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The photographer life is not an easy life. Shooting and collaborating is fun, but just about every other aspect of it is a grind; from promoting yourself to working on your portfolio to the perpetual push to grow your skill set. But of all the things that make it tough to be a shooter, none is more demanding and frustrating than social media. For the photographer, it’s hard to treat social media as a light endeavor because it exists as too many potentially important things: your brand, your portfolio, validation to clients, PR, communication to cast and crew, inspiration and mood board. That’s a lot of pressure for one platform, and it weighs heavy.
TikTok, on the other hand, has felt light. People are singing and dancing there with abandon. They care not about the aesthetic of their feed, captions or a whip smart hashtag strategy. Brands are on TikTok, but nobody is building a brand on TikTok. It’s meme-central; goofy, ridiculous, but also complicated and chaotic. It’s Coachella to Instagram’s SXSW. And maybe that’s why you should be there.
Let’s back up a second.
Why are you into photography? In all likeliness, you are in it because you chose it. No parents pressure their kids to become photographers. Nobody “falls back” on photography. It’s not the safe…
