A lot of us think of social media as a sort of necessary evil: if we’re not comfortable with it, we still engage with it because it gets our name and work out there. One photographer deleted all his high-follower accounts and went without social media for a year, and he was quite pleased with the results.

Coming to you from Dave Morrow, this interesting video essay examines how his life and creative output changed and/or benefited from disconnecting from social media. I have to admit that lately, I’ve been really questioning the assumption that photographers have to keep an active social media presence. I’m certainly not arguing that increased visibility helps, but whether it’s worth the time, effort, (often) money, and mental toll that feeling constantly beholden to a social network often creates is another question. While the benefit to his creative process was expected, I found it especially interesting to hear Morrow talk about how his website traffic actually increased after he quit social media. Of course, this is just one case and doesn’t represent every photographer’s unique situation, but it is promising to hear his story and how it didn’t affect his overall success. 

Lead image by Free Stocks, used under Creative Commons.