For a long time, I’ve spread myself across far too many social media accounts and platforms.
An Instagram photography account.
A separate pinhole account.
X.
BlueSky.
Three Facebook pages.
VERO.
YouTube.
Blogging.
Two websites.
At one point it all made sense. Different projects, different audiences, different ideas. But over time it’s become increasingly difficult to keep up with everything, and honestly, it has started to take away from the thing I actually enjoy — making photographs.
As my photography continues to evolve, it feels like the right time to simplify things.
Over the last six years I’ve been heavily devoted to pinhole photography. It became a huge creative focus for me and shaped much of the work I shared online. But the reality is that film is expensive, time is limited, and increasingly I’ve found myself working more with digital photography again.
That doesn’t mean pinhole is disappearing. Far from it. It will always remain part of my photography journey. But the balance is changing, and my online presence needs to reflect that too.
Picking up old accounts again is never easy, and abandoning others feels strangely difficult, but keeping everything active simply isn’t realistic anymore.
So here’s where things are heading.
My Facebook page PinholeLife has now become Will Gudgeon Photography – Light, Landscape & Life. The old identity served me incredibly well for years, but this new direction better reflects the wider variety of work I’m creating now.
Some of my other Facebook pages may remain online for a while, though they’ll likely become inactive before eventually being removed altogether.
Instagram is another platform I’ve stepped away from. The truth is, I just don’t enjoy using the app anymore. I found myself endlessly scrolling and wasting far too much time on it, so I deleted it from my phone. For a while I continued using the browser version on my old MacBook, mainly because all my photography lives on my computer anyway, but even that has become unreliable now.
Then there’s X and BlueSky.
In many ways, they feel remarkably similar — just people arguing from different political directions. I’m there for photography, creativity, and community, not seeing endless hate and online debates. Increasingly, I’ve found both platforms draining rather than inspiring.
YouTube is another thing I’m stepping back from for now. I’ve enjoyed making vlogs over the years, but they take a huge amount of time and energy to produce properly. Maybe I’ll return to it in the future, perhaps with a more structured approach — even just one thoughtful video a month rather than constantly trying to keep up.
So where does that leave me?
Honestly, in a much simpler and healthier place.
I’m focusing more on blogging regularly again, sharing photography through my Facebook page and photography groups, and posting once more on VERO, which still feels refreshingly photography-focused compared to many other platforms.
Both of my websites will remain active:
Although these days, most of my newer work tends to end up on the latter.
At the end of the day, photography has always mattered more to me than social media. The platforms come and go, algorithms change, trends shift, but creating images — whether digital, pinhole, film, drone, or landscape — is the part that remains constant.
And maybe simplifying everything online will help me spend a little less time posting photographs… and a little more time actually taking them.
Comments
Post a Comment