I go through cycles with the social media side of photography. Sometimes I’m excited and driven to share stories, and other times I go on a months-long hiatus not because I’m out of internet range, but because I just don’t see the point. I still spend time browsing and liking, but I have no drive to post anything. Nothing’s good enough, or worth the effort. Until I miss the community of shared inspiration and stories enough to post again, and attempt to post ‘regularly’ for a while. And then the cycle starts over. 

I’m a little frustrated at the moment because there are lots of photos that I’d love to share, but I can’t. They’re tied up in bigger, longer projects that will take months or years to unfold, and I don’t want to ‘waste’ them on social media before their time. I’m busy with my PhD and not getting out enough to have another stream of images to draw from. These all sound like poor excuses for not posting anything, but I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how our best work takes time. Time that, if we waste it on force-posting an image a day on instagram, doesn’t get put towards our long term goals and dreams. 

To grow as photographers, as visual storytellers, we have to put time towards these slow-burn projects. Learning new skills, soaking up inspiration, trying new things (failing at new things), and trying again. Working out how to put words and images together for maximum impact. If we get so caught up in looking like we’re doing this work by being constantly present online, then we’re probably not doing the work with enough time and focus to really benefit from it. Constantly sharing images may be rewarding in the short term, but there’s no long-term nutrition in it for our creative selves. We need time to grow, and that can’t happen if we’re distracted. There’s so much constantly happening on social media that it’s easy just to consume and consume, to try and keep up by frantically posting photos. But if we do that, we’re not giving ourselves the space or time to improve our craft.

Personally, I want to break this boom-and-bust cycle of inspiration and depression with social media. Probably because I’m coming at it from the perspective of working on long-term projects (like my PhD!), where busywork is gratifying (I love ticking things off a to-do list), but the truly rewarding things (like publishing papers) takes much deeper, more focused work, and aren’t something you can smash out in an all-night caffeine-fuelled sprint. I’m driven to develop my skills as a visual storyteller, and right now I want to grow in my creative practice while also balancing it with my ‘day-job’ as a researcher (arguably more of a night-job, at least during the field season!). The weird thing is that I feel guilty for disappearing for months, not posting anything, barely engaging apart from a mindless scroll every day. Social media is built for us to get addicted to it, but the short-term rewards aren’t worth losing out on proper growth. 

This has gotten a little rambling. Long story short? I think we should all take time away from the glittering, fast-paced lure of social media to spend time on our creative practice. Spending weeks or months will get better results than spending minutes to create something ‘good enough’ to post.

So if I’m not very present – that’s where I am. Taking time to work on projects that I hope will have bigger impact than a few likes. Working on one or two amazing images rather than a-pic-a-day of passable ones. To present a recipe I’ve spent time perfecting rather than a slapped-together fast-food burger.