Photographer Thomas Boyd shares on his Facebook what happened when Instagram featured one of his photos…if you’ve ever wondered what kind of traction that gets, he explains it.
And, no he didn’t get paid.
Last week a photo editor at Instagram contacted me and asked if they could post one of my photos to Instagram. I wasn’t really sure what that meant. I provided her some extra information and mostly forgot about it. When I looked at my phone at 9 a.m. Sunday morning, I realized they must have posted it. The @Instagram account has 201 million followers. By 9:05 a.m. it had 30,000 likes. By 11:00 a.m. it had over 78,000 likes and it kept going like that for 24 hours until now where it has 1,038,688 likes. There was significant click through to my account. I picked up about 400 new followers and that photo now has over 900 likes on @thomasrboyddotcom. It has been interesting to see over 5,900 people from all over the world comment on it. It’s also thought provoking to consider that photo is sitting on over 200 million phones worldwide. So, if Instagram asks you for a photo, that’s what will happen. I had no idea.
So far, the post has over a million likes. Read more about Insta in this post from another Insta famous photographer and my related story about influencers is in the latest print edition of Digital Photo Pro.
It’s great work if you can get it and don’t expect to get paid…..