The short answer is no. Do not unfollow anybody you are following on Instagram because it will reduce your follower count. If you look at this historical chart from IconoSquare, you can see that anytime I did a mass unfollow of “Followings who don’t follow back,” there was a huge unfollowing back of those who […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Instagram Celebrity
When I was living in Venice, California, a really good friend gave me some great advice. “Stay away from the film industry and you’ll stay sane.” I followed his advice, and I still have very positive memories of Southern California. Unfortunately, for my sanity, celebrity has come to Instagram. A gossip and celebrity magazine, Enstarz, […]
Social Media Marketing Is Not Photography
A photographer produces photographs. These can be sold, and if you sell one, you are a professional photographer. Photography is a trade. A photographer uses sales and marketing skills (now often in the form of social media) to sell photographs. What Instagram makes you forget is that photographs are used by brands to sell. Many […]
Milling About Court in Instagram
Following people on Instagram is very similar to what you would find at the Tudor court or in at a networking event in Silicon Valley. The people in corners do not need to mill about. They have the power, and like the king or queen, their focus is limited to a few. The people not […]
No suggested users have followed me back
Yesterday I decided to try to follow all the suggested users by liking really good photos and leaving genuine and sincere comments. At least one of them would follow back, right? Zero followed back. I am ok with this because I already have an audience I love. But if you are a new user what […]
Kodak 120 Portra 400 Film
I really like this film. It’s great for random scenes that you might find while out for the day. The latitude on this film is very wide so you can shoot from ISO 400 to ISO 12000. Here is a sample of Portra pushed to ISO 3200. Here’s Portra 400 pushed to ISO 12000.
My Instagram Process versus My Photographic Process
“Instagram is not photography… It is not a photograph unless you print it (on paper).” I first heard this idea from André Herman. This sort of photographic traditionalism or conservatism employs a subtle metaphysic. How could this be true? It is true in the sense that before photography not every portrait was considered a painting. […]
Cheap Advertising on Instagram
Last year I hosted over 25 photo walks organized through Instagram and about half of these were branded “experiences.” I did this to learn more about photography, marketing and working with brands. It was a fun experience but not so fun realizing I helped generate millions in revenue and just got an Instagram mug from […]
What cannot be expressed in a Tweet
What are the limits of expressing thoughts in Twitter? Here’s a powerful but inefficient (when run) thought that can be expressed on Twitter, a quick sort in Erlang in 126 characters. qsort([]) -> []; qsort([Pivot|T]) -> qsort([X || X
Instagram Updates Explore Page Algorithm
If you haven’t noticed yet, since you haven’t gone to the Explore page in *years*, Instagram has updated its Explore page algorithm. This page has featured only photos with the most likes. This led to poor quality photos by brands and celebrities always being on the Explore page. Thanks to some algorithmic curation, it seems […]