How Social Media is changing Photography, and Why that is a Good Thing
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter, the list goes on. Our lives are flooded with social media, and what is one of the best parts of it?Photos, pictures, pic-stiches, snaps. The internet is overflowing with images taken, edited, and posted by users. It is amazing when you stop to think about how many photos are uploaded to websites. According to Claudine Beaumont, the Technology Editor at The Telegraph, “ We love snapping away so much, in fact, that we now take around 60 billion photos a year. Many of these will be of blinking, unsmiling relatives and badly-lit vistas — there’s only so much a camera can compensate for the photographer — but many more are treasured possessions, records of holidays and happy occasions, that we want to keep as mementoes and share with friends.” Smartphones in hand, we all are taking on the world one photo at a time. After all, picture, or it didn’t happen, right?
What does this mean for photography? Sure, some would say it is destroying the art form of photography, that it does an injustice to real professional photographers out there. But I would like to argue that social media is helping more than it is hurting us photographers. Take, for example, the fact that large interconnected platforms have created the best potential for photographers to display their work to the world. “In professional photography, Instagram has also had a strong impact with an increasing number of photojournalists using the image-sharing mobile platform to build large groups of followers,” said Olivier Laurent of the British Journal of Photography. If you are looking to make a profession out of your photography, take advantage of the virtually free photography exhibit that is the internet.
The opposition argues that photography used to be an art form, and the few photos people had were more significant because of their scarcity. “Photographs used to be something to cherish. A good piece of photography even more so. It seems people are no longer buying photo albums to house pictures of their children cross dressing because they want to ‘be a girl when they grow up,” said Elise Levee of Social Media Today. I get it, the more we have of something, the less we appreciate it. But just like everything else in the world, photography is changing with the times. Media has changed over time from the newspaper, to radio, to TV and so on until we got to where we are now with the Internet. Music has evolved over time, storytelling has changed with time. The culture we live in is an ever-changing one, and I think we need to accept and work with it instead of stubbornly fighting the flow.
I do not think all photography is improving, by any means. I wouldn’t consider the photos my friends post on Instagram as true photography. True photographers take time to know the art, understanding lighting, shutter speed, aperture, the rule of thirds, and so on. Melody Weister of the Digital Pivot asserts, “We’re losing our appreciation of photographers in favor of a love of people who snap a photo with their iPhone.” I disagree. We know the difference. There is something in the human brain that can tell the difference between a beautiful, well-composed photograph and a pixelated image of a Starbucks coffee cup with an Instagram filter on it. We know what is aesthetically appealing, because certain visual stimuli pleases us.
Not only are we aware of good photography, photographers who consider themselves professionals can easily get ahead of the less-knowledgeable amateurs out there. Think about it, people are automatically drawn to incredible photography. Why do you think businesses spend millions of dollars every year in photographic advertisements? If a photographer wants to promote him or herself, all he or she has to do is put high quality photos out there. Those photos will easily surpass the low quality photos that 13-year-old posted with an iPhone.
“The issue of image-making accessibility to the smart phone-wielding public is something professional photographer Adam Lowe is cautiously optimistic about,” according to Jackie Mantey of Columbusalive.com. “Instagram has helped him stay innovative, and images of those he follows have provided ideas of places to photograph clients.” Social media has made learning, innovation and inspiration so much more accessible. Since we are surrounded by images, it is not hard to find inspiration for new projects of our own. Scroll through a couple pages of Pinterest’s photography boards, and try to tell me you were not inspired in any shape or form.
I understand if the idea of the art form of photography changing makes you uneasy. Change is uncomfortable and sometimes we just want to hold on to tradition and what we know. But whether or not you approve, social media has and will continue to change photography. That’s just the way it is. So you can either hang back and complain that photography is getting worse, and social media is destroying the art form, or you can jump on the new opportunities to create new and original things as a true artist would.
