The Social Image — what makes a photo work on social media?
What works and what doesn’t? Some photos seem born for social media while others fall flat, failing to engage, impress or inspire. But what is the difference? This article is my best attempt at an answer.
With a certain futuristic awe, I curiously unpacked my first digital camera (a 3 megapixel Sony Coolpix) in 2002. I ventured onto Facebook in 2008 and started dabbling in Instagram around 2013. By late 2020, I’ve taken and edited thousands upon thousands of photos, personally and professionally. And I can confidently tell you that the following photo — while technically decent enough — would not work on your social media profile.
Why wouldn’t this “installation shot” of Benedikte Bjerre’s 2020 artwork I DID DID I work? Hopefully, that should be very clear at the end of this article. But first… the footnotes.
What, you may ask, do I presume to mean by “work”? Am I implying there’s some objective measure of social media success that we should all aspire to? Well, no… but also: yes. Now, on your personal accounts, let no one tell you what you can or cannot do. Maintain an invitation-only profile with darkly abstract shots of your cat’s tail — indeed, let a thousand dimly lit flowers bloom. But those who manage brand accounts (be it for bike stores, NGOs, or public institutions) almost always do so with a purpose, and that purpose is usually to increase awareness of a cause or of the brand itself.
In other words, there’s an overall goal which means that your work can be measured in terms of quality which typically (although perhaps unfairly) translates into engagement or reach. A person’s screenspace is extremely contested and you are competing for his or her attention with the rest of the world. For the competitively inclined that may sound like fun, but it can also be a tough and rather unsentimental business.
Also, am I really implying that social media photography is a genre altogether different from the time-honed art of photography more generally? Absolutely not. The principles of lighting, editing, focus, and composition of course remain the same, but social media — due to their specific context of reception––demand an emphasis on certain photographic characteristics.
The characteristics, I believe, are related to Decodability, Motivation, Spontaneity, Identification, and Nowness and we’ll go through them below.
The context of reception
Very few, probably quite odd, people take to social media to follow brands. Our social curiosity draws us towards people, opinions, emotions and sometimes towards inspiration and escapism. Note the absence of the word marketing on this list and indeed the word branding.
If you go on social media to sell or convince those who care little about you or your product (or who feel they know enough about it or have plenty of alternatives) you are sailing into the wind.
As a rule, social media users are not looking to learn new facts and they certainly don’t log on to to learn what your institution wants per se. Rather, the expectation is of a social space filled with human beings, and if learning is to happen there must be an emotional, human sounding-board.
In the early days of social media, much ink was spilled over how to define these new-fangled platforms. One I always found useful was that of the cocktail party – a place you go only if you find it amusing or rewarding, i.e. a place you go of your own free will. At this hypothetical cocktail party no-one is required to interact with anyone in particular and certain behaviour types are rewarded with attention: If you have interesting things to say and if you’re a competent conversationalist, i.e. one who masters turn-taking, who knows when to talk and when to listen.
But also one who isn’t blatantly self-promoting, goes into lengthy narratives about things irrelevant to the listener or embarks on long, pre-prepared speeches with little warning. It is these — decidedly human – qualities that brands must master (or, if you will, simulate) to make any headway in this social space.
But equally importantly, social media users browse with acute discrimination. Our feeds are quite full, thank you very much, and the time allotted to the initial estimation of relevance is measured in milliseconds. It’s not a painting in a well-lit gallery, it’s not a photo in a book you’ve already deemed worth buying. Rather, it’s an image that must catch the immediate attention of a social animal.
Decodability
This photo of a late night event at the national gallery of Denmark has multiple problems:
Technically speaking it’s not unbalanced (i.e. it doesn’t tilt to either side) and nor is it (mostly) out-of-focus. Even the color scheme is relatively pleasant with its purplish hues. But what is it a photo of, exactly? The motif is a mess, which means you won’t easily understand what you’re seeing and, importantly, you won’t know where to start looking. The photo lacks what graphical designers might call a visual hierarchy; a starting point for your eye.
In photography a visual hierarchy is usually established through simplification (removing extraneous objects, either before or after the shot), lighting (making sure the central element is lit up), depth-of-field (placing the central element in focus and less important elements out of focus), or composition (placing central elements in positions that naturally — or by convention–attracts the eye). Let’s look at a few examples.
In this almost minimalist shot, the focus is clearly on the pastry, for many reasons:
- There are very few competing elements
- The server’s arms almost form an arrow pointing to the plate
- The plate and pastry light up as a glowing warm object in a generally cool image (this effect was enhanced in editing)
- The pastry is on the plane of focus and there’s a relatively shallow depth-of-field (the server’s left hand is noticeably out-of-focus).
- The pastry is placed on (or close to) an intersection of frames in the well-known rule-of-thirds grid
In the same vein, the highly selective lighting here serves to strongly highlight the sculpture slightly right of center (and to blur a large number of elements that might have made for a confusing image). Meanwhile color and composition singles out the photographer placed almost dead center. The angle of the camera and the direction of the gaze of the sculpture (placed along a line in the rule-of-thirds) creates a strong double focus.
Here, the two foreground figures are placed in a rule-of-thirds intersection. But more importantly, the curving path leads the eye towards the museum entrance – a pull enhanced by the direction of all three walking figures.
