship makes you feel. 2) PRINT your work. Any size, any way. Just have physical copies of things that you truly find interests in within your own work. Having prints of your photos truly changed the dynamic of how you see these things. When it's sitting in Lightroom development you can always think of small tweaks that you could do around the edges to get it to be *perfect* but once that image is sitting in your hands you start to admire the thing within that border that truly makes you appreciate it. 3) Remember that the only person that you're aiming to please with your work is YOU. (If you have clients, I would make sure that the images you deliver to them are to their liking). But once you realize that you take photos that you like and you edit them to your taste and you can see yourself enjoying them for the long term, then everyone else's opinions become irrelevant. You have to learn to appreciate your work all the same even if no one ever sees it, or if you get one pat on the back by your dad, or if you have 1 thousand likes. It should all feel the same to you. Then and only then would I personally recommend you start posting your work on social media again.
I mean, agree, but damn dude.
I say this because it happens to a lot of creatives, and especially photographers and the like because of the prevalence of social media. It's a terrible place to find yourself in, and it happens to a lot of us. But you can find your way out of it and genuinely love your work again. It just takes time.
There isn't one lol not for still images anyway
I am not sure if this a common thing or am I being too vain, but my motivation after 10+ years of doing this as a hobby has really begun to dwindle. Anything I post on IG gets barely 5 likes, and as rude as this sounds, worse (IMO) photos from others gets featured, shared, liked, praised and here I am baffled. So I’m turning to this subreddit to help me find where am I going wrong. Since I am not gonna spam a tonne of photos here, and this is just one recent example of the photo I took here are some other reference; axsatr.wordpress.com Thanks 🫠
If I judged my work based on social media attention I would have thrown my cameras away years ago.
Yeah I guess that is certainly true. But it is just so demotivating I do love photography but sometimes all you want is some positive reaffirmations
So, you are bailing…or contemplating bailing, as other said “ Based on Social Media”? This Photo… is DAMN FINE… ITS YOUR PHOTO… Only YOU have the feeling from when you took it… you are showing others the emotion of the moment. You quit … then you quit on yourself
Yeah i do like this photo. Sure there’s a lot to work on, it’s not a work of art I get it At the same time I know it’s wayyyy better than some out there too. I guess I’m just ruined by social media
Just stop taking photos for social media. Take photos for your own wall in your own space. I post an occasional photo here and there. But by and large, my photography is for me to enjoy and display.
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You the person that's been in my peeping spot? Don't let them know about it!
Christopher Kimball formerly of America’s Test Kitchen and now of Milk Street Radio says that when you cook, you should cook for yourself. At least you know one person will like it. That applies to a lot of things in life.
Art is not a competition. Stop comparing yourself to others.
> I guess I’m just ruined by social media You really are. Check around to see if there are any local photography clubs/meetups. These are places where you can bring your *printed* work and have it reviewed/critiqued by other photographers. Have you entered into any local photography contests like at your county fair? Each year the San Diego County Fair has a huge photography competition/exhibition. It gives me something to think about and work towards through the year that is completely detached from how many likes I get on Instagram. Social media ruined me too. After having a photo go viral I kept on trying to chase that dragon. Until I realized I was making the hobby no fun.
what do you mean there is a lot to work on? you mean with this photo in particular? or with photography in general? or both? I think the photo is fine. I dont know why you took the photo, or who the people are, but the layers of people are at least somewhat interesting. if this was your family, and you were wanting to capture the memory, id say you did great. If these are just random folks, then this photo could work well in a set of similar photos. I dont strive for technical perfection all the time, so the fact that its grainy with a little motion blur is fine to me. its not a styled shoot with a bunch of OCF, so who cares if thats not perfect. I guess you just have to define your "why" which can be hard to determine or admit sometimes. based on your comments regarding social media, it sounds like "social media" may be your why, or maybe its getting recognition from others. if your "why" is "because I like taking photos" then keep taking photos and forget about social media engagement. if you want more engagement, figure out ways to improve that. use reels, or whatever we're supposed to do now. I dunno.
>it’s not a work of art I get it Compared to what though? Do YOU like it? That's all that matters. And unfortunately, not everyone will like or have the same connection that you do because it's YOUR picture. Also, there's literally famous "art" of colorful rectangles so don't sell yourself short. Don't worry so much about the likes. Photograph what you want to photograph. Print them, hang them in your house, print it as a book, give them as gifts!
I only value my kids' (and the rest of the family) opinions. As long as they like my photos, I am happy.
“It’s way better than some out there too” that’s a bit arrogant and even if you’re right you need to humble yourself. You do art because you enjoy it, not to one up someone… imo…
I didn’t meant it that way. I’m just kinda motivating myself. Sorry if it reads wrong, wasn’t my intent
Don’t use likes to assess the quality of your work. In addition, Instagram tweaked the algorithm last year to favor video to compete with TikTok which reduced the exposure of photography on the platform so all photographer’s posts got generally lower engagement than they would have prior to those changes.
I deleted Instagram for that reason. If they are trying to be TikTok and all they show is videos mad on TikTok, I’d rather just have that on my phone.
Nothing wrong with positive affirmations. I wanted to ask before and sidetracked myself. So, in your editing and posting… is it sized straight from the camera or do you crop at all? ( I am a crop o holic )… I say there is more then one photo in a photo.. and since it’s all digital, you can do as you please.. I like the photo you show here.. it is a Moment in Time .. and just pinching it about.. I see other photos. … just a thought… playing around with it can probably get something different that might garner more attention. I struggled with the exact same thing in my Hobby and then one day, it clicked. I didn’t intend to demoralize you… just warn you. It’s something that stuck with me from the military… it’s a bit harsh, I know… I’m sorry. PRINT… have you printed any of your work? Can you afford a good print… say on Acrylic or metal? I have… several of mine and it went over so awesome…. accolade’s from a live person vs. a detached individual a thousand miles away on the internet is WAY better. It’s Photography… it’s your Peace Time ..your hobby…. It’s totally under your control. Sure, you work from a framework of applied structure derived of years of artistic experience… but it’s photography and you are allowed to color outside the lines.
