Two days ago I wrote and posted this on my weblog on how I wanted to set up a Flickr-style gallery that would allow me to post edited images directly from my iPhone or iPad to my website and maintain complete control over both the images and styling. Then today I read this article by Oliver Laurent on the British Journal of Photography‘s website. 

For Tomas Van Houtryve, a VII photographer, Instagram has allowed him to take pictures he’d stop taking altogether. “Sometimes, with digital cameras and huge raw files, I actually hesitate to take a picture because I don’t want to deal with downloading it and backing it up on my hard drive and captioning it later,” he says. “With Instagram, it has kind of brought that joy back where I can just take a moment – it’s worth what it’s worth – send it out and move on to something else. Not everything has to be a raw file.

This statement and the BJP article’s opening statement “Have photographers become complacent with their only commodity in order to expand their community of followers?” both resonate with me but the last one is the reason why I’ve never posted many photos on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m a commercial photographer, or whether it’s my only commodity and I’m reliant on it as my main source of income, it’s my commodity.