Changes back
7 April 2025Hello. A few months ago I wrote this, under the title Changes. It was my last post here before I moved my little blogging operation to Substack.
If anyone is bothering to check my online presence for signs of life and knows me at least a little, they may think something is wrong. I’ve barely been here, and my online photographer life in general has felt very unfulfilling lately. That said, the headspace I’ve spent much of the last six months in has made most things feel unfulfilling, so to that mystery reader, yes, something has been wrong. I’d now like to start putting things right.
Part of that is re-evaluating how I represent myself as a photographer, online and off. Overcoming my lack of confidence will never not be a battle, but having done this for more than a minute and received some kind words about my work from people with actual credentials to speak of, maybe I should try and accept that perhaps legitimacy isn’t such a far-flung goal, and any effort I put into sharing what I produce as serious work isn’t necessarily in vain.
I’ve neglected that side of things recently but in my defence, Melbourne’s callous rental market has resulted in us living with my partner’s parents in a semi-rural internet blackspot for the last few months. The isolation and lack of space hasn’t done my mental health any good. I also couldn’t sync my Lightroom catalogue at all until we went on holiday to Tokyo last month and took full advantage of the lightning-quick hotel wifi. It was great. And we’re moving house next week to somewhere a little closer to town, so our connectivity woes are hopefully almost over.
With that in mind, I’ve decided now is a good time to give my website and socials some long-overdue attention. The former will in due course become more streamlined, as a place to show and eventually sell my work. Exactly what I sell is up in the air at the moment, but prints and zines seem like a good place to start. I’ve enrolled in a zine-making workshop next month with the good people at Tall Poppy Press, and hopefully I’ll learn a thing or two I can apply to my self-taught InDesign efforts to date.
I’m also in the process of gradually shifting my blog posts over here to Substack, and this time I’m going to stay on here and to hell with whether anybody follows me at first (but I hope you do). Once that’s all done, the blog section will be removed from its previous home on my website - I think sharing them here will ultimately slightly give them more of a chance.
I also plan - subject to other photographers and friends I’ve made doing the same - to wrap things up on Instagram, because frankly it’s getting dull. I like to see genuine engagement from people, meaning I’d prefer messages or comments of substance from a small handful of people over a thousand random folk leaving fire emojis, but I see no sign of either. I suspect a lot of people I’ve corresponded with there are similarly losing interest.
Anyway, we’ll see how this all plays out, and if the IG competitor rumoured to be launched soon as a companion app to Bluesky sees the light of day. I hope it does, and I hope it catches on, because I don’t like the social media landscape right now for what should be very obvious reasons. I don’t like Nazis, and I don’t like their friends. And I also don’t like short-form text-based platforms like Bluesky and Threads, because I have no idea what even the non-Nazis are talking about.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.
Some of this has panned out well - we’re settling nicely into our new home, while work on zines and prints continues in the background. The social media element, not so much. I just can’t seem to connect with Blueksky, I’m still on bloody Instagram, and that leaves us with Substack.
Substack had become the main app I kept up to date on, and for a brief period I was prepared to overlook its annoyances (How to grow your Substack grifters and engagement farmers among them) and try to connect with people there. In recent weeks, though, the app has changed (in my opinion) for the worse and seems set on following the same well-trodden path of being all things to all people, the path that has ruined Instagram for so many. While there are lots of fine writers on Substack and I’m staying there for now to keep up with them, I can’t rule out walking away from it some day.
I don’t feel particularly motivated to post there either and when I do, I pour my heart out to a barely a ripple. The algorithm is increasingly feeding me some unsavoury characters too, so for the time being I’m going to share whatever I can rouse myself to write both there and here; that way, at least it’s in one place I have some control over.