Is Instagram Dictating the Way we shoot?

Have you ever found yourself cropping images for Instagram? There isn’t anything wrong with that I suppose. I mean if you are cropping images after taking them for the purpose of it displaying better for a particular platform then I don’t really see anything wrong with that. What I will never do (outside of an assignment) is let instagram dictate the way I take a photograph. Like the day I start shooting and composing images for a particular platform is the day I’ll hang up my camera.

Agnieszka Orzel | The Barbican | 2020
Image taken on the Sony a7iii and the 35mm Ziess Distagon lens

Instagram is literally the worse place on earth to view images as far as I can tell. We’re literally viewing photos on a tiny little box on a small screen. I have seen images that people have posted on Instagram and thought ‘that’s an ok image’ but it’s only when I’ve stumbled across that very same image on a website and even on one or two occasions as a print that I have realised the image in its entirety. I have seen the story that is being told or I have connected with the subject in the portrait in a way that I never did when I saw it on instagram or viewed it on my smartphone.

With that in mind I have decided to share mores images on this very blog/website. I’m aware that most people these days are viewing images on their smart phones anyhow but possibly the act of viewing on a website rather than on instagram will slow people down a little. And even if only a few people view on their desktops I’d rather one or two people see my images as they were intended to be seen than 50 people skim over it on instagram.