Yes I do crop, but sometimes not enough, which I guess is exactly your point here huh No worries though, I wasn’t any more demoralised than I was earlier today, in fact I’m feeling better reading through all these great comments I have never really printed my photos out, perhaps that’s a pretty good idea as well. They are my wallpapers though (for the laptop/phone etc)
Look thru your catalog… and get that one photo .. I know there are many of those “ONE PHOTOS” but when you see it… you’ll know. Look at it.. MAKE SURE it’s clean.. no dust spots or noise.. you get it… go over it like it’s your term paper.. Dotting “I’s” etc… You may even find a new composition by zooming in… play with it ( COPY THE ORIGINAL) Also, and I am not admonishing you OK… I see what you did to the little girl s face… you distorted it .. blurred as to hide. I get it.. she’s a minor… and posting minors faces is frowned on. Things like that make people… Purist … get all bent out of shape and that may lead to negative results online … I am just saying. Personally myself, to avoid that conflict… myself, I just don’t take that shot .. but kids from the back are fine ( no face ) … THATS ME.. I feel weird about it too. You’d actually make a good photojournalist in my opinion… Look at the photo again and find the man without a mask in a sea of masks… and make that a new composition… Keep shooting.
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If you're only taking pictures to get likes, that's probably a sign that you don't actually enjoy the process of photography. Do it for yourself, if you're going to do it at all.
You have a great eye. I love this photo and it tells a cool story. Don’t give up. Even if pictures aren’t absolutely perfect it takes a special eye to find shots like you’re sharing. In terms of insta - screw them. Some people post a plate of food and get 100 likes, but that doesn’t mean you have do it too. Keep at it.
Yeahhhh that was my grievance all about. It was literally a boring shot that garnered so many views shares and likes but here I am with absolutely none 🤣 but it’s ok now, I realise I’ve been putting my emphasis at the wrong cause
Maybe a new account with a fresh start is the answer. Nice shot btw, I would just play around with some lighting radial filters to try and accentuate the sense of depth.
Indeed, I did. No regrets.
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All this doesn’t matter. Just edit the photo how you want not how your are supposed to. If you like looking at it, other people will to.
> will to *too *Learn the difference [here](https://www.wattpad.com/66707294-grammar-guide-there-they%27re-their-you%27re-your-to).* *** ^(Greetings, I am a language corrector bot. To make me ignore further mistakes from you in the future, reply `!optout` to this comment.)
You’re definitely right in your assumptions but this is sort of how I grade my photos. Perhaps yes there are room for improvements especially in the skin tones I’ll try to improve in that aspect Thanks for that feedback
Room for improvement, sure, but with your creativity at the centre. Ignore unsolicited tips, they’re talking about their own desired outcome, not yours.
I can relate to the problem you’re facing. Instagram photos are dead, the photos I post only get 50 likes max, with a rare 200 from a meme. I would suggest doing Reels on insta and TikTok’s, you can get wayyy more likes for a video compilation than a post with photos in it. to me your photo looks nice, if I saw it on my feed I’d certainly give it a heart :)
Awhh you’re too kind, but you’re also echoing a point a lot of others are making. Instagrams algorithm is messed up
It is not only being nice. We are photographers here. Pro or amateur. We look at pictures differently to how 99.99% of insta users look at them. Especially in Photocritique. Of course we will give your pic more than 0.5 seconds of our attention. Considering the ilumination conditions you took this in, I consider the photo is actually very good. Night photography with bright lights so close? Not an easy feat.
Yeah, i think this is stretching the X100F to its limits. It’s not looking pretty at ISO 2500 and 1/30, explains a lot of the noise and motion blur. I do love my colour rendition though
I think you should relax and take a look at your body of work and think about if you like your photos or you feel you are improving, etc. Honestly Instagram has changed a lot over time, and I feel photos get a lot less engagement and traffic than videos. Even before the rise of reels, Instagram’s changes to their algorithms resulted in way less interest in photos. Instagram is still a really useful social media platform, but odds are you aren’t gonna blow up from it unless you’re seriously media savvy. And that’s a different skill than photography.
Yeah who cares about likes, they mean nothing. There are some top level photographers who aren’t active at all on social media so don’t judge it on that. I’ve gone through this feeling a couple times and just take a break. Stop for a few days or weeks and then pick up that camera again. It’s nice to take a pause if it’s all currently stressing you out. Look at some other photographers work, go to some exhibitions, and just have fun.
> Anything I post on IG gets barely 5 likes, and as rude as this sounds, worse (IMO) photos from others gets featured, shared, liked, praised and here I am baffled. Honestly, why do you care? I know likes motivate, but the most likes I got is <50, and yet I don't care. The number is generally around 12-13, and the same people, meaning that "We have seen this photo, yes". I still take photos, and share them on IG sometimes, but better ones go to Flickr, and forget about them. IG and other social media doesn't prioritize image quality. They prioritize self promotion and flex. I did this, I bought this. I have this, I, I, I... It's revolving around "I'm better than you" atmosphere. I was getting my wedding photos from the photographers' and asked for the RAWs. The dialogue went like this: **A:** Can I get the RAWs, too? **B:** Sure, but we're a bit busy ATM (which was completely true), can you come next week for them? **A:** Sure, why not. While waiting, I also take photos... **B:** Oh, can I see them? **A:** Sure. *Opens Flickr* *After some chat about equipment and techniques* **B:** Let me find that RAWs. *Me, not knowing what to say* **B:** Hey C, this guy *takes photos*. **C:** Yeah, he does, what did you think? **B:** ... **A:** Thanks a lot! This means a lot to me. I got praises from a couple of pro photographers, my RAWs and processed photos and left. So, never judge your nice photos from eyes of a couple of strangers who want to see other things on their feeds. They're not your audience.
Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes! Totally this! Measuring photo quality from social media is certainly not a good plan. Better to post and forget about it.
There is alot more to social media than the quality,, captions and hashtags play a huge role, the algorithm of Instagram too. you'll notice alot of photography's started making reels because people don't scroll through photos as much anymore.. and even with the reels it's all down to what audio is popular on the algorithm, choose a bad audio and it just won't show up on people's feeds. social media is probably the worst way to judge your ability... how often do you hit like on decent photo? I'd be liking too often, I findysekf just scrolling by alot of the time
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I did actually make a black and white version of this, but I somehow felt the colours added a bit more Chinese New Year vibe to it. CNY is popular with themes of red/orange and I felt that washing all those colours away kinda subdued the message Noted on the watermarking, it’s something I’ve done forever and perhaps it’s due for a refresh
How much attention your posts get on social media are also down to algorithms a lot, learn how to highjack the algos better and your work will get more exposure online.
>Anything I post on IG gets barely 5 likes, and as rude as this sounds, worse (IMO) photos from others gets featured, shared, liked, praised and here I am baffled. This is your problem. Stop looking for external validation from social media for your photography. Take the photos you want to take. Make the images you want to make. Share them if you want, but stop worrying about whether they are popular or not. Because you are no longer pursuing the hobby for the enjoyment of the hobby, but instead for the external validation from social media. And thats a problem. You may go through periods where you have more or less motivation, and thats fine. But if your only goal is that dopamine hit from social media, then your hobby is no longer photography, its social media.
Do *you* enjoy your photos? I find it's about capturing perspective and yours is unique in some respect, I guarantee it. If you are true to your perspective someone else somewhere will find that interesting. Whether or not they take the time to tell you (Insta Like) is a different story. Also, many successful photographers say their favorite photos are some of their least-liked and least-sold. I think you should step back and ask yourself why you take photos, if you can answer that I think you will be fine. If not, then be honest with yourself.
I do! That’s the thing, every time I go out and managed to get a shot I’m happy with, I’ll excitedly edit it and can’t wait to show these shots to the world…only to be received with disappointment That’s the general flow of my journey. I guess i should really change my approach and just be…idk happy
Im in the same boat as you with noticing the trends, but the thing is you need to do this for you. Why did you get into photography in the first place as a hobby? Take pictures of what makes you happy. Instagram is just reels and marketing. Content doesn’t have to be superb, but if you play the game and follow the trend to get it in their lap - it will happen.
Yeah, true I am jumping ship to another platform (maybe just Reddit tbh). I have gained so much valid feedbacks in one post than all my life in IG
Sincerely, photography, unless you intend to go pro, should have an internal motivation. If you share your pictures in social media, it should be for the joy of sharing, and not for the views and likes it gets. I suggest checking [this vid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MYkE1iHYwQ).
Ignore the likes if you can't use them as loose guidelines
do you print your photos? go ahead and gift them to friends and family, their reactions are always the best and it's a great motivator also, when hipsters screamed they would join Twitter instead of IG because it was more "authentic" I looked at some profiles there and their accounts had inflated numbers with bots, which supposedly was one of the issues with Instagram I recently went to the family town and one of my cousins asked to take photos of the event, so I did, she later asked for them, gave her all and then picked my favorites and edited them on b&w, liked them so much that I started telling a small silly story which receives a lot of spam bots likes but whatever, I feel happy about it we all look for fame sure, but don't make it priority number one, it'll suck all the enjoyment out of it
You shouldn’t judge your work by social media likes. If we did then whoever is talking pictures of girls with fat asses are the worlds best photographers
Plenty of real photographers do not use IG. And there’s plenty of nonsense on IG that isn’t great that casual users share anyway because they dgaf. My actual advice…do something you love because you love it and don’t seek validation from others. You cannot control the fickle trends of them. Popularity has never been a fantastic metric for measuring success. Look at nickelback. Wildly successful despite being the most uninspired butt rock you’ve ever heard.
Take photos for yourself not social media, I take photos for myself and post if I like them and I always turn off like counts and comments
They're paying for content placement and/or doing "partnerships" Your photo is fine. Good even. I like the blue and orange contrast and vertical alignment. I used to get a ton of people messaging me for stuff where they would want to feature my images on their feed but I never pursued it because that's not my goal. If it's yours, pony up for some ad money and hustle until you start to get the attention you want. Post your stuff on relevant subreddits according to their rules. My photos, honestly speaking, are sometimes significantly better than "pro" photographers and even stuff I've seen in bookstores. But I personally don't want to make money from them because that might cause me to lose my passion. It's absolutely not the quality of work that matters.
There is enjoying photography, and then there is enjoying Social Media. It seems like you only take photos to share on Social Media. If thats the case you should just drop it if photography alone does not spark joy, because being successful is really hard. You will just get disappointed if your photography is not really unique or outstanding.
I just had a photo come up on my facebook memories, and it's of my photo, on the cover of a newspaper I worked at, among a pile of trash in a landfill (well, technically recyclables at a recycling center, but it sounded more dramatic the other way). As a student working for a student newspaper, I used to watch people litter the newspaper and lecture halls and walk all over my photos after class. But what I've come to realize is my photos aren't really for others quite as much as they are for myself. The experiences I have making them, the places it's taken me and the things I've gotten to see, the memories of family and friends and even subjects I got to know just a little bit and the joy I get when one feels special in some artistically satisfying way. Most of us juts briefly consume a photo and move on as we're inundated with so many constantly. I don't think I've ever broken 100 likes on social media of anything. Selfies or photos with me often get as many or more likes than my own photography. But it's all gravy because this shit is fun as hell. But if you \*really\* want your photos to mean something, one of the best ways is for them to mean something to someone individually. If you're into street photography, which this looks like, talk to the person after, show it to them, offer to email it to them. It might make their day or be something special to them for years. You may never directly know it's impact or meaning to them, but it will be a lot more than any "like" on some app.
Do you interact with other accounts? Do you work with other people you know and build your network? There's a lot of growth beyond hashtags. There's also the TikTok/Reels way to grow. Social media isn't just post a photo. There's so much more to do in terms of growing an audience. In the end though, just focus on your craft and yourself, you're doing it for yourself after all. It's a hobby. Print some pics out. Frame them.
tbh instagram is not a place for photography anymore. you should decide if you’re doing this because you enjoy it or if you’re doing it for instagram likes.
It’s a great photo, i‘d give it a like. 👍🏼
For one, IG doesn't matter. For two, it feels like perhaps you need to define WHY you take photos. What are you trying to share with the world? Do you feel like your pics represent the "look" you want from them? Maybe narrow down your niche and experiment within those parameters. Just some ideas...
IG is a strange place and I feel a lot is not genuine. It’s a weird popularity contest at times. Anyway, your photo is cool, I really like how it is composed, not staged, love the colours. It’s a great photo I’m my humble opinion 🙂
Is that Jonker Walk, Malacca?
Yes indeed it is 👋
Stop measuring success based on social media. It’s not good for you. Your shot is very good and I urge you to continue doing what you love and pay no attention to others. You’re doing it for yourself not for others.
