I’m starting blogging again and why I hate content creation.

When I first got into photography I was immensely inspired by some of the old masters.
The thing that drew me into their work was the unique way they managed to capture moments, there was a certain kind of energy in all of their photos that felt like they captured something that was gone the second after. Besides that the stories they told with their images were very inspiring to me, they showed me worlds I didn’t know and the beauty in all kinds of people and culture.

Fast forward a few years and my own photography business started to take off, it was -I think- thanks to the rise of Instagram that I was able to grow my business so quickly and grow a nice client base within a few years.
After a few years of doing commercial work, working with these bigger brands became quite overwhelming. Their carelessness towards images and how they used them started to annoy me.
I started to shift more to working with smaller businesses.
I’ve been working like this for a few years now, a lot of the clients became friends and I still enjoy working with them every day.

However, social media and the use of photography and video continued to evolve.
Let me explain what I mean.

Instagram started out as a user based platform where you could share your images with your friends, reply on it and like them.
But by now we all know Instagrams direction has changed and most of the images we see now are either meant to sell us something or meant to make us engage with the creator or brand.
As a regular user, you are a minor addition stuck between this content.
The result is images or video that evoke a quick reaction, think about photos with obvious main models with blurred out backgrounds, bright colors and light, or dramatic poses.
The description usually asks a questions or ask for you to reply in the comments.

Video content is usually really quick and snappy, with “trending music” and puts as much (or as little) information in as short a time as possible (you want to keep the viewer glued to their screen).
Specifically photography videos, are usually about unreal settings (that are often staged, we’ve all seen the street portrait videos) or really simple tricks or hacks to “improve your photography”. Everyone tries to chase the current trends and this results in waves of the same content over a period of time.

My problem with this is that all of this content is meant to revoke a reaction within a few seconds, and then send the viewer on to the next piece of content. Keeping you in an endless stream of advertisement or engagement. All in service of the social media platform and their advertisers. Anything that is not able to be monetized will basically not get any airtime on the platform.

There is no time for context, layers or holding a viewers prolonged focus.
Now all of the above has been talked about a lot already, but apart from social media shaping the way we view content, it has also shaped the way we have produced it.
And the latter I feel annoyed by the most, because over the years this has also shaped me as a photographer and now I realised that this is not the kind of photography I want to be doing and all of these years feel like wasted time, spent in practicing fast-food photography, easily consumed by the viewer.

*music quote

“Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here’s American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!”

As a photographer I feel not only the need to express myself through my photography, but also to teach the audience something.
And

The kind of photography that is open, multi-interpretable, in the moment and storytelling.
I love the magic moments that only appear for a few seconds. I like how multiple images can give me an insight into a world that I do not know at all.
But this kind of work is usually not easily consumable like the images on social media, but I personally feel overwhelmed by the amount of images solely created to sell us things.

I to, am responsible for this, and it is not that I think there is no place for commercial images, I have many clients that I enjoy for working on a commercial basis. I love working with them and I will try to do so for many more years.

But I feel like there is to little depth and the main crowd needs to see more images that spark their imagination, make them feel something or challenge them to think about an image instead of triggering them to quick likes or engagement.

So who am I to say this when all I do is work? And don’t go out myself, exploring my own vision or stories?
So I’ve decided to take a camera with me everyday from now on.