∴Is Substack Worth it for a Photographer?∴

What I've learnt from my first year of this newsletter

I started my newsletter on photography for two specific reasons:

1. To share about my work and my process

2. To find thoughtful people to talk to about photography.

After a year of weekly posts, I’d like to share a bit about what I think has worked, what hasn’t quite worked how I’d expected, and the direction I’ll take going ahead.

The photo that kicked things off

What’s Worked

Before starting something like Substack, or YouTube, or the projects I like to work on, I usually write down why I want to spend my time this way. Throughout much of 2023 I felt deeply motivated in photography, but with very few people to talk to about it. Though I’ve always shared somewhat consistently on Instagram, every time I tried to write about photography there it felt out of place.¹ My forays onto r/photography have been mixed at best. While I’ve received some interesting responses to questions there, I’ve also been spoken to with outright hostility² or just downright ignored. Finally, I turned to Substack for an outlet.

Redditors’ responses to this question were a mixed bag to say the least

Context

Substack, built largely for writers, provides a space to establish context for your images. Writing these newsletters allows me to provide a framework readers can use to understand the images I share. If I email you an image of a plant taped to a fence, it might be a touch inscrutable. But writing about the image here not only provides some insight as to why it’s meaningful for me, it gives me a chance to show what drives my choices in the imagery I make.

Writing on this platform has helped feel like I’m bridging a gap that I’d always sensed between the people who see my photos and me. This may all be imagined, but that doesn’t make it feel any less good to try address it.

How To

I think most people that are on a platform like this are either now or have at one point been hungry for some kind of guidance. Many of us feel the motivation to improve and produce, but the gaps in our knowhow can keep us from making as much as we might want. Substack shines here in particular, as a space encouraging people to share what they’ve learned and promote a DIY ethos.

Dirty Work, the zine I made and used as the basis for my How To guide.

I don’t really look at the stats of what I share, but I’m pretty sure the best response I’ve received has been for my series on How to Make a Photo Zine. I mentioned above how part of the reason I started a newsletter was to have people to talk to about photography. Truth is it’s the posts where I try to show what I’ve learned, not just what I think, that inspire the most engaged conversation. This point’s encouraged me in the direction these newsletters will take going ahead, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Self Help

I’m very much one of the people I’ve just mentioned above - motivated to improve and produce, and looking to reconcile the gaps in my knowledge that might slow me in doing that. Working consistently on this newsletter about photography has forced me clarify my thoughts and just what it is I want to communicate - through my imagery and about my imagery. A Substack newsletter was never meant to be a way for me to improve my own photography, but with a year down it’s had a more profound effect on me than I expected.

Writing this newsletter has encouraged me to focus on what I truly believe is valuable, like all the reasons to make small prints.

What’s Not Quite Worked as Expected

Discussion

In my halcyon days of those early newsletters I would sit back and daydream about all the deep and fulfilling conversations they’d inspire, with people from all over the world chipping in thoughtful responses to my each an every prompt. As it turