Why no one cares about your Photography (feat. @SimonBaxterPhotography )

this episode is sponsored by Squarespace whether you need a domain website or online store make your next move with Squarespace have you ever noticed that your favorite images the ones you're really excited about because they signify growth in your work just don't seem to get any attention online but the images that you don't really care about ones that are often just a repetition of old tricks that you learned a while back always seem to get a lot of Buzz around them why is that well I've been thinking about that a lot lately and I have a theory that I want to share with you and I hope that in sharing it it will help you to stay on track with your growth as a photographer in fact no matter what sort of artist you are I think this applies let's start by being honest about who it is that's doing all this liking and commenting and interacting on each other's creative output on things like social media online it's mostly beginners isn't it now I'm not saying that to be disparaging at all but I think it's an important fact to begin this conversation with because let's face it there are always way more beginners in any art form always loads of people starting it out trying something new and very few actually reach maturity some just give up because it becomes too tough and they don't see the success or the gains that they really want to see or some sidestep to different disciplines constantly trying new different art forms always being beginners learning new skills but moving on before they reach that full maturity there are way more beginners in any discipline it's also true that those photographers for example who do reach maturity or become professional photographers just have way less time to be interacting around other people's work on things like social media so just remember that most of the interactions the commenting and the liking around your images most of the feedback that you're getting on your work online comes from beginners and that's an important fact to put everything into context that means that most of the people who interact with your images online are usually going to be either new photographers who just picked up cameras and are trying to work out how this discipline works or perhaps their passionate hobbyists who've been doing a little while but don't want to go too deep with photography it's more of a social thing or an artistic expression just for them personally and they're there so that they can pick up tips for their own work to find inspiration so that they can keep growing or maybe to get a bit of a sense of community amongst other photographers and yes amongst that crowd there are also going to be those aggressive few who only ever picked up a camera to get famous or to seek fortune or those few who engage in online trolling to work out their own frustrations and it's important to keep all this in mind to gauge where the responses to your work is actually coming from but for all the good and the bad of it I think it's important to frame these interactions because for me it then answers the question why is it that people seem to go nuts over my more simplistic images but they don't really seem to care about my work the more it matures I'll give you an example I know if I post an image like this it will get a lot of attention it's a simple exposure technique and one which I've talked about many times on this channel and of course it appeals to beginners as something which is eye-catching and exciting as they try and work out how to expose and compose for images like this themselves but when I post more complex more nuanced images like this it gets very little attention or affirmation and may even draw negative comments from people suggesting that I've lost my mojo or why would I post such a boring image the thing is I enjoy both ways of shooting but I know this is a better image and it represents growth for me I was chatting to my friend Simon Baxter the other day who for my money is one of the best Woodland photographers working in the world today and he gave me an example of exactly the same sort of thing that happens in his own work yeah it's it's interesting what we were talking about recently and I was looking back at some of my older images and the ones that kind of you know always sort of seem to have uh a presence in my mind because of the significance that they've they've had in terms of the attention that they've garnered you know look at spooky tree or afraid of time as it was called and uh it's without doubt being one of my most successful images because well I mean just look at it it's graphically striking we've got this gorgeous kind of dead Oak Tree in this beautiful dark Moody environment wonderful light and I remember when I found it I was incredibly excited um but the actual process of making the image was pretty easy to be fair you know you've just got a single subject and you can see why people are drawn to images like that because it gives them something to focus on it's like that's my subject that's what I'm taking a picture of and it then becomes the kind of Technical and methodical process of Photography that very quickly takes over um and the result is just a very nice tree and an extremely kind of captivating setting under glorious light you know I've got this uh image here which I've never published I made it in the summer of this year late summer and I feel it's a it's a not only is it an image that I feel happy with creatively but it says something about the place and that's the thing is that I'm wanting like I said before I want to speak for the trees for the Woodland and in that process you're making images which say something about the character about you know what really makes that place special yes we have particular trees in this one which you could classify as subjects but the small details in this um they command the viewer to spend a bit more time with them I think to fully appreciate it and the whole nature of social media is people don't want to spend time lingering on one post it's like oh that's nice double tap move on and it promotes scrolling doesn't it a very kind of bite-sized consumption of things and it has some lovely little details in terms of lots and lots of different elements going on we've got Deadfall we've got different species different layers of color there's a little bit of mist in the background and a little bit of mystery um but the way these things all connect where one branch merges into another where we've got intersections you could just move one you know 2 Ines and the whole thing would just fall apart and I love that Precision it's not just about position it's saying this is what makes this Woodland interesting and not only that but from an ecological perspective it's embracing some of the things that make a woodland healthier normal such as decay W such as Scruff such as things which some people see as perhaps distractions but I I don't see them as distractions I see them as things is that this is what Woodland is this is what nature is I think an important part of the growth and maturity in in photography is confidence it really is I mean I spent a lot of time kind of questioning every little decision that made all my pictures and it set me on a kind of path of you know self analysis and being very judgmental of my work but it comes to a point where you just have a bit more confidence in what you're trying to achieve and it's very easy to become distracted by what's working or what you perceive to be working based on Engagement online so if I was caught into that trap I'd just stifle my own creativity because well that works I'm going to photograph more spooky trees more laone trees more Mist more rays of light because that's clearly what people want um but then I realized I that's not actually what I want you know I've spent so much time in Woodland in conditions that we perceive as not being conducive to successful Woodland photography and I love all those moments and yet why did I disregard them from a photography point of view