Changes....

 I am sat here on November 1st 2024 contemplating change and have decided I will be making changes to my online presence in 2025 and beyond, some social media accounts are going to be closed and others will see a reduction in my posting. I'm stretched too far! (stop sniggering at the back!) I have too many social media accounts and, whilst it was fun for a while, I hardly use some of them.

This is, of course, self inflicted! I am far too eager to try stuff out. As social engagement moved from forums and chat rooms on websites to the glut of social media channels we see today, we all moved with the times. We became slaves to MySpace, then Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. More recently we have seen the rise of social media sites born from a desire to rebel against the sale of Instagram and Twitter, and their new proprietors.

Twitter and Instagram were once great places for sharing photos and engaging with the photography community, be it film, digital or any of the processes we enjoy. Sadly Twitter became a cesspool of posts written by people who don't understand that "Free Speech" carries the caveat of having the wisdom to use it properly. Then a certain person bought it, after making the stupidest business decision in history and, in the opinion of many, actually managed to make it worse.

Instagram was also a great place for sharing photos and engaging with the photography community, but that suffered from being bought by a certain person who wanted to change it into a video platform to challenge Tik Tok. Instagram was a place where we, the hobby photographers, could get hundreds or thousands of views and likes. It dried up seemingly overnight as the new owners changed the algorithm and shoved us to one side.

As you can imagine, the actions of two people drove countless other people away from their social media sites. people who searched for a place they could feel safe from hatred and get fair treatment from the algorithms that all social media websites use. This also inspired people good at coding to invent Mastodon, Blue Sky, Grainery, Foto and Vero to name but a handful of social media and photography centric websites that have sprung up over the last few years.

Of those, the leader, in my humble opinion, is Blue Sky. Funded by investors, not advertising, and designed to give a familiar feel to exiles from Twitter/X, Blue Sky has over 20 million users and it's rising by the day. The difference is you get to see the feeds you want to see and not what an algorithm pushes upon you. There's no ads for stuff you wouldn't want even if you knew what it was. The #BelieveInFilm crew moved, seemingly en masse, to Blue Sky and the photography community there is thriving. It may be that Blue Sky does need to monetize the platform, but until then it's getting a LOT of traffic.

The problem is I have friends and family on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X who don't use other platforms. I want to keep in touch with them and it makes taking my leave from those sites rather difficult. Of those X is the easiest to depart and I have deleted all of my photos from there. The final straw was their new terms and conditions which gives X a perpetual, transferable licence to do what the hell they like with our work. That's a massive red line that I wont cross, so it's now empty and dormant bar one splendid meme. I will pop in to see a few dear chums, but I am not sharing my work on there again.

Instagram used to be great, but since it's sale and the reset to prefer video, engagement has steadily declined. It actually plummeted in the days after the US election and I get next to no engagement there now. I am hovering on the delete button and will decide before the end of the year if I depart that platform too. I will also be taking a good look at Meta's terms and conditions. If they are anything like the ones X has introduced, then it's goodbye from me.

Facebook is the problem child that killed web forums and chat rooms when it exploded in the noughties. I have a lot of time and effort invested in my presence there and if I were to leave, I would genuinely lose touch with friends I have had since childhood. Better the devil you know comes to mind and it will be a strange day should I decide to cut loose from facebook.

There's a couple of new(ish) photo sharing sites I have been trying with mixed results. Foto is a recent addition to social media the photography community and it is still in Beta phase. It may mature and become a great place one day, but without investment, it is taking a painstakingly long time to iron out the creases and make it a place worth inhabiting.

Grainery is another, it's charm is that it is film photography only. No digital photos allowed, not even film sims. Yes, we upload our edited digital scans, but they are all from the original negative. Some folks don't even edit theirs, they just upload a scan in all it's flawed glory. Colour shifts are left as they were scanned and the first off the roll movement is alive and well there. It's also a subscription based platform.

I pay for my presence there as I want Kyle, the guy behind it, to succeed. He learned how to code in order to develop the site. It takes him time to work his way through it, but it's getting there and fair play to him for giving it a go. As with any start up investing in it is always a risk, but this was one I was prepared to take and long may it continue. I consider it to be storage, somewhat akin to Flickr and I keep full control over my photos. If I fall out of love with it, I can leave at any time.

It's been a long time coming, but the changes I am making to my online presence means I am saving myself a lot of time and effort in promoting my work whilst increasing engagement with the photography community. I am also finding a lot of inspiration from more photographers out there who are doing what I am doing, taking photos and sharing them for the world to see.

You can view my photos in all their glory on my Flickr account. Here's a few more from my recent Frugal Film Project 35mm photos and I hope you enjoy them.

Jim Graves Flickr