Social Media and my experience with Photography Groups

Obviously social media is a big part of everyday life for most of us. Logically, social media is home to many photography groups. I am a member of several of those groups and thought I’d share some of my experiences with them specifically with regards to the journey of trying to get better.

Before I go down the path of discussing “good” or “bad” I will say this. I continue to be involved in all of the groups I follow on social media. I still post images, I still solicit feedback, and I still give feedback. My point being it is all very supportive and I do get the opportunity to see a bunch of images of various styles and locals. My point in this blog is not to disparage these groups. How could I? I still am actively engaged with nearly all of them. With that said, I would say recently that I’ve also began to see the challenge with them or at least to understand the dynamic within them that, for me at least, hasn’t always been beneficial.

I think the first photography group I joined was the group associated with the “31 Days to Becoming a Better Photographer” class I signed up for through the Digital Photography School website. Jim Hamel was the instructor for this course and he was extremely involved in the facebook group that we posted to as we completed assignments from the course. For me, this was a very educational time frame because I’d do the lesson, post the pictures, and get feedback from other classmates and from Jim himself. And to my earlier point, this is probably the group I remain the most active in even today (it’s a graduates group from those that completed the initial course, but it’s essentially a lot of the same folks).

I think during this growth time of learning aperture, shutter speed, and ISO along with composition and learning some fundamentals in post-processing that Facebook group was really perfect for me. My fellow classmates were really, really good and I learned both from their feedback as well as seeing their images and seeing their feedback.

Since that time I’ve joined several other groups.

To me, the groups are all incredibly supportive. For all the groups that I hear about on social media where you see the hateful comments and the inherent “tear people down” mentality, literally none of the groups I am involved with for photography are like this (on a separate note, I don’t see any of this on social media anywhere I participate. Toxicity has no place in my life, so should I bump up against it I simply remove myself from that community).

To me, this congeniality is my challenge with the groups though. I’ve never (never? ok rarely) posted an image where people said “man Jack, that one really sucks.” Or “wow, you really missed that one!”

Quite the opposite actually. Sometimes I’ll post an image and people work to find the positives. Even if it’s a terrible image, or at least not a very good one.

To be fair, I do the exact same thing. I have no want to offend anyone or hurt anyone’s feelings. Most images I don’t find appealing I don’t comment much on but even if I do it’ll be something like “I really like the Bokeh on this one” or “what a cool scene” or something generic like that. The reality is when I do that I really don’t provide any feedback that might make an image, at least in my eyes, better.

Now, in some ways I do think that’s ok. Who am I to determine if an image is “good” or “less good?” In these groups we almost all advocate for posting images that you like, regardless of what others think. And I support, agree, and believe this. Your photography is just that, yours. If you like an image, regardless of if the “world” tells you it is amazing or it is trash, it IS an image you like and as such it brings value to the only person that matters - you, the photographer.

But still, there are some times when I see an image and I just think “that’s really just not very good” or I’ll see an image and think “man I wish that person would do even a little post processing work,” But I don’t. Sometimes, rarely, I might make a suggestion. Something like “you might want to consider cropping a little more from the bottom” but I invariably say “but regardless of that, great image!”

My other challenge in these groups is that, from my experience, there is no conversation about photography. No discussions about techniques or learnings.

For some time now this dynamic has bugged me in the back of my mind. I find myself constantly wanting someone, anyone, to say something critical about one of my images. Now, sometimes people do. In one group I’m in there is one individual that does offer critiques of my images as well as other’s images, but my honest opinion there is I don’t particularly like his photography. It isn’t that his images are bad, quite the opposite actually. I think a lot of his images are pretty incredible. But his style is dynamically different than mine and so when I get his feedback I often find that it would bend my image to more of his style, and that’s just not what I’m looking for.

So where am I going with this?

I think when I was starting out the Facebook groups I joined were instrumental in developing a core foundation for my photography. There is no doubt in my mind this is true, and for that I am grateful.

I believe that I grew as a photographer as a result of these groups. While I’m no teenager, I can see by virtue of the “likes” what images maybe resonate a little more or a little less with people. And of course some of the comments help me to think about my images differently.

The thing is, posting images on Facebook is so very easy to do that it is also easy to post up a quickly edited, composed well but not great, and probably get some fairly positive feedback. It’s easy to not strive for excellence in that environment, at least for me.

For me, what I have found, is that I will not get to where I want to be with my photography based on feedback I get from a social media group. I just won’t. My peers will be nice, and gracious, and complimentary but, as a group, we won’t dive into an image and ask about the aperture, the shutter speed, the composition. We won’t discuss what about the scene works, and what doesn’t.

When this became the most revealing to me was when I entered my first photography competition not too long ago. A competition where there were winners, and losers. In that environment the judge found issues in my images that I hadn’t considered. Or even if we didn’t say issues, we said opportunities, the fact was that things were identified that at least in the eyes of that judge made my image not quite as compelling as others’.

And so after that I realized the level of scrutiny, discussion, depth, challenge etc. was simply not going to be there in my social groups. I love the people, I have loved the journey, but I know that alone won’t get me to where I want to be.

Which leads to my last point. To get to be a next level photographer, which I aspire to do, you have to want to get really, really good. You have to get into the details of photography. You have to critique every aspect of your image - when you are shooting it but also when you are processing it. You have to think about angles, and light, and depth. You have to see what’s in front of you but then you also have to see what is potentially there in an image. And you also have to realize when something in front of you just won’t make a compelling image. And a lot of this will depend on what you want to represent as a photographer.

I encourage joining social media photography groups. You’ll learn a lot, both what you want to do and what you don’t want to do.

I just encourage you, as I encourage myself, to know that getting your photography to where you want it to be is on you. No social media group will get you there. You will learn from them, but what you do with those learnings and how you take that beyond that group is on us.