As some Instagram followers may have noticed I’ve been very active (from a photographic perspective) in the months since my former blog-post. I had regular (which means usually 3-5 per month) photo-shoots in my studio and during this time-frame a lot has changed in my photography – at least from my perspective.
During the last years I was mainly focused on portrait-photography (mostly outdoor and just sometimes in studios, hotels or other indoor-locations) with nude-shoots every now and then. Meanwhile I ended up doing around 80-90% nude-shoots and pure portrait-sessions happen once every 2-3 months. I also spent most of the time indoor in the studio and found some “comfort zones” in the location that I explored from shoot to shoot by adding and/or changing different elements to/from the scene that I photographed.
For quite some years I was focused on adding as many different model-faces as possible to my portfolio. Meanwhile I decided to focus on a rather small number of about 10 models that I regularly work with and where I know that the collaboration:
- is solid (which also allows me to organize shoots with these models on short notice if needed and the hustle of the whole organizational part – that I hate so much – gets reduced to a minimum),
- is fun for the models and myself but also
- delivers great results that the models and I really appreciate
Cutting my use of social media (mainly Instagram) and the change from portrait to nude photography resulted in a situation where most of my Instagram-followers seemed to be no longer interested or even offended by my current work. That’s why I decided to abandon my former Instagram account. I will keep the Instagram profile online at least until I decide how to proceed. Maybe I will just use my website and restructure it to fit my needs and/or I start a new social media profile (not sure which platform I would use in that case – but most likely not Instagram, Facebook or any other US mainstream platform that requires censorship).
I noticed that Instagram or Facebook are really a bad choice for nude content (because the required censorship destroys most of the pictures and you are in constant fear that pictures or your whole profile get deleted from one day to the other without a reason or a chance for appeal) and as I do not need the platform any longer to search for models or to boost my ego by receiving likes I rather prefer a possibility to create a kind of “raw version” of my photographer-portfolio online while receiving a small amount of constructive feedback instead of a larger amount of likes. I may end up with a platform that allows me to re-arrange pictures after the upload and where the majority of the user-base has some solid background in photography and/or modeling. If you know such platforms, I would really love to hear your opinions.
I added a newsletter-feature to my website which allows you to subscribe for future updates. Whenever I post blog entries, create new social media profiles and so on, I will send update emails to newsletter-subscribers.
Cheers
Didi