I was scrolling through instagram the other day - as one does - when I realised, after scrolling for several minutes, that I hadn’t seen a single photograph from an actual photographer. Sure, there were a few still images, but they were either from celebrities, or part of news stories. The majority of what I was seeing was reels and ads. It seems Meta really, really wants to turn Instagram into TikTok. Unfortunately, it’s becoming the worst of both worlds.

So you’re probably thinking - well, it’s just an algorithm thing? You can still see your followers by using the “following” feed, right? Well, switching over to the “Following” feed wasn’t much better. It’s still mostly celebrities and videos. It seems that most photographers aren’t even bothering to post actual photography on instagram anymore. It’s certainly far fewer than I have seen in a long time. I’m guilty of this too. I still post there occasionally, but less and less so now. I mean, I was never a great Instagrammer to begin with - I don’t have the discipline for it - but now it just seems pointless.

To be honest, Instagram hasn’t been “for photographers” for a long time. It has always been more about lifestyle than photography. Even so, there have been quite a few photographers who found fame and success on the platform. There’s always been issues with it, though, in my opinion.

For a start, forcing your images into the right aspect ratio to gain traction often requires those really serious about it to either shoot specifically for the format, or do what I and others do, and do the white border thing. But that’s not ideal either, and now they’ve ruined that anyway by inexplicably changing the aspect ratio of images on the profile page. I tried creating a new template to address this, but what’s on the profile feed doesn’t match the ideal aspect ratio of the normal feed, so it’s all just a mess. I pretty much gave up.

The other problem with Instagram is that what might be a good and compelling image, doesn’t always work on a small screen in a tiny 4:5 window. You end up either cropping to make it work better or just not posting. Over the years, I believe that this phenomenon of optimising images for instagram, has led to a certain type of photography becoming prevalent, possibly to the detriment of the art overall. What might be a good photograph on a large screen or on a large print, with plenty of room in the composition to breathe, is just lost on the instagram feed. It also tends to favour vertical or portrait format images when most photography is probably landscape format.

Some people have undoubtedly done well out of this. Those who are focussed and disciplined enough to create specifically for instagram have been quite successful.

Only now they all seem to be gone.

Social Media Instagram Alternatives

In terms of social media, I see more photography content on Threads now than I do anywhere else, including Instagram. Most of the people I had followed on Instagram are now posting on threads, and they seem to be posting more photography content there. Ironically, the viewing experience seems to be better on threads too, and so far, it’s not dominated by those optimising it solely to rank on the platform, although that will probably change before too long. Af all the social media platforms, personally, I think this is the best Instagram alternative at the moment.

The other social media networks - not so much. I hardly ever post on Facebook anymore, as I think that's kind of a racket. Facebook feels like it is a mob boss who holds your posts for ransom until you pay them to show them to your followers. It’s crazy. I have over 10,000 followers on my Facebook page, but when I post there, Facebook only shows it to about 20 to 30 people. Unless I boost the post, of course. It’s a “That's a nice post you got there, it’d be a shame if something happened to it” kind of thing. The flip side though is, if you do want to boost a post, it is relatively cheap, and so I do sometime still use that feature, even if I do need to go and take a shower afterward.

I haven't seen much Photography contenrt on Bluesky and X/Twitter is….well…., let’s not go there.

Foto App

There’s a new app which launched recently that I’ve been trying called the Foto.app. It’s a similar set-up to Instagram, except they are aiming it strictly at photographers. The main feed is only chronological and only your followers. Not only that, but they never crop photos and always display them at the aspect ratio that you post them in. It’s early days yet, but it’s a nice application. There are still a few bugs, mind you, and some limitations, but it has promise. It all depends on whether it gains traction or not. I’ve been using this for the past few weeks and I like what I see so far, but they have a long journey ahead of them. I hope they succeed though as it really does have potential.

Another relatively new option is Pixelfed which uses the same decentralised protocol that Mastodon uses. I’ve tried this out but i’m not a huge fan. It’s a bit…well…”meh” and the design is a bit out of date in my opinion, but you may well like it!

