Photographing with Motivation from Instagram Silences the Artistic Voice

Left to right: characters Walter Mitty and Sean O'Connell in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (2013)

This blog post came from a homework assignment asking me to write about something I try to avoid when practicing photography.

Two excerpts from the book Art and Fear read: 

“Making art now means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither audience nor reward... Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself.” 

“In large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive.”

Considering the above passages, my philosophy regarding authentic art-making (in my case, making photographs) focuses on the following tenets: prioritizing self-discovery, taking risks for the sake of authentic progression, an emphasis on internal motivation, and continuously pursuing the development of a distinguished voice single to the photographer only, all while simultaneously working in a private manner in order to foster meaning in the photographer’s pursuits. In comparison to Instagram, my beliefs illustrate the social media platform as the antithesis to authentic art-making.

Instagram’s structure discourages self-discovery. Its framework and algorithm creates a powerful platform mostly for advertising and for users to gain significant attention. Instagram seduces photographers to participate in photography trends, detracting from the ability to develop a singular artistic voice. Instagram accounts can be set to private, but doing so will severely limit how many users can see their work. If uninterested in creating a photography business and more focused in progression as an artist, the photographer would benefit from avoiding Instagram.

The intention of this paper is to explain the negative influence Instagram can wield, how working in privacy continually enables the photographer to unearth their artistic voice, and sharing how I have applied these principles to my personal work.

To begin, it would be valuable to understand the main purposes for Instagram, designed by Instagram. The platform’s configuration mainly intends to trap users into spending more and more time on the app. This is accomplished through Instagram’s endless feed feature. Instagram’s features also encourage users to share everything and anything publicly for opportunities to “connect”. This gives an immense amount of opportunities for businesses to advertise - and most alluring - gives opportunities for anyone from the general public to become famous by going “viral”. It’s a haven for advertisements and attention. For the photographer interested in making a business out of their photography skills, Instagram is essential, especially for those who want a large client base or to reach a vast amount of people.

When motivated by Instagram’s rewards (likes, follows and views), photographing in an art-making paradigm causes many negative effects to the photographer and the overall progression as an artist. These negative effects I will describe come from personal experience and relating to other photographers about this specific dilemma. Motivated by Instagram’s external rewards, I photographed with a people-pleaser mindset. I wanted to follow the latest trends in subjects and style, which inhibited my ability to develop an artistic voice unique to only me. I may have experienced some moments of self-discovery, but it was always secondary to my focus on gaining a larger following. I not only shared most of my photographs, but I also shared many thoughts regarding my artistic development, even my deeper emotions in general. I did not practice photography in privacy, which left me vulnerable to the addictive external rewards Instagram provides. This overall mindset was damaging to my artistic progression, and caused me to plateau in my work. My photography essentially became advertisement for myself - basing my worth on how many likes, views, and followers I would receive. 

All aforementioned is damaging to an artist’s authentic progression, as I saw it was to mine. I was so focused on pleasing the masses and basing my worth on Instagram engagement, I neglected finding self-fulfillment and discovering what I am most drawn to as a photographer. I slowly made this important discovery: both self-fulfillment and understanding my preferred subject matter requires me to keep my photography more sacred. Instead of letting my photographs be tainted with social media’s judgements (mostly from uneducated laymen), I deleted my Instagram account. I then began keeping my photographs to myself and to close friends whom I knew understood how to look at a photograph. This epiphany to keep my photographic pursuits more private came from a pivotal scene in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

When both he and a colleague are about to lose their job, Walter takes action by embarking on an adventure more extraordinary than anything he could have ever imagined. "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" was released in 2013.

Walter, the main character, sets out on an extensive trek to find the renowned (and elusive) photographer Sean O’Connell with the goal of retrieving an important photo negative. After following all traces of where Sean recently traveled, Walter ends up hiking at the top of the snowy Himalaya mountains in search of Sean. Walter miraculously stumbles on Sean in the moment of attempting to photograph the “ghost cat” snow leopard. The snow leopard then appears in the camera’s viewfinder, but Sean doesn’t take the picture. In this scene, a couple significant lines said by Sean struck me, and are as follows:


“Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.”

“Sometimes I don’t [take the picture]. If I like a moment, I mean me personally, I don’t like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.”


(watch this movie scene here)

At this moment Sean had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to photograph the notoriously elusive snow leopard, but to Walter’s surprise, he didn't take the picture.

In this scene I noticed how sacred a moment was treated by Sean. To him, fame was secondary - the moments with his camera were primary. I realized the essence of photography was right before my eyes - I saw photography was all about noteworthy moments, and truly understanding what to do with the moment. The photographer can always photograph the moment to their discretion, but intentions must remain untainted by selfish motivations to gain fame and fortune from a photograph (as clearly portrayed in Sean’s character). When the photographer does not dictate the moment but instead remains its servant, their photographs retain a sanctified aroma to it. Photography then becomes the authentic art-making pursuit as described in Art and Fear, enabling the photographer to find true progression as an artist. I came to the conclusion that what Sean embodied was what I wanted for myself as a photographer.

I shortly thereafter applied what I learned from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty to my photographic pursuits. As mentioned earlier, I deleted my Instagram account and avoided most social media platforms. I began keeping my photography mostly to myself. Keeping my photography to myself and close friends helped me feel enabled to photograph whatever I wanted, which set me on a path of understanding my own artistic voice. I could ask myself what I truly wanted to photograph without the pressure to please others. I also decided to shoot on film instead of my digital camera, which significantly enhanced my new photography approach.

This photo is from the very first roll of film I shot in 2015. I started my film photography journey on a black and white film stock.

Shooting on film taught me the importance of the moment. I only had so many frames available to use on a roll of film, and I had to decide which moments were really worth photographing and what were not. Shooting on film also taught me the importance of slowing down. By photographing on an old film camera with no automatic settings, I was required to take the time to manually set my aperture, my focus, and shutter speed according to my light meter. Manually setting my camera combined with the consideration of limited frames created a perfect environment for me to decide what I thought was worth photographing. With the pausing and the crucial decision-making, my authentic journey of developing my personal artistic voice was strengthened.

Today, I still keep social media secondary to my photographic pursuits, and I continue to shoot on film. Six years of photographing on film and a three year break from Instagram, I’m here now, in tune with and following what I understand to be my artistic voice. This was made possible through a hiatus from Instagram and working in a much more private manner. For my pursuits as an artist, I will always keep social media secondary to my work. Social media stardom is an external reward, but I’d much rather have the internal reward of “finding nourishment within the work itself."