If you desire to thrive as a photographer, #deleteinstagram and join ARSBETA.COM instead.
Why do you make photos?
“What you rappers rap for?” – Kanye West
First of all, ask yourself:
Why do you make photos?
I feel the best reason to make photos is to express yourself creatively and artistically. Or more specifically,
To ‘flex’ your artistic power. To share this artwork with others.
Anti-Metrics
This is the problem with Instagram:
You start to quantify your progress and value based on the number of likes and followers you have.
I personally believe that your progress as a photographer/visual-artist should be based on your own inner-metrics. Your own ‘inner scorecard’ (as Warren Buffet calls it). The basic idea is that we should NOT use social media (Facebook/Instagram) as a tool to judge ourselves.
No. If you want honest feedback and constructive critique on your photos, arsbeta.com is the solution.
Don’t feed the beast
The beast is Instagram. The notion I have heard about the ‘social media treadmill’ is this:
You must always upload something to Instagram/Facebook in order to ‘feed the beast’ (algorithm).
The reason why I hate this:
You start to train the algorithm, but the algorithm also starts to ‘train’ you — which makes you a slave to the algorithm and the social media platform.
Invest in yourself and your own platform
Consider– we only have a limited amount of willpower, focus, and attention in a given day.
Would you rather become a ‘digital sharecropper’ by investing in a foreign master/platform (Facebook, which owns Instagram) — or would you rather build your own website/blog platform?
The simple idea:
Build up your own website/blog by uploading and publishing anything to it that you would normally do on Facebook/Instagram.
Do you want constructive critique on your photos?
After about a decade of teaching photography workshops, I’ve discovered that most students love/desire getting honest feedback and critique on their photos. If you want direction and feedback on what direction to take your photography, best to get it from other real-life human beings (NOT AN ALGORITHM!)
This is my vision of ARS:
You upload your photos, and get honest feedback/constructive critique from other (friendly) anonymous people in the ARS community.
To give it a go, start uploading your photos to arsbeta.com
To innovate in your photography, creative isolation is necessary
This is what I believe:
If you truly desire to innovate in your photography and artistic vision, you need to actually DISCONNECT from social media. You must embrace ‘creative isolation’ in order to pave new artistic ground in your own photographic vision.
I can say personally — my greatest photographic growth, innovation, and inspiration derived AFTER I deleted Instagram.
Why? I spent more time shooting for myself, and really questioning myself: “For what do I photograph? Why do I photograph? What is my purpose in photography?”
Do it for yourself
Don’t “do it for the gram”. Do it for yourself.
Pursue photography as a form to express yourself. To communicate what you deem beautiful in the world. Photography and art is a ‘pressing outwards’ (ex+pression) of your own inner-soul, personal aesthetics, and viewpoint(perspective) of the world.
ERIC
ARSBETA.COM
Join the photographic revolution: arsbeta.com