Cal Newport, associate professor at Georgetown University, author of Deep Work and many several other productivity writes a blog called Study Hacks where he explores our attention potential and how to get more out of life with less mental energy. He is especially interested in how our distraction culture keeps us from doing our best.
Dr. Newport is not a big fan of big site social media, seeing it as more of a scam to steal our attention and harvest our data than as a service to bring us together. It’s power over us is really up to us and how we use it and when.
In his December 7th, 2018 post, “On Blogs in the Social Media Age” he makes the case for creating a blog rather than relying on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram to communicate with others. One thing he points out is that social media offers us the satisfaction of being seen and I think that is pretty powerful, even of it is only as part of a crowded newsfeed.
As photographers we love to see what we see, express it and show it. A big part of the “showing it” is to have viewers, to have the satisfaction of being seen. It may be a crowded field and the social media platforms may not even be showing our posts to many people, but chances are we’ll get some views, some appreciation for what we’ve done, some satisfaction of being seen.
For photographers there are more opportunities to be seen than Facebook and Instagram but these other opportunities may take more effort, a little more curating of our work.
A big part of the purpose of the Photographers Group is to be one of these opportunities to give photographers the satisfaction of being seen through projects, shows and galleries. We aren’t the anonymous masses but instead a collective group supporting each other.