I recently wrote an article about why photographers hate but still use Instagram. While writing it, I started thinking about how photographers use Instagram. Unfortunately, there are some mistakes you might be making. Here are some of the most popular ones.
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A bio is an important part of your profile. Only the most important information is included there. That important information is not what your camera is, what lens you use, or some quote you extract on the internet. Your email isn’t on the profile either, especially if you have two or more.
If you put your camera gear and other tech stuff in your bio, people won’t look any further and see you as an amateur proud of the tools they have, now about what they do with it. You’re not that person, are you?
If you had a fabricated quote, I would argue that you are using valuable real estate in your bio. After all, you can use that space for something that will present you as a professional photographer.
Why isn’t your email in the profile? Well, because if your name isn’t literally Tom Scott (I’m a huge fan of his YouTube), people get it wrong. Even Scott can be misspelled as Scot, Skot, etc. I don’t need to delve into the 1,001 ways I’ve seen Illya misspell in emails. Instagram has a feature that allows you to add an email button. That way, the email address the message was sent to will at least be correct. Another reason not to have your email in your profile is because of wasted space. 
So what should you have in your bio?
I try to make my bio a mix of personal and professional things. Here’s mine, I haven’t changed it significantly in a while:
🇺🇦 Fashion Photographer | Ice Fan | Coffee addict
Budapest / Vienna / Munich
While not the holy grail of bios, it works for most purposes. Each element has a role:
- Flag of Ukraine: a personal touch
- Fashion photographer: what I do
Please do not book photographers, videographers, graphic designers, pianists, professional jugglers, divine creatures, attorneys, paramedics and freelance writers. You can’t be good at all of these things at once. At most would be photographer/videographer, maybe art director if you’re famous for that. The debate about photographers being art directors deserves a separate article.
Ice Fan | Coffee addicts: a personal way to connect with people who are viewing my site. I have a Q&A on my site for the same reason.
Budapest / Vienna / Munich: my location. I travel between three cities weekly at this point. Everything other than the camera is rented to work.
I used to have the line “Represented by” until I cut ties with my former agent not too long ago. After I sign with the next person, I will add again.
My biography is very little, but it shows very well what I do, who I am and what I like. As you develop your style, you may want to write something like “elegant fashion photographer”. Just like startups have a pitch, you need a pitch for your work. What describes it? For me, that would be a “colorful and vibrant fashion photographer.” But since my feed doesn’t just reflect that, I can’t say that.
account name
If you want to work in the commercial world, get rid of anything that isn’t your name. I wish I could have “illyaovcha, r, but I can’t, so I use the next best,” illyaovcharphoto. “That’s the maximum allowed. First name, last name and “photo” if the first two are not present. Forget anything along the lines of “prettypixel_photography_99_Xx”. That looks silly, sorry. If you have a brand for social photography feel free to use it, but I think I know one, at most two photographers who do this. Even then, they are a photographer within a company, which makes it less noticeable.
Combine Personal and Private
According to Quantum Marketer your Instagram must be professional. This means that no private pictures are allowed to be shared on it. I have a second account for private photo sharing. When my main account crashed, people started tagging me privately, and I responded by asking them not to tag me.
The approach I take with my professional Instagram is pretty simple: portfolio work in the feed and BTS in stories. Occasionally, an occasional conference announcement and other things make up the story, but I almost always reject political posts on my account. Furthermore, I don’t share my personal life on my professional Instagram, unless it’s a big holiday like an anniversary or birthday. It’s important to draw a line between your professional and personal life. As a freelancer, it can get blurry at times and people will want to intrude on your personal life. Please keep your privacy private. Several people from my audience and beyond have successfully tried to engage me on private social media channels. No wonder I blocked these individuals regardless of the situation.
Here are examples of what I post on my personal page, as opposed to my professional Instagram:
Follow / Unfollow Game
I see, you probably want a lot of followers. While I don’t have a particularly large audience (nearly 2k), it’s still something. There are times when I follow people I really want to work with, but they don’t follow me back. But instead of following/unfollowing and redoing this, I just moved on. There’s no reason for you to follow someone just because you want more followers. One tactic suggested by some is to visit a celebrity’s page and follow all of their followers. While it will get you some followers, how valuable will they be? If all you want is higher numbers, sure. But having an audience that isn’t your customer and therefore doesn’t bring in revenue is, to some extent, pointless. I’d rather have 10 big art directors follow me than 10,000 random people. Oh, and don’t buy followers, that’s a bit sad.
Close comment
There are a lot of mistakes photographers make when working on their Instagram profiles. To be frank, I’m guilty of all of this, too. My profile is trash, the name is “ovcharstudios,” and I posted everything I wanted. In fact, my @illyaovcharphoto account started out as a personal account, which I turned into a photography account when I started taking pictures. But hey, I’m not telling you that.
