I’ve been taking Instagram way too seriously

This sometimes had surprising results when an image I loved barely got a like. Or when an image I didn’t think much of at the time received a tonne of love. I quickly learned my tastes weren’t universal.

Nevertheless, Instagram was a place I could share work with no expectations or fears of how it would be received. After all, when I started regularly posting my photography, I was working in advertising as a copywriter. So there was no risk in sharing work that might “bomb” or wasn’t aligned with the style of work people expected from my portfolio.

Since becoming a professional photographer and relying on my image-making skills for a living, I’ve found myself treating my Instagram account like a portfolio — instead of the experimental playground it once was. It’s become a sacred place where the only images I’m comfortable sharing are the kinds of images I’m hired to produce. Leading my Instagram account and portfolio to be almost indistinguishable from one another, made up of bold & dramatic portraits.

This sounds ridiculous to say (ok, type) out loud, but posting on Instagram has become something I’ve started to dread. Each time I consider sharing an image I interrogate myself. Is it good enough? Does it align with my style? Would someone hire me to recreate this image? How many likes will it get? This fear and self-censorship is taking the joy out of photography.

While I genuinely love all the images I’ve posted, there’s plenty of work I’ve been afraid to share. And that’s no fun.

This all clicked last week when photographing Toronto-based photographer & filmmaker Justin Poulsen. At the end of every portrait session, I like to try something new. Sometimes this results in a great picture. Sometimes not. But I always learn something. During Justin’s shoot, the sunset started blasting through the studio windows and instead of closing the curtains and continuing our session, I decided to work with it and experiment with long-exposure portraits. The sunlight exposed the image for a quarter of a second while my strobe froze the final moment instantly.

The results were a weird and interesting “stretched” image. Like something you could imagine seeing on a movie poster about time travel. Looking at the back of the camera, Justin and I were both pretty stoked and excited about the results. But after the initial excitement wore off, I became bummed because given how I’ve been treating Instagram, I didn’t know what to do with these portraits. They’re too “arty” too “experimental” too “trendy” too “weird”. It doesn’t fit with the rest of my work.

I got all up in my head.

But that’s when I had the revelation that I’ve been taking Instagram way too seriously and my self-inflicted censorship is taking the fun out of photography. A tad dramatic. But fun is the whole reason I got into this craft in the first place. It’s the way I approached landscape photography in the beginning, then street photography, and now portraiture. It’s what kept me going through early mornings and late nights — the fun of chasing that next amazing image.

Because nothing beats the feeling of surprise and awe when you realise you’ve captured something interesting. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. And these are the images I want to share. Whether they fit into the little niche I’ve carved out for myself or not.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that I’m about to start sharing a broader range of experimental and less-polished work on my Instagram. And once again treat the platform like a playground for sharing work that interests me and to see what resonates.

If an image makes me go “Oh neat!” then it’s going I’m throwing it on my Instagram. Like spaghetti on a digital wall.