My daughter, Isabel, through the screen of our back porch in Montclair, NJ July 2012 © Ed Kashi.
National Geographic magazine opened up it’s Instagram account to a number of us and was received enthusiastically as a “behind the scenes” way for photographers to communicate. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the BJP article. You can click on the link at the end to read more.
But one household name was quick to realise Instagram’s full potential. A few weeks after its launch, Instagram signed its first major brand partnership with National Geographic. When the deal was first announced, the goal was for National Geographic to share photo tips and offer photography challenges to its followers. But in recent months, it has become an integral part of the magazine’s operations – with professional photographers taking over NatGeo’s feed of images – reporting instantly from their travels and photo shoots. As a result, a number of renowned photographers have created their own accounts and are now building their own following of dedicated photography enthusiasts.
BJP claims that Instagram signed with NG as a “brand partner,” in the graph above, but I’m not sure that is actually true. There was an article in TechCrunch about the possibility of this, but folks at NGM who should know, say a deal was never made.
What is interesting is how different publications are dealing with this phenomena, the New Yorker is paying a different photographer each week to add photos to their Instagram account. NGM is not paying but feels the additional traffic to the individual photographers will make it worthwhile. Ed Kashi has photographed for both feeds and talks about the future possibilities in the BJP article:
“What concerns me is that this is yet another channel for creating and disseminating photography that does not bring in income. At least not yet,” says Kashi. “I gather ‘building your brand’ is all the rage and while I acknowledge the importance of that, it’s not why I create nor do I see a direct correlation to making a living and developing this field into the digital era where creators’ work is respected, compensated and properly appreciated.” Kashi wonders whether Instagram is yet another fad that “further feeds the devaluation of our craft and continues to contribute to the destruction of this field as a viable way to make a living.” His concerns come on the heels of the release of his Photojournalisms iPad app, which failed to gain interest from users. “I am willing to explore these new models of distribution, but it’s a crap shoot and requires a lot of trial and error. We’re also facing the audience’s expectation of not having to pay for content. I don’t mean to be negative, but it’s a slog. I guess this all makes me feel like asking, ‘so this is what it’s come to?’”
