Three ways to get more out of Instagram & My 14 favorite Instagram Accounts in 2020
Three ways to get more out of Instagram
Social media plays a big role in our online lives, we can’t deny that. It has also become increasingly more difficult and unpractical to live without media like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Twitter. However, we are the captains of our own ship, and we still have a choice in HOW and IF we use these applications. As a photographer, social media are valuable tools, both from a inspirational and a business point of view. Instagram has been on my phone for a good couple of years now, but somehow I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with it. And you know why? Because the way I was using Instagram was just wrong! Therefore, I’ve sat down and really changed my way of using this neat application. Here are three ways to help you get more out of Instagram:
Delete a big chunk of noise: I feel like some accounts tend to make you feel bad about your own life, not being so perfect, not being on a tropical beach, and so on. It’s one of the major downsides of social media, and the psychological power that it yields. Help yourself to focus on the bright side of your life by removing content that makes you feel *** about yourself.
Stop the comparison and start the inspiration: When I started using Instagram, I was predominantly following people from my field of work (wedding photography). In my experience, this is neither constructive, nor inspirational. Not only does it lure you into following certain trends within your specific fields of work, it could also make you drift away from your own vision, consciously or unconsciously. It makes it very easy to compare your work to the work of other people, because it’s so closely related. And be honest: most likely you are following people who you think are way better than you. So, after scrolling for a while, you might even feel sad and overwhelmed knowing there is so much stunning work out there.
Then the topic of inspiration. I’ve learnt through experience that it is much easier to create unique art when it’s inspired by something completely different to what you are creating. Based on that, I started to add more diversity to my feed by following more photographers of nature, travel, fashion and street life. When you do that, you can start trying to take the inspiration drawn from other fields of photography into your own photography.
Use saved folders: Ever since I started saving inspirational content into Instagram’s ‘Saved’ folder, I find it one of the easiest and quickest way to get myself back in flow during a full day of shooting, or right before a shoot when you ‘black out’. Luckily it doesn’t happen too often, but when it does, it’s such a great tool! You can click on the little button on the right side of the forwarding button to save posts, and even save them into different folders:
Illustration of where to find the SAVE option on Instagram.
My 14 favorite Instagram Accounts in 2020
It can be really hard to discover Instagram accounts that really align with your aesthetic eye, and at the same time motivate you to pick up your camera and start creating . Luckily, Instagram is constantly working on ways to provide you with content that might be interesting to you. You can also create a more enjoyable feed yourself by following specific hashtags. For example, a hashtags that makes my feed more interesting and diverse is #filmcommunity. Instagram will tell you every now and again what hashtags the photos you liked had in common. That could be a hashtag worthy of following, for you specifically. Through this method, I have discovered some amazing accounts this year, and in case you might not already know about them: here is a list of 14 photography Instagram accounts worth following:
1. @pc.koublis
3. @jeremysnell
6. @colorpalette.cinema
7. @etczine
8. @life_framer
11. @nowness
12. @all__minimal
13. @portbox
14. @theogosselin
That’s it! Hopefully that inspires you! If you are curious to see how these pages inspire me and how that translates into my own portrait and wedding work, have a look at my portfolio on Instagram:
