🎧Why You Should Give Up On Instagram 📸

Photography is Dead Season 2 Episode 1

Photography is Dead is my essay podcast series about the current state of the photography world where I talk about different topics plaguing us in the modern era. You can listen to all of Season 1 for FREE on your favorite podcast app in the Double Negative (a photography podcast by Will Malone) feed. Season 2, however will be PAID content here exclusively on my Substack. I’m dropping the first episode for FREE, but starting with Episode 2, you must become a paid member to listen.

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“Don’t be a quitter.” Is something I remember my dad telling me when I wanted to quit T-ball as a 7 year old. This might be a good lesson for a young child who is easily frustrated, but overall, there was no chance of me pouring my life into professional T-ball…or any sort of ball for that matter. But it’s the principle of the thing. I now watch my daughter get angry when she doesn’t nail drawing the perfect heart with her crayons, but I tell her, “Don’t give up. Take a breath and try again.”

As an adult though, quitting takes on an entirely new light. Quitting can be freedom. Quitting can be self-awareness. Quitting could be a gateway to a new beginning.

Despite being urged to not be a “quitter” as a kid, I still quit all kinds of stuff. You didn’t see me playing T-ball or any sort of ball after age 8. I quit guitar. I quit Tae Kwon Do. I wish I had quit college instead of sticking it out for a degree that I don’t even know the location of at the moment. (It was last seen at my mom’s house I think) None of these things stuck. The one thing that did stick, however, was photography. I was given an Olympus point and shoot digital camera when I was 17, and despite my best efforts, I have yet to quit that pursuit.

“Quitting” doesn’t exist in a vacuum as an adult. As a kid, you ask your parents “Why?” And the answer is usually just, “Because I said.” Those kind of answers don’t work in the real world. I quit my last real job in 2018 because I wanted to build my own thing, and it was in direct opposition to working a 40+ hour a week job at the time. I quit doing wedding photography because I don’t like weddings, so it was hard to sell myself as a champion of documenting, you know…weddings. I quit real estate photography because it was too much time for the money I was getting back. The only way to make real estate photography really work is to focus on luxury (which I didn’t have a ton of access to) or volume, meaning I’d have to have, like 90 realtors on a speed dial (I had a nightmare about that once)

So, I guess, you could say I’m a quitter. And to that I say, “So be it.”

But over the past few months, I’ve been weighing quitting yet another thing I’ve probably put too much time into for the return: Instagram

There’s been a lot of digital ink spilled over complaining about the state of Instagram, and I don’t want to talk about much of the obvious issues people have with the platform. (You can just go to Threads and scroll for 5 seconds and find those)

Rather, I’d like to talk about the sensible reasons why Instagram just doesn’t work for the modern shape of social media and getting your photography out there.

First, Instagram as a product is confused. It doesn’t know why it exists or who it wants on the platform (aside from..everyone it can get), which makes the work of understanding how to be successful on the platform next to impossible for most people. Instagram started as a sharp tool for photo-sharing, and the mission got muddied once Facebook bought it and needed to squeeze it for all the capital it can. It has simply thrown things at the wall to see what sticks, which has made Instagram a Cravensworth’s Monster of Snapchat, TikTok, Youtube, Facebook, and whatever is left of Instagram from 2011. Each of those things I just named are successful social media platforms in their own right that just focus, largely, on doing one thing very well.

Compare it to Youtube, for instance: Youtube does long-form video really well. More than anything though, it does search really well. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stared into the open hood of my truck in total befuddlement and consulted Youtube for the answer. It’s really easy to search something on Youtube and find what you need pretty quickly.

Well, guess what? Instagram has grafted a decent search engine to their platform as well. The only difference? Youtube is a website that has built itself on value and useful information. No one goes to Instagram for advice, info, or value (definitely don’t go to instagram for advice about anything by the way). They go to instagram purely for amusement. Useful information just isn’t a valuable currency on Instagram like it is on Youtube.

Next, Instagram was never for photographers. I don’t know why people believe this. It was always for regular people sharing their iPhone photos of their memories and travel. It was essentially a better designed, more simple Facebook. It was an answer to the busy-ness and chaos of what Facebook became in that time. If you were a photographer, it was an enormous hassle to get photos from your camera to your phone and then to Instagram. One would be shamed for posting a photo using a professional camera at the time. Instagram was designed as a level playing field for everyone to share their life through their iPhone, and now, it’s the opposite of that in every way.

