First and foremost, I'd like to explain my current mindset about social media. For anyone pursuing a career in the creative fields like design or photography, social media has become more than a platform for sharing fun vacation photos with friends and family. It can also be a tool to display work, see others' work, and even gain business. That can very easily become overwhelming, and my generation is addicted enough as it is. I know that social media has the potential to help me get to where I want to be, but I'm very careful to keep a certain detachment from it. The amount of likes or shares I get does not determine the quality of my work. I post the work that I want to because I'm proud of it and I want to share it with others. There are a few guidelines I follow to help get my work out there, but I always try and make sure that posting on social media is something that's fun and not something that I feel like I have to do.
In one of my recent semesters of school, one of my classes required us to read a book called Show Your Work by Austin Kleon (Link here!). It was all about this kind of topic, how creators can share the work that they produce after hours of work. It would be a shame to work so hard on a project, and then never show it off. My professor used the example of a design student never posting their work, and when they started to share it, they had people messaging them saying "I didn't know you did design!" At the very least, my family and friends should know what I'm going to school for and what I'm doing. I try and post on Instagram every day, just to make sure that my page is active. It also keeps me accountable in a way, it keeps me creative. But at the same time, I don't take photos or design things exclusively for posting on Instagram.
If you scroll way back through my Instagram, you'll see how many phases I have gone through when it comes to themes. Themed threads are supposedly a way to bring traffic to your page because they are visually pleasing. I have never had much luck with these, so my only "theme" is to add white borders on my photos (to assure that the whole image can be seen despite Instagram's size restrictions) and to post in threes. The screenshot below is unbalanced right now, so the rows are off by one. Even so, you can see that there are three pictures of the chocolate chip biroche and the croque madame. When I add another post, they will all flow together as a row of three images from one shoot.
I take most of my Instagram photos with my DSLR, so I can't import them straight to my phone. I usually want to do some retouching first anyways. I use the desktop app for Adobe Lightroom on my laptop and export the RAW images as JPGs before uploading them to a folder on my Dropbox so I can access them on my phone. It's tedious, but I don't have a whole Apple setup where I could utilize their Airdrop feature. I'll save the photos to my phone, retouch more if necessary with the Lightroom mobile app, add the white border with Whitagram, and post!
As for other social media platforms, I'm not nearly as active. Every time I upload a blog post, I share it to my Facebook and Twitter and post about it on Insta Stories if I remember. My Instagram and Twitter handles are the same if you want to go see what I'm up to there, the username is @/hswrightphoto (Here are links for my Instagram and Twitter)
I also like to use social media as a source of inspiration, whether that be photo or design inspiration or life inspiration. Other than following family and friends, some of my favorite accounts are:
@shutupandgo - I love their platform, they have young people from all over the world sharing their travel stories and experiences to motivate others to shut up and go!
@ _storiesstudio - This is the Instagram account of a design agency based in Barcelona, Spain. I think their work is really beautiful and their page shows it!
@lucancoutts - This is a Toronto-based photographer I've been following for a long time now, he does really cool urban photography and his work is characterized by vibrant colors and surreal landscapes. Think of the visuals in the movie Blade Runner.
So this post was a little behind the scenes of my social media and a bit about my mindset behind it. I like the system I have going now, I think I have a good balance of work and fun. One of the links up there goes to my Instagram account if you want to go have a look, the "serious" posts go on my feed and I sometimes put snippets of my day on my Story. Thanks for reading!
xx, Hannah
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