because if I love being here and I like what I'm seeing why am I not making pictures and yes the quieter yes they don't have that initial impact but the results says something about how how I want to celebrate the Woodland and you know do I do I post these no do I feel the need to not not really because I think that's quite a powerful thing in itself because if you post them thinking well I just don't care I'm just going to post these anywhere and I don't care what people say you know if you don't get response then maybe this is just something niggling in the back of your mind where you think oh maybe this isn't as good as I thought it was whereas I think what's what I tend to do is I still make those images of the lone trees the standout trees are beautiful old ancient characters um because I'll Always Love You Know finding those because that's part of the part of the enjoyable process is the exploration that sense of Discovery but every now and then if I make something which I feel as if is I've had to work very hard for it um because it's under quite flat conditions or it's a very kind of precise composition or is something like this which is it Embraces the chaos then I'm quite happy to keep it to myself because I know there'll come a point where I'm given the platform to share it and if I share it on something where on a platform which isn't really meant for that type of image I think I end up over egging it and trying to sort of sell it too hard in the description and you shouldn't have to justify your work that way just save it for a time when you're given the opportunity such as an exhibition or a book to display it as it was always intended and this is why context is so important because if we get worked up about the attention we receive around our work online or we get upset by the lack of it it could start to shape our journey in completely the wrong way let's be really honest what it could do is it could see us making simplistic images forever never growing as a photographer just trying to please beginners online I read something the other day that I thought might be quite a good analogy for how we think about where we put the value in our work I'm finally getting around to reading quiet by Susan Kane which a bunch of you have actually recommended to me and at the beginning of the book she talks about how in the late 1800s and early early 1900s it seemed that as a society we really valued character in human beings and in all our literature and the way that we wrote about ourselves at the time we put on a pedestal those with quiet higher moral values than the rest of us but from the 1920s onwards as people moved on mass into cities and were aggressively competing for the same jobs a new type of human being was born in our society the salesman and if you wanted to get to the top of that pile you had to have the gift of the gab the ability to grab people's attention and to be able to walk up to strangers and convince them to buy your products so as we made lists of the kind of human beings we wanted to be a new set of traits started to take precedence traits like honesty loyalty duty honor reputation morals and manners were replaced by attributes like energetic forceful dominating attractive stunning magnetic and fascinating in the book she uses this to describe the difference between character on the one hand and personality on the other where personality is often quite flashy and loud and shouty and attention seeking but it's also quite shallow and usually cynically just trying to sell you something but on the other hand Carr off and has more depth and meaning to it but it's usually also quieter which means it's less immediately popular and gets a lot less attention in our modern world is this maybe a good metaphor for the work that we produce as photographers or artists of any sort where at the beginning we're really trying to draw attention to what doing we want eyeballs on it and so we're using flashy techniques to try and bring people to what we're doing and there's nothing wrong with that by the way but at some point we decide that we want to put some of the techniques away and build more depth and meaning in our work and we're not as worried about how much attention it's drawing immediately we know that that kind of choice has a cost and the reason I'm telling you this is so that you'll put that online chatter in context it's so tempting isn't it to keep making work that pleases the beginners I mean I can shoot a diag no Shadow on a wall all day long because I know people like it but if I do that if I make that decision I stall my own growth as a photographer and I don't want that I really want to keep building work with more depth and more meaning with more character perhaps than personality personally I'm committed to growing as a photographer to keep trying to build more and more depth into the images that I make and to put behind me the simple devices that I used at the beginning that I know were very attention grabbing but they don't necessarily serve the story I'm trying to tell today and I know that has a cost I understand that that will be less popular amongst the beginners who hang out on social media platforms but that makes sense right when really nuanced and meaningful work from some of the greats through history is posted on social media it often gets overlooked in favor of the simpler louder images that are being posted on their daily so is it really such a terrible thing that your images are also being overlooked of course we have to acknowledge that it might be because your work isn't very good yet and you've just started on your journey and you've got a long way to go keep going but maybe if you've been at this for a while it's actually because your work is now too grown up for the short-term attention span of social media perhaps you've reached that point in your journey where you've been posting for a while but the likes just aren't coming in anymore and the comments and compliments that used to arrive just don't seem to be around as much what if that meant that far from you losing it or having taken a wrong turn somewhere it's actually meant that your work has reached a new level where it's no longer as interesting to the beginners who hang out on social media because it's got more depth and Nuance but that work now appeals to more seasoned photographers those who really know what they're looking at that will always be a smaller quieter group online so what if over time less attention around our work actually means more growth for us as photographers what if boring to the internet actually signals forward for us as artists just a thought thanks again get to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode if you need a new website or a domain they're a fantastic option I've used them myself as my website of choice for over a decade now the biggest reason I chose Squarespace was because I wanted a very clean and minimally designed template where my images did the talking and not the design around it and because I'm no designer and I also know that minimalism is quite a difficult thing to do I looked at Squarespace and saw that their templates were very clean put together by professional designers I also needed something that was super easy to use use because I'm no web design expert but I found the back end really really simple to just drag in text blocks and image blocks and Galleries and videos and contact sheets and even build a store in no time at all and when my website went live I love the fact that it's my work on there that does the talking start your free trial today at squarespace.com and go to squarespace.com Tucker to get 10% of your first [Music] purchase [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Sean Tucker

Views: 142,896

Keywords: street photography, woodland photography, landscape photography, social media, instagram, sharing photography online, online attention, character vs personality, susan cain, quiet, growing your photography, photography

Id: HB1g5jv6spU

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 12 2023