I’ve used Instagram pretty heavily since basically day one, and there was no window, no moment in time, and no sense at any point that the platform was embracing photographers. If it was meant for photographers, it probably wouldn’t have started as a platform that forced you to post your photos cropped into a square.

Yes, Instagram has since created many photographers, but I think that is just an accidental outgrowth of originally branding Instagram as an image sharing platform.

Fast forward to now, and the CEO of Instagram, the way too online Adam Mosseri has basically just come out and said there’s a supply problem on Instagram now, which is what is limited everyone’s reach. Essentially, there’s too many people making content and not enough people looking at it. Instagram is over-saturated to the max. It has succeeded in it’s main goal of getting as many people as it can to post engaging content so that it has a vehicle for all the ad space it needs to keep the lights on. That’s the game. Sell ad space. That’s it. If there’s no content or the content sucks, no one wants to buy ad space. Simple as that.

Instagram has done a really good job of staying relevant despite everything I’ve just listed. I’ve been largely negative so far, but I know some people who have been really successful at getting reach on Instagram in the past. The problem is that many of those people are chasing the dragon, including myself. And much like chasing the dragon in real life, it’s bad for business. Not Instagram’s business, necessarily, but ours.

Let’s talk about me and you.

It feels like Instagram is really important, and maybe it is to some people. I have known people in the past who use Instagram as their main marketing engine of their photography business. I’ve gotten print sales and client work from Instagram. Can’t remember when the last time that happened was, but it has served that function for me before. I think TikTok took a big bite out of that for many people, but regardless, Instagram has some utility. But I think to many of us, Instagram takes up outsized space in our theoretical marketing plans when it isn’t really delivering the results anymore.

What’s confused me about the last couple years is this desire to grow via short-form video on Instagram. People I have seen successfully lean into Reels heavily for their photography work have amassed a much bigger following than before, but for what? Follower count doesn’t have the importance it used to have when a feed is algorithmic and individual pieces of content engagement is what matters. But also, pay structure is unclear, at best. If you really dive into why someone wants desperately to grow via short-form video, what we find are largely, just vanity metrics. Reels seems great if we are good at building a funnel to purchase our product or service, but if we’re not doing that, then what are we doing?

I’m a long-form guy, in a short-form world. I’ve never been able to make short-form video work for me. I find it unsatisfying and too difficult to be good at. But, I’ve definitely given it the old college try, for probably way too long. Every once in a while I have a clip that works for a short vertical video, but overall, I struggle to make short-form video with consistency.

But that works out great for me, because the market actually rewards long-form minded people way more nowadays. You wouldn’t know it from how people talk about the need for Instagram, but it’s true.

Through my Youtube Channel, I make a 30 minute video every week where I just talk directly to the camera about photography.

And I get paid for it.

I don’t make a ton of money from Youtube, but the amount per month has been steadily growing and becoming more consistent. In two years I have surpassed all the money I have made on Instagram since 2011.

In fact, to add insult to injury, Instagram alerted me that I got some money from their bonus program. A whopping 44 cents! Just a little bit more and I’ll be able to dive into my riches like Scrooge McDuck.

There’s also Substack. I love to write, and I now have a place where I can instantly build a newsletter or publication that has the potential to be a business in and of itself.

Both of these platforms are flexing muscles that platforms like Instagram asks us to flex, but it actually goes somewhere. There’s a reason for it. It doesn’t feel like a total grind and waste of time.

I think photographers specifically, need to go through a great re-prioritization of their social media diet. The strategy of just doing everything just doesn’t work anymore. There has to be an actual plan of attack. A strategy.

And for me, Instagram has just felt like a frustrating use of time that gives nothing back. Sure, everyone’s there, but we’re all so entrenched in algorithmic silos that those who once followed me when the feed was chronological are wrapped up in their own universe of Day in the Life videos of their favorite flavor of person.

2011-2025 is 14 years. That’s a long ass time. Do you expect anything to be the same as it was 14 years ago? Why do we expect Instagram to?

Getting our photography to break through is hard enough, why are we making it harder by relying on the same strategies as we did 5 to 10 years ago?

Instagram has made its decision. It has decided it is better for it to be a middling version of other social media platforms that are best in their field, because that’s how they can maintain their ad business. That’s it. They have no real plan, no strategy, no target market. They just want to appeal to everyone.

Sounds like a great way to appeal to no one.