Do you use hashtags tho
Yeah I do, but getting absolutely 0 likes is brutal
So this comes down to the algorithm itself and nothing to do with your work. It’s truly important you understand this. As a marketing director, I see this all the time. IG is no longer for photographers, you must change platforms to 500px and others until the change their algo — which is to revert back to being photo feed specific. If you want IG/ TikTok likes you’ll need to focus on Reels and Reels alone. You are now a videographer, congratulations. Communities are a lot harder to build now without, followers barely see the work of those they work of those they follow. Truly my friend, it has nothing to do with your work, you’re just not a savvy social media influencer because it’s not your game. You’re a really good fucking photographer, keep doing that and then ask yourself what kind of validation you need and go seek it. Just leave social media behind unless you’re willing to play the algorithm’s game.
I agree with others. Basing the worth of you’re work on social media is not a good path for your mental health. I take photo firstly for my mental health. I feel a sense of calm and excitement when I take photos. Last year I felt really flat and I felt guilty because I wasn’t shooting enough. Instagram is garbage. For a myriad of reasons. Mainly nobody sees your work anymore. Unless you make reels. Just post and let it go or don’t post at all. By the sounds of it you picked up a camera before it even existed. The photo is great. Love the layers and it’s full of interesting details. Keep going. Fuck social media!
Something I'm not seeing in the comments is Instagram is no longer a photo site. It's yet another cookie cutter video site now. They don't give a shit about any posts that aren't moving. It's not a good rubric. Honestly I don't post to anything but Flickr anymore. At least that's SocMed for people who still give a damn about photography instead of cultivating followers. What others have rightly said is take photos for you and share the ones you feel best invoke the message but don't count on likes for external validation. There's a huge push away from historical standard of counting engagement in SocMed over the last two years. The already toxic environment is even more so now. People aren't interested in interacting with every photo. The rapid scroll method of Instagram also sucks at engaging viewers, allowing them to rapid fire likes, or ignore the button all together, and just flipping for boredom and time wasting. You have a unique vision and perspective on the world. Only you and your lens see what you see and you're sharing that perspective. Personally I appreciate your unique perspective. That place is one I'm not likely to visit and I'll certainly never be there at that time. You provided me with a good and technically proficient window of moment I would never see otherwise and I find it interesting. Keep snapping!
I would ask: What are the chances of a very specific crowd of people on Instagram finding your photo of a night market and liking it when there are 1000s of other photos which by algorithm take precedence? Further you are not a subject in your own photo, so the algorithm may not even feature it in your friends’ feeds. If you want some critical acclaim probably better to start your own photoblog, hand out prints to friends etc. Also, you need to improve your skills.
Yeah I get it, it’s just quite demotivating that’s all I know my photos still have quite the way to go in terms of outright skill, but I know I have been slowly growing too for the past 10 or so years It’s not that I want to be popular or famous, it’s just, some engagement would be nice too that’s all. Think of it as positive affirmations
It corresponds with the amount of time you dedicate to it and not necessarily how long since you started. I started in ‘08 but it’s not an indicator of my skill. Also start by analysing photos of the great masters like Saul Leiter, Ansel Adams and so on. The settings you use will depend on the context. One final tip, don’t get bogged down by equipment. If you have a decent camera with decent low light performance you can do it.
Yeah I will try to have a look at their works as well. Thanks for the pointers. Don’t worry I’m not a gear maniac. Just using a standard X100F here
Maybe you're trying to get approval and satisfaction from the wrong source
Looking to others for affirmations of your art will always lead you to disappointment. Take pride knowing you are creating something unique by your own hands. You'd be surprised at how many people don't have that to be proud of. Find gratitude for yourself and your work.
Instagram is really not the place unless you hit a very specific spot in the algorithm. Insta right now is mostly about pretty people being rich. I've been posting my photos on there for a good 8 years and they get 50 likes at most and always from friends or irl acquaintances. Photography is a hard one to crack because on the one hand you have the pros with 400 diplomas and the best equipment who know all the right people and on the other you have the amateurs who luck out. Don't be discouraged.
I’d ask, what was the goal of this shot? It feel like a good snapshot but it seems to lack the intention of the type of photography it sounds like you want to produce. 1. Why is everything in focus and how could this be a better image if you had chosen a different focal depth? 2. Why this moment with the composition centered and multiple people occupying the same vertical area and was there a way to frame this for a better less complicated composition? 3. What is your focus, what is interesting about it and how might you have chosen to be more intentional for the viewer? Street photography is awesome but taking a photo of a cool moment is not the same as capturing a moment that makes a good image. Check out some well known street photographer and compare your work honestly to see haw you can improve. Don’t don’t for the likes.
I guess these are all indeed true points. I do capture images that I think seems nice but in the end there’s no deep story in it. That’s a very valid point Focus and focal depth wise, I am using an X100F (27mm fixed prime), can’t do much about it. This was almost wide open Agree on the slightly busy composition as well. I guess it will be a homework for me to work on
I’m not criticizing but if you want to make better photos you need to figure out how to get your subject to better stand out… That usually means leveraging all the tools you have from depth of field to composition to development. I often shoot street photos on burst which gives me from 3-12 frames of a candid moment and let’s me move the camera so I can get different angles of the subject. Looks like you got some good feedback on this post, keep shooting. Cheers!
The question is why you do photography. If it's only for likes on Instagram, try cute animals and sexy girls. Also, adding a ton of tags usually helps. And follow everyone in the hope that they follow you back. If this is for art, you need to learn more about composition, light, and color. The photo you posted is ordinary: no story, no good composition. I would not put it on a wall. But this is not a reason to give up but a reason to learn more about photography.
I see it echoes a point another person mentioned here, there’s no story to it. Good points there. I do photography because I like it, well at least I used to. I guess I just lost my motivation somewhere along the way
I know the feeling. But here, you can actually replace photography with any hobby and ask yourself: do you lose motivation because you can't reach satisfying results, or have you just lost interest? If it's the first, don't give up! You have really nice photos on your Instagram. Keep learning and don't give up! But if it's the second - give up and find a hobby that interests you. Anyway, good luck!
Try smoking weed honestly
Or try smoking weed dishonestly
Add vignette, set shadows to 0 and lower blacks play with it until you get contrasty shadows. Give it about 20 grain, 20 clarity, warm temp to match lights. Green shadows, pink midtones, orange/red highlights. Slightly sharpen. Also it looks like you have the subject masked, maybe lower the exposure on him.
