orphenshadow

some people wont tell you anything at all, so there is that. But if it bothers you and makes you think differently of that person, then perhaps you should just unfollow them and maybe follow photographers who are more open to teaching for free.

My friend, you are doing fine. I can't pull up Imgur at work, but I don't think I need to. You are just a year in. This is kind of to be expected, don't let it get you down.

If you can manage one photo a month that you are happy with then that is a good goal. You don't see the tens of thousands of bad shots everyone takes every day.

I picked the hobby back up about 6 months ago and I'm sitting at about 14k images taken and out of all of those there are probably about 5 that I consider great, and a bunch that I consider to be okay.

Also, don't discount the ones that don't speak to you today, you may review them 6 months from now and find a gem.

Another thing that has helped me is to spend some time studying art, color theory, and composition. I found it a lot easier to learn from the perspective of someone who paints/draw and then translate those concepts into framing an image.

I have small business cards with my portrait, and a QR code to my Instagram as well as a link to my Link tree on the back. There is a line on the card for the person to put their name on it. If they want a photo, I simply write their name on the card, and take a picture of them with the card, and then tell them to DM me on Instagram and once I've had time to edit I'll send them a copy. The picture with the name makes it super easy to go back and find which pictures belonged to who. I've only really had to do this a few times, most of the time ppl will just follow the insta and wait for the post.

Threads is the best I've found, since the last update it's been doing an amazing job at putting my photos and posts in front of other ppl. I also do a lot of street/documentary work and the bonus benefit of engaging with ppl who will then also click over to insta and follow you on both platforms. Most of my growth the past week has been organic growth from just commenting and interacting with posts on threads. I use it more as a place to post whatever I want, and more behind the scenes type content. Since its more a community of peers and not potential customers its perfect for what I as a hobbiest am looking for.

for photography, Threads is the new hotness. the amount of engagement on that platform is insane, I've been trying to build my Insta for a few months and I've struggled but I just broke 500 followers, Such a small milestone I know, but still I was proud. within a few hours on threads i had 120 followers and an average of 10-15 likes on all my posts, people making comments. The algorithm on threads does a good job of grouping you with other photographers etc. A bonus side effect is every threads user has a little icon with their Instagram so once you meet and engage with ppl on threads its a natural progression to also follow each other on isntagram.

As far as Instagram is concerned my strategy has been to engage with my followers content, post a story with a link to every new post i make, and once or twice a week crop a bunch of my shots into 9x16 and use one of the templates to make a quick video slideshow of photos. I get way more engagement with the videos and a few followers but its super slow growth. Almost not worth bothering with.