It's no secret I'm digging Instagram.
Even now it's owned by Facebook (boo!) it is still a cracking way for photographer's, amateur or professional, to share their images. Be they stunning works of art, cat shots or the ubiquitous sunset.
It's easy, it's mobile friendly (hence why FB bought it) and it's social without being creepy (like FB).
As a good way of firing out images to the masses obv's the brands and mags are adopting it as another arrow in their multimedia quiver. Which is all well and good. If I was a marketing manager spending thousands a year on imagery then I'd dig it. Straight from the source innit.
For the mags it's a bit more tricky. Unless you have staff photog's on salary (increasingly rare, Length just retired Selway and Nunn, two of the best in the business) then there's no budget for Insty shots. As budgets are tight everywhere (economic doom and gloom doesn't avoid the surf industry, luxury items are the first to be cut back on, and no swell=no surf shop sales).
The question for mags and surf photog's is what to share. For the mags they can't cut their noses off to spite their faces. Best shots go in the mag first, that's the rule. Once published and out for a few weeks then it's fine to drop some gold. But still you don't want to give away the farm for free. As is I share classics from the archive (like my 'Leen one above) more than fresh shots on @surfphoto and a mix of behind the scenes, new shots and old gold on @carvemag.
For photog's it's a question of not shooting yourself in the foot. Have all potential sales dried up? Can an image be sold again in any other territories? Case in point: the B&W shot of John John in Japan is from the @Stabmag Insty and is a Nate Lawrence (@lawrence_photo on IG) shot.
A killer image and one I'd requested from Nate as I wanted to run it as a double spread (hell, maybe a cover seeing as JJF is hot shit right now) in the next Carve.
Now that's a £100 he's not gonna see as the shots been blown* (admittedly it's not his fault). Over a 1000+ likes on IG (and who knows how many views) means no dice. Impact and the 'WTF!' moment when you flip to that page in the mag, that retina widening millisecond we craft the mag for is done. "Oh yeah, seen that on Insty," is not a phrase we want people to be uttering when reading surf mags.
Even though scores of surf mags worldwide have closed their doors there's still at least one strong title surviving in each country. Use them to share your pics and then share on Insty once the cash has dried up. Win/win innit?
*Shots appearing in US mags aren't that much of a bother to us as the sales of the US mags in the UK are tiny in comparison to the UK mags, <10% sales of the home titles.