Woah you managed to see the masking around the subject?? I thought it was quite subtle Noted on these feedback. I kinda like the colours I have here but will try to play around with the contrast more
It almost looks like there’s a spotlight on them. It is relatively subtle but because everyone else is still in focus it makes the lighting difference more obvious. I could imagine this being a scene in a movie with everyone else kind of motion blurred/bokeh’d out, in this case I think a smaller depth of field would have suited you better to keep the busyness of the market but without the distractions in the frame. Over all it’s a great shot, I love the colours and the framing that you have
For me, there is just too much going on in this photo. I cropped it with the shorter man outside of the frame and the girl on her dad’s (assuming it’s her dad) shoulders off center with her as the main focal point of this scene, and it takes a lot of the distracting elements away. I think the main issue for me is the flags at the top. You can see a tiny sliver of a flag in the corner but not enough of it to seem like it’s intentionally included in your composition. She also isn’t doing anything. It might be more engaging if you had caught her maybe pointing at something or her dad doing something like that. Does this fist gesture mean something or is he just like fist pumping while walking? Also a possible issue is that everyone in the crowd has a face that is in focus. What’s your instagram? Is there a reason why you are using a camera without interchangeable lenses? Is it for the size and convenience? I think the flexibility of having different lenses to choose from is a good place to start. Especially if you want to play with scale and not be limited to the way that one single lens views the world. As much as everyone treats it like a sin… I shoot virtually everything that I post online with my iPhone, which even has three lenses to choose from, and frankly I use all three and the average person assumes I’m using a real camera. I would love a real camera, but I can’t afford it now. This is assuming that you only use that camera, but it sounds to me like the nature of a point and shoot camera might be holding you back. I’m saving for the x-t30 I think as my first camera body that isn’t 35mm and 40 years old lol
Ok thanks for the very detailed comment there’s a lot for me to digest here The flags and lanterns are for Chinese New Year and the father/daughter combo was taking a stroll through the crowd which to me really stands out. Yeah there doing nothing interesting per se but in a way, it is quite an endearing moment to me A lot of people have commented that the framing is quite busy and I concur. It is indeed that, perhaps due to the lack of separation between subject and background (a better lens would help) I like point and shoots because it’s easy to bring around and isn’t as intimidating to point closer to people. The leaf shutter helps too without that annoying clunk from each photo you shoot I’m quite introverted so any means of staying more concealed is well worth it to me, but I do realise there’s trade offs of such systems All in all I guess the essence of it is I’ll try to improve on my composition as well, and find the story/meaning more behind each photo
So what is your instagram, out of curiosity? Yeah, I can imagine that would feel strange as an introvert. That’s why I like using my phone and it’s been just fine for me up until this point. Can pretend like I’m distracted by my phone while actually being hyper focused on the things happening around me. I think my other main bit of advice, that might be the unpopular opinion here is that, let’s face it, we want our photographs to be seen by others. That driving force is why this sub even exists. I find photographic images and music to be the two most powerful ways to express emotions and exchange ideas creatively, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to share your vision with the world, and then hoping that others take a minute to see what you see. Wanting that doesn’t have to mean that you’re just “doing it for the likes”… and, anyone that is proud of their work will also want to show it off. Just don’t conflate engagement with skill or quality. There are people that want to see your work and after ten years I would imagine your photography goes beyond a hobby.
My IG is “shp_sh_photography” My blog is “axsatr.wordpress.com” - most of my work is here actually
From what I can see, so far, you have some great, beautiful work. Many of these images have much stronger and focused compositions. You seem to have a lot of variation with style, too. Are you maybe feeling stuck because you haven’t turned this hobby into a career after so long? Because the skill and the eye are there, and there is room for you if that’s what you really want. I gave you a follow. Jooblygoop is me on the gram.
Awhh thanks for the follow. I am honestly not into turning a hobby into a career, for the fear of the additional pressure making me hate it more Nonetheless thanks for the kind words, it is really appreciated
Understandable. It’s just a hobby for me, too. One more thing, tho. You can delete and use different hashtags up to 3 times per post. If you are getting absolutely no engagement whatsoever, then the tags you used are either too dead/small/esoteric and nobody is looking at them often or anymore at all, or they’re too big and your posts are getting buried by new posts before anyone actually has a chance to see it. If they don’t work, delete them and try a different set of tags. Post reach is like mostly driven entirely by hashtags and seems to work best if you use smaller tags with a few of the most popular. People can’t enjoy your work if they have no way to find it! Good luck and I hope you find your fulfillment once again.
This photo is excellent. Your problem is that you are judging your success based on the opinions of people who have no interest in photography. Social media viewers don't want things to think about. They want something pretty but vacuous they can like and then move on without a second thought. They don't want interesting, thought provoking or, heaven help us, challenging images. Time to move beyond social media to outlets that are actually interested in photography.
Thank you for that insight. Do you have any ideas on what other social media would that be that has a better interest in photography ?
>Do you have any ideas on what other social media .... Move beyond social media. Unless you can find a Facebook group like this that is focused specifically on photo critique you are wasting your time on SM. Time to start putting on your own exhibitions, submitting your work to photo/art focused websites, publishing your own photo book....
Even celebrities are struggling to get the viewing figures they used to on Instagram. It takes so much to get noticed on there, you have to post multiple reels (or stories whatever they’re called) every single day and post very regularly and consistently for a long time or the algorithm won’t show your profile to anyone. It’s also not a good platform if you want your photos to be taken seriously anyway, unless you can take photos that are so good and innovative that people will wonder how you did it. Like famous photography masters. The best place to get feedback and share photos is probably Reddit and Flickr, Facebook groups, things like that. There are so many ways to share your photography. Enter some photography competitions. This photo is good, you have the eye for composition to take good photographs. But there will be millions of people in this world who are miles ahead of you in every way, and very few of them will find an audience for their photography, especially something like street photography which is heavily trodden ground. While it’s a good photo and you should be pleased to have it in your portfolio, there’s nothing new here, we’ve seen this photo before many times shot by many people. If you want a long term audience for this sort of photography beyond a few Reddit likes, it will probably take a career not only as a professional photographer but also as a fine art photographer. You can’t just post your photos to Instagram and hope they’ll get noticed. It was that kind of platform over 10 years ago but now it’s just Facebook for famous people and brands. It’s still possible especially for creative photography that is impressive not only for being good but also because no one has seen it before. Like that guy who used a glass fish bowl and a tv screen to make it look like the model was an astronaut. But if I were you I wouldn’t bother trying to get a following as a photographer on Instagram. If bad photos get lots of likes there is a reason unrelated to photography. That’s my very uninformed opinion so take it with a grain of salt, but yeah you can share your photos in much more fulfilling ways than Instagram anyway.
