What does the new Instagram algorithm mean for photograhers?

Instagram plans to create an algorithm in order to switch up the order of your feed. You won't be getting your photos in chronological order any longer and you will be getting the photos that Instagram thinks that you want to see. What does that mean for businesses that have been using the platform? What is it going to do for the photography world?

We don't know what it is going to bring at this point, since we have not seen the algorithm go into effect. Content is still going to be king and you still want to have content that people want to share or engage people. That is how this whole game works and will work.

San Diego Art Fashion Photography flour thrown

The reason why Facebook's algorithm has hurt businesses is because they started devaluing the business pages on their algorithm unless they were sending in some dough. With Instagram, there is nothing that distinguishes your page from being a business or a human. It will be interesting to see if businesses do stand out or if it gets pushed to the bottom of the stack.

We will have to wait and see what it all looks like once it gets released out to everyone, but at this point it seems that it will be great for people that already have a good following. Once it gets released we will have to do our own evaluations on what is the best items to post and when is the best time to post. Our eyes will be all over it!

Instagram adding portrait and landscape orientations

Instagram has released a new update that will allow for portrait and landscape orientation for photos. I think it will be cool to allow everyone to post a photo in those different orientations and will be awesome for photographers.

Here is the official release from Instagram:

“Square format has been and always will be part of who we are. That said, the visual story you’re trying to tell should always come first, and we want to make it simple and fun for you to share moments just the way you want to.”

We were already posting most of our photos with the landscape orientation to be a little different from the rest. I do like the idea of using the portrait option though more. I didn't like posting portrait shots in the past since it would add white borders to the sides and would make the photo look strange and small. Now the portrait option will take up more space on a timeline and grab an extra millisecond of attention for people.

Make sure to follow our work on Instagram: @bestillphotog

Time to give this new update a test drive to see how we like it all. I think it will be an overall great thing for everyone. I did like the clean look of squares everywhere though.