There’s no creative lighting or strong editing here but the image is nevertheless very easy to decode (if one were to make a slight edit, it might be to remove the three short barrier sticks on the path – they arguably block the implied direction of the walkers).
All three images would probably work well on social media in the sense that they are very easily decoded. Another way to think of this is through the concept of choice. For the photo to be easily decoded the photographer must make a clear choice (indeed many clear choices). A very useful beginner’s rule of photography is to get as close to the motif as you possibly can, but the slightly more advanced principle is to avoid the mid-distance — you’ll want to get up close or further away, to avoid the compromise and make a clear choice.
Motivation
Why did you take the photo? Ideally you didn’t just press the release button at random and then post the result. Something special must have happened for you to take the picture at that particular angle at that particular time — at least if you expect others to care.
Your motif can’t just be an always-accessible, timeless scene that anyone could (arguably) have shot if they only wanted. Maybe the lighting was unique? Or a lady in a red dress walked by matching the last rays of the setting sun? Or the moon was framed evocatively for a brief moment between tall buildings?
Anybody could take a photo of Christen Købke’s A Rocky Coast, Capri. After Sunrise but this is the moment where a person who’s hair matched the painting’s colour scheme took a closer look.
Similarly, this photo is made far more interesting by the presence of a fast-moving figure in a long jacket.
In other words, a photo must be “motivated” by being somehow non-mundane. It has to be taken on a special occasion where something specific happened.
Spontaneity
Thirdly, the photo should emit a certain spontaneity to avoid seeming too contrived or over-done. Ideally, the viewer should technically have been able to make the same shot given effort and fortunate circumstances.
This is a tricky balance. You want your photo to stand out but you don’t want it to look like it was taken from an elaborately planned marketing campaign.
The following photos, while certainly striking, arguably err on this account [note: Instagram embed isn’t working at the moment, so you’ll have to follow the links].
https://www.instagram.com/p/BzFqGOBFkbx/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CEfOpMXBd4A/
And this one – although it’s certainly a matter of taste – seems somewhat overdone to my eyes:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CI5-LdCCLj3/
To work best, a photo must be “real”, that is it must be realistic. This is why editing must be kept under control — of course you can edit away all you want, but the finished image can’t look too edited.
Identification
Perhaps the most obvious principle of the social image is that it contains people. These people may move, act, or simply work to establish scale. Arguably, they serve to “place the viewer in the picture” as an object of identification. As a viewer, you can easily imagine what it would be like to be part of the scene.
Here’s a relatively nice-looking night scene. It’s visually ok, but it’s not particularly inspiring:
Another example. Not unpleasant, just somehow… empty.
Even in the following shots, where the person is somewhat ornamental, it’s easy to see the contrast to the previous photos:
We are social animals and our eyes are drawn to people. Somebody doing something is one of the most immediately interesting things you can put in your picture.
Can it be overdone? Of course. But as a general rule: Always add people.
(Damn it — there really, really, should have been someone standing on that balcony in the photo below).
Nowness
Finally, your photo – as a rule – should be fresh. They named it Instagram for a reason and we want to see how each other are doing currently, not historically.
For brands, a common killer of the social vibe is scheduling, i.e. pre-composing a post to be published at a later date. It’s highly convenient, but in the user’s feed it’s a strong non sequitur. In our cocktail party analogy, it would be highly inappropriate to suddenly interrupt a conversation by mentioning a completely out-of-context topic. Indeed, intense scheduling is like a party guest who simply rattles off pre-prepared little speeches with little or no interest in the flow of the conversation.
This is why, as an ideal, you should strive for photos that are obviously fresh. By now social media are full of contrived archive shots and this makes decidedly fresh motifs stand out. Thus, if you can catch and post something obviously going on right now (an impenetrable fog, a startling sunrise, a party going on this very night) don’t hesitate.
Look, I just drove by and the fog (which you can see outside your own window) has swallowed the Danish parliament entirely! 👇
Just now, we’re bringing out the big balloons in the museum garden — drop by and have a look! 👇
Today’s surprise sunshine casts our cafe in deep shadow and you should come by and see for yourself. 👇
To be clear, I’m not arguing you should talk more about the weather (please don’t) but I am arguing that you should try to speak to the current moment and not curate a strange stream of messages that don’t address what’s likely to engage, interest or worry your followers right now.
Against the tide
As an institution or company on social media you’re out of your natural habitat. Unless you’re an unreasonably hip startup, organisational pressure will almost always favour the scheduled, the safe and the non-controversial — this is simply how most institutions work.
Hopefully without offending anyone, I’d venture that you can see this pressure asserting itself on a multitude of brand profiles. Museums – extremely knowledgable and with strong story-telling experience — sometimes become predictable, even bland, on their social accounts. The extremely safe can be pretty, but it doesn’t actually inspire depths of emotion.
In this article, I’ve outlined visual strategies to avoid being blandly corporate. There are – of course – no rules and I’m certainly not implying that a successful image must always meet all five criteria.
In the end we all know what to do. After all, we all have extremely deep experience being a person, and that is really the core experience you need to succeed on social media. The challenge, of course, is to translate this experience into a kind of persona representing your institution and to resist the pressure towards the institutional comfort zone. In essence: Don’t let anyone make you forget everything you know, just because you’ve arrived at the office.
Best of luck to you, and I can’t wait to see your social photos!
Note: Many of the ideas above were originally developed by Mille Maria Steffen-Nielsen Smith (thanks!)