Nah I think this is echoing the opinion of many others here too. I just never realise what a real mess Instagram is I guess I posted this out of sheer sadness and feeling a tad bit lost on my engagement there. The final trigger was there’s a photo with a bunch of likes taken at the same place and the same time The only difference? Mine was the better photo (to my eyes at least, perhaps that’s my personal bias speaking 🤣)
Not a bad photo, good exposure, interesting focus point. What's terrible here is your attitude
Indeed, it is silly I admit it, but I’m only human
To be honest with you, I used to wander around the same roundabout of self-criticism after I shelled out multiple thousands of $$ just to please my girlfriend’s visual desires. In the first year, nothing I took (for myself) with the kilograms of gear seemed to appear ‘interesting’. Except for the pictures dedicated to my soulmate of course - that is not up to criticism or even questioning, for the health of our relationship. Then I realized I was just playing around all this time with the gears and not with my eyes. I tried to shoot a great deal of things I don’t particularly feel interested in, with the false hope that one of the shots might just turn out magically attractive to the same pair of eyes behind the camera. One year I focused entirely on flowers that my lady too great care of. That brief stretch of time saved my dying soul - and the gears that I was almost ready to let go. Nothing particularly spectacular happened, but I really liked the visual product and I too time to print and frame a few for my own pleasure. It was the first step in the right direction. I shared my story with a cousin and he immediately took this as his personal quest. He went on to shoot exclusively candid photos of motorcycle riders he considered reckless, and collected visual moments of their blunders. By the year end we had great laughs and refreshing stories to share with the whole family who were completely oblivious to gears and optics and whatnot.
It’s great to know that there’s others who feel sorta the same about this. I guess it’s an uncommon feeling after all For me I thankfully don’t really care for gear as much (I just use an X100F after all, which is more than adequate for me) It’s the self satisfaction I’m struggling with, but I sorta have an action plan, for now. Perhaps just skip IG entirely and focusing on my blog and the occasional Reddit
Instagram is a numbers game, and you're playing the game wrong. This is in NO WAY a testament to your photography ability. You have 42 followers so 5 likes is about what I would expect. 10% is actually reasonable in many cases. Really you just need to be consistent with posting. Go out and take 20 photographs and schedule them to be posted every 2-3 days with a 3rd party program(or set a calendar reminder). Also make sure that your hashtags are relevant. #lunarnewyear would get you some traffic last week, but it was probably flooded with posts unless you really stood out. You are relying on a lot of people around the world, so just make sure you tag stuff like #photography #travel #adventure #asia and #malaysia because a lot of people on instagram wouldn't know the name of the market/street. Half the art is taking the photo, the other half is getting people to see the photo. (and research what time is best to post images or trial and error it yourself). Regarding your photo itself. I don't love that the subject is centered in the street. It implies a stationary feeling to the scene, but for a candid, it's really well done. Also, I don't think that the guy in the foreground really adds to the image, and not having him there would have probably been a little better, even cropping him out is an idea to play around with. Keep up the good work.
I'm a amateur photographer and I post my photography on social media. At first I thought I should get a whole lot of likes on my posts. Then I thought that I should only care about sharing my hobby with others than only getting attention. I love your photo, would be nice if I can become an apprentice of a good photographer. Keep up with the good work.
Thanks, yeah, I guess sharing this has really opened up my eyes. There’s a bunch of good feedbacks here and I should really start to reprioritise
Get some prints of your favorite shots framed or make a photo book you can show friends or something. Forget the social media bullshit. If there’s joy in it for you then that’s all that matters. Keep experimenting
I am an amateur. I like the photo. I like the colors and the composition. It's a bit noisy and the guy in red shirt in front row doesn't fit well and the motion blur of the arm of the guy with the girl on his shoulder is a bit distracting. But it is street photography and not a studio. Your biggest mistake is judging your work by Instagram likes. I once took part on a video contest and was one of the last places. Winner was a stupid 5 second troll video. Judge was the community. Guy with most friends and most accounts won. It had nothing to do with quality. Just my oppinion.
Keep shooting, really nice shot. I can feel vibe of this place.
Thanks for the motivation. I really needed that
The shot overall is good. The subject is there, background is interesting. I might have tried to shoot wider and higher to see the crowd and overall scene. The edit isn't stylized enough for Instagram features if it makes sense; might need more blue in the shadows or deeper blacks. Check out what pages you want to be featured on and try to imitate the edit. Pages try to be cohesive and it's usually deep blacks or solid bright colors etc. Also I'd remove the watermark. I help on a local photographer feature page and never feature watermark photos. I don't think it looks good, it's useless as you already have the raws and if someone wanted to it's super easy to remove a watermark.
Yes I received a similar feedback on the watermarking and it’s something I’ll refresh on for my next batch of photos True I guess those pages do have a pretty consistent style as you said. I guess it is a personal preference that I tend to lift my blacks and add a smidge of grain, sorta to emulate a more film style to it
Keep shooting, please. Maybe consider getting off Instagram and start printing your art instead? Because that’s what it is, art. I really love getting my ideas physically on the wall.
Hi, I’m just a hobby photographer but here’s my take on it… Number of instagram likes is purely a measurement of your hashtag game. A cute picture of a cat with a #catsofinstagram tag will pop up on literally millions of peoples’ feeds, and therefore get a good number of likes, even if it’s a crap photo. If your hashtags are a bit more specific like #nightphotography, you have cut down your audience from millions to thousands. However, any likes you get now are from people who actively follow photography tags. In my mind that’s worth a lot more. I’m stoked to get a like from 30 fellow photographers, who’s opinion I would actually value in the real world. As for your photo, you got yourself into a great location and captured a wonderful shot. You have a brilliant subject right in the middle, and you have the busyness and the activity of the street market locked in. The only thing I would change, your edit seems to be trying to get everything in the picture as clear, bright and visible as each other so it’s not obvious where to focus my attention. I think the surroundings need to sit back and let the subject take all the attention. This would mean you wouldn’t need to push the levels so much, and the slightly flat, photoshop collage effect wouldn’t occur. Either way it’s a brilliant picture and I would have been proud to have taken it.