There’s also, of course, the old faithfuls of Flickr and Tumblr, but I don’t think they will ever be able to compete, and to be honest, I never post to Flickr anymore. Most of the stuff I do see on it when I remember to check it once a month or so isn’t very good. Also, it’s not really optimised and the interface is old and out of touch. It’s sad, really, considering it used to be the go-to place for photography. I don’t think anyone is on 500px anymore either. They ruined that with ads and other questionable carry on. I put out a poll about that a while ago and there was no one still using the platform. I believe Tumblr still has something of a cult following, just not necessarily for photography.

Why you need Your own website

If there’s one thing this experience has highlighted to me, it’s the importance of owning your content. While using a platform like instagram is always going to be much easier than having a website, there is something to be said for not relying on the whims of huge tech companies and their megalomaniac bosses.

Squarespace

If this were a YouTube video, you’d be expecting me to launch into a commercial for Squarespace right about now, but I’m not going to do that. I actually do host my websites on SquareSpace, but I’m really not happy with how the platform has changed over the past few years. They seem to be mostly focussed on turning it into an e-commerce platform now more than anything. You can still create some nice portfolios with it, but it’s become a bit more complicated, and it’s not as flexible as it used to be. On top of that, they’ve really undermined it as a blogging platform.

It’s a real shame as I used to love Squarespace. It probably is still the easiest way to get started, especially if you want a website primarily as a portfolio, but you’re also back to the same problem of being at the whims of a tech company.

Exposure

Another interesting option, if you want a more story-driven website for showcasing your photography, is Exposure. This has been around for a while, and I never really see it talked about much. It lets you create photo essays and similar content in a nice magazine style. It’s easy to use and setup, but it’s also limiting in that you can’t really create traditional portfolios with it.

As an alternative to having a blog, though, it might be a suitable replacement. I tried it out a long time ago, but never pursued it as I was already paying for other hosting and didn’t want to add to my outgoings at the time. You can try it for free, though, so it might be worth checking out.

Portfolio Hosting

If you want something more portfolio driven, then two options are Photoshelter and Photodeck. Both allow you to upload your images and generate portfolios from them. Both also have e-commerce solutions if you want to sell your photography. Of the two, Photoshelter is the oldest, but as it’s US-based, it doesn’t comply with a lot of overseas legislation for e-commerce. If you did want to sell your images, and you’re not based in the US, then Photodeck might be a better option.

Photoshelter is more of an online backup and archive of your images, although it has a portfolio website tools too. In my opinion, these are a little rusty in the design side, and the company seems more focussed on its digital asset management for brands now than their legacy photography product. Having said that, Photodeck’s designs aren’t great either.

The back ends on both of these are a little complicated, too, so it might be worth trying them out before deciding. To be honest, I wouldn’t recommend either of these unless you have a large library you want to keep online and make available, but I just wanted to include them for completion’s sake.

Another portfolio hosting option is Adobe Portfolio and Behance. While these are somewhat more geared towards design than photography, if you have a creative cloud subscription you get access to the basic level of these, and they can be a simple way to get your images out there.

If in doubt, WordPress.

The other obvious solution is to create a WordPress site. This might be a little more complicated, but you can control the hosting and the content much more so than with a platform like Squarespace. You can either use WordPress’s own hosting or one of the many, many available third-party hosting options. There’s also thousands of themes to choose from. The two biggest downsides of going this route are the fact that it’s a little more technical to set up, even with most places doing managed WordPress hosting. Getting everything to your liking can be a bit of a challenge. The other downside is the sheer number of options available. There are literally thousands of themes, and finding the right ones to suit you can be daunting.

But the advantage is that you have full control tool over the content. If you’re not happy with your hosting provider, it’s easy to move to another.

Conclusion

I realise that this post has gone a bit off-topic towards the end, as I hadn’t really intended it to be a collection of website hosting tips! Getting back to the original topic of Instagram no longer being about photographers, it’s really about what you want to achieve with social media for your photography anyway. If all you want to do is share images for the sake of it, and just to be social, then sticking with something like threads is probably going to be fine for you. But if you’re using it as a method of driving people to your business, then it’s time to take control and put yourself back in charge of your content.

You can still use social media to promote your work, but don’t expect the platform to do the heavy lifting for you. You can still use instagram to share reels, behind the scenes, content and so on, as this seems to do much better there now. Your instagram profile will not be the place for people to find your work anymore, so instead create a compelling website that you control and then use social media to drive people to that. I know that's what many of you have been doing for a long time anyway, but for those who have gone all in on Instagram, and have used it this way in the past, it’s no longer a good option for photographers.