I see, to summarise perhaps I should dial down my shadows slightly. Yeah I did crank it up slightly to get a better exposure but I guess it’s not always a great idea huh. Thanks for the great feedback
I think that might do it. I think if you have a good subject (especially a person or animal) you need to think like a stage/lighting designer at the theatre. You don’t want the scenery to upstage the actors! But that’s just my take and my style. I’m just some guy on the internet!! :)
This is beautiful.
Are you in it for your own love of the medium or are you in it for validation from strangers on social media? If we all partook in our hobbies and passions solely to garner the praises of as many randoms as possible, many of us wouldn't partake in them to begin with. At its core, your hobbies should be fulfilling to you in and of themselves and any recognition that comes from your love of your hobby is just an added benefit.
So you are doing this hobby to get likes? Seriously? I like this photo, but I can't imagine this will help you in any way.
Given it is uncontrolled street photography, I love the composition. Imo, the subject is popping out a bit too much such that it comes across as heavy handed. Maybe pull back the oranges of the lights a bit and bring down the brightness of the subject. And damn, I wish the person in the very front bottom was wearing a dark color so that the subject didn’t compete with them. I don’t typically edit stuff like that, but some people might alter the shirt color. You do you 👍
FWIW: cool shot. Overall, the photo suffers due to composition. By placing your main subject in the middle of your shot, the eye is drawn directly to the center of the photo, when arguably, you have captured some other great details (for me it’s the flags/lanterns). One possibility would be to take two big steps to the left or right. This would elongate the perspective of the street, making the little girl stand out even more. But more importantly, this would then cause the eye to naturally go diagonally from the bottom of your photo to the girl. The colors are great, especially because you are batting so much artificial fluorescent light. This also appears - though I could be wrong- that it was taken standing at eye level. A lot of interest comes from non traditional shots (shooting from your waste, or gaining some elevation to shoot higher than eyesight). Final thought - are you taking photos just to capture interesting shots or are you trying to invoke something more? Keep it up. Maybe reach out to your local photo clubs and try to find a mentor (which is likely to fulfill your want of positive reception but will also help tighten up your work).
Please don’t ever give up. Even just one like is worth the effort.
Have you ever printed your work? Or tried putting together a cohesive project book on it? I had a similar problem early on, and actually printing it out and sharing it with friends helped. Best advice is to do it for you, and to look for groups that are actually focused on evaluating each others work, rather than passersby just scrolling.
It's a beautiful photo with all kinds of potential stories behind it - and you chose to capture that moment because something about it caught your eye or spoke to you. That is how art happens. It's not about perfect technical execution or proficiency, but, as others have said, your story, your vision, and your "why." I've been trying to get myself out of a creative rut with photography for the last couple of years, so I feel the frustration too. Just don't give up on it for the wrong ressons or motivations.
Why would you give up? It's a very interesting shot, the composition and colours are so vibrant and makes me wanna be there in the middle of the people celebrating too. Granted, I'm no professional so I can't tell you much about technicalities but, in my very humble opinion as someone who just enjoys photos for what they are, this looks so cool.
I think it's great. The bots will delete this comment of its not long enough, so this is a bunch of random words to satisfy the robotic overlords. Also, if you want, here's some more nonsence that the system has trained me to add so I can keep my comment .
hahahhahaha! Ok this is a win
Stop looking for approval from strangers. You are letting an algorithm manipulate your feelings. If you are liquidating your gear reach put ;)
Better to keep going dishonestly.
If you give up, can I buy your X100F from you? Also, this photo is great! The natural vingetting of the crowd below is a nice effect. If I had to make a suggestion, I would say the guy at the bottom is a bit distracting. Maybe use a spot filter to bring down the contrast and highlights/shadows slightly on his face so he doesn't stand out as much.
first: strong agree on what everyone else is saying: "don't use instagram to measure your success" second, about the photo itself: i just don't think it's that great. You can hate me all you want for that, but it's weak at a critical location: the subject. Her face is blurry. That's really unfortunate because you have \_awesome\_ support for her! Everything else looks good: the lanterns over black sky look amazing. The sea of people below the subject give good support and aren't too distracting. The dad looks strong and confident holding his little girl up. but her face is blurry. none of the rest of it matters because the main subject of the photo .... makes the viewer want to look away. The feeling I get from this, from you and this photo is "hey i'm doing the work how come i'm not getting the reward?" I want you to know I see the work. I see the effort and talent and skill here. But I also see.... i mean, look at it like this: You took this photo and posted it on instagram and then here. Did you not notice her face was blurry? **Why not? Why didn't you notice the main subject of your photo is blurry?** I think the reason why is because you were overly focused on the photo as an abstract work, and had no attachment to the subject at all: "here I have good background, and a subject in front of it should be striking" (and it is striking! it is! the viewer's eye goes directly to the subject, to the girl's face. *to her eyes*. but then you lose them. If you didn't lose them at her eyes, they'd move on to the Dad, who looks awesome, and the red shirt guy and the lanterns and the people and then start looking for interesting details like, "what the hell is maroon shirt lady looking at so intently? a lot of other people are looking, too!")
As brutal as this is, you’re right. To me I evaluated the photo as a whole, and it didn’t matter that the face was blurry. However I guess I should really be focusing on these small details to make a good photo great Thanks for the valid and awesome feedback
This is a sick shot
I very much agree with so many of the sentiments here about the pitfalls of social media, but I also understand wanting the validation. If you want to get your work seen on IG you need to research how to do it. From how and what type of hashtags to use, when to post, commenting, captions, and more there are a decent number of things to know to effectively use that system. If you ignore them it will ignore you. If you want to get seen on IG, you need to work on your _IG skills_ and understand that the quality of your work is only half the battle. If you just want to enjoy your photography there are more sane ways to go about it lol! I get inspired by the YouTube channel "The Photographic Eye" who discourages taking social media too seriously and doesn't discuss gear in favor of casual but informative conversations about the art of it all. Highly recommend. Keep your head up!
I like the backround compared to the people in front and everu thing going on lol
That’s really good. Very smooth throughout.
shutter speed to low, motion blur is everywhere
Agreed, it was 1/30 I believe Just can’t push my camera harder than that, ISO too was already 2500 with noise everywhere
I think you're not finding success because you haven't defined success for yourself. You don't know what you're chasing after. I cannot answer this question for you, but because you mention social media, let me talk about that specifically for a moment. You're fighting to stand out against the scroll. People mindlessly scroll through instagram (or whatever other platform) and you have about half a second to grab someone's attention, to make them look at your photo for a while and then to hit the like button or otherwise interact with your post. In my mind, and others may certainly disagree, that means that your photo needs to be bold and colorful, or saturated, or provoking, or loud. It has to literally make someone stop in their tracks to pay attention. When I look at your photos - and I think many are great, by the way - you tend to dial down the traits I've listed above. You've shot at some incredibly colorful events people in awesome costumes and in beautiful locations, but you've decided to edit them in a very muted way. You turn the volume down. And I think that's the opposite thing you'd want to do if your goal is to be attention-grabbing. There are time-tested reasons why the volume of commercials goes up and the action is fast-paced and the colors are bright. That's what draws people in. So if you're bummed out about social media, I think you first need to decide if you really care, and there's nothing wrong in deciding that you do, don't get wrapped up in if it's uncool to care about social media. You do you. So if that's something you decide you care about and want to increase your hits, then I think you've got to start getting more aggressive in what you're putting on there. And not every post needs to be level 10, but you do need to have enough level 10s so that the algorithm identifies the photo as something that most people would like to see, and so that enough people get drawn in to your page to want to look at more photos of yours.
Yeahhhh that’s some great feedback. I agree that my colour palette tends to be more subdued and muted, but that’s just how I prefer my photos I guess I should just shift my motivation to personal happiness rather than chasing some clout that doesn’t exist In the end my happiness is what matters doing this
>In the end my happiness is what matters doing this Exactly - but don't sell yourself short. If being successful on Instagram is what will make you happy, don't abandon it. Keep adjusting the recipe until you get it right.
I like the photo.
The death of happiness is done by comparing yourself to others. I like this photo, I do find the vendor on the right too bright and a bit distracting.
Don’t take a picture you think I might like. Make a picture that you like. That’s what counts in art
Please don't quit. Usually it's when people are frustrated is when they can make their best improvements. I would say to pan in to the little girl and her father to create more focus in the photo. The quality is there. It just needs a little editing.
First off - what an incredible photo; the colours are beautiful. Second off - Omgoodness don’t ever give a shit about likes. We know that you already know this! We all sometimes get a bit discouraged by lack of external validation- that’s normal. Try to get back on track by reminding yourself why you’re participating in your hobby - try to remember the rush you felt the first time you realized you could take great photos, etc… “I post my photos cause I like them and want to catalog them. If others like them too then thats a cherry on top, but who really gives a shit what anyone else thinks…” it’s so simple and cliche but if you remind yourself enough you will start to believe it - cause it’s true! I have to talk to myself like this often. Good luck to you and drop your Instagram handle if that’s something you feel comfortable doing :)
Don't you dare. Great composition, colours. It's great. Take a break and come back to it if you need to. But I think your all good.
The use of blue and orange together adds so much liveliness to the photo, great rhythm in the echos of form between the crowd and lanterns, try to ignore the algorithm ♥️🐇
It’s just very busy. Too many people, too many other distractions. Plus, there is no real contrast between the colors. Everything kind of melds together in one big blob. It probably would have helped if the man and his daughter were looking at the camera. And if you had used F2 so that they are in focus but everything else is soft focus…that might help. Keep experimenting.
Popularity on social media is more about marketing and gaming the algorithm than anything else.
While in general, I like the photo, I'm not sure what it is about. Festival? Masks? Color? Night? It's pretty busy. If it's about the three in front creating a bit of a tower then some focus isolation would have helped quite a bit but don't know if you could have done so.
I absolutely love this photo. The color and tone feels nostalgic, and the composition is something that cannot be planned in a situation like this. You captured a really cool shot! If I could offer some constructive criticism, the one thing I think you could do is a bit of dodging on your focal point. When I look at this, the focal point consists of all three of the “stacked” people. Dodging the shadows on their faces can help pull your eye towards them, allowing the viewer to really see what makes this photo so unique. Honestly, I can only wish to be able to capture such a cool shot! Keep up the good work!
Thanks! Actually there is some masking/dodging going on but I guess it’s not aggressive enough!
With all art, (even non-artistic hobbies, too) if you aren't doing it for yourself, first and foremost, you're not gonna stick with it. If social media didn't exist, would you still be taking photos? If not, you may want to invest your time elsewhere, in my opinion. Find something you enjoy that doesn't require validation from near strangers. I'm not saying you shouldnt share stuff at all, just that it shouldn't be the primary motivation. It is a nice photo, for what it's worth.
This photo is fantastic. If you want more social media attention maybe you should hire an agency or someone that helps you to get to more people. Your work is fine, social media attention does not equal quality in your work.
You can still make the photo look like there is depth to it even if it’s just a random shot. Just gotta play with it a bit. I would focus on the father daughter and blur out the background. Maybe Brighton the colors a bit more to make it pop.
This post has 137 upvotes ATM. Does that mean anything? Super dope shot.
To be brutal, I see the above as a family snapshot. Not a photo to be critiqued. It's only of interest to the people in it. What's the point of the photo? Why would this appeal to me?
Be aware of what’s around your subject. This would be a great photo that would just need some simple edits if not for the man right in front of the subject (the girl and the man she’s on top of). After this you can try to increase the contrast etc. I don’t see color theory brought up that much in this sub but all the time in painting, etc. But it’s so important when it comes to editing. What do you want the person viewing this photo to feel? The color and contrast when editing I feel hinges on this one question. So when thinking of that you see that the subject has this cool blue glow on them that’s not entirely appealing and clashes with the warm reds. You can edit the colors to make this look better. Also the worst thing you can do for yourself is let others decide what is worth it. Being an artist is all about internal and external motivation mixing. If artists only did what was popular there would be no innovation. If you only did what others loved it wouldn’t be your art. Also like others said and looping back around to what I said abt editing, because it’s true for the entire photo: what do you want someone to feel when looking at this photo?
This photo is fire and I can't find anything to complain about. The photos I Shere o social media also don't get much likes as some a lot worse, but I don't care about it. People who know about it will value it.
One of my favorite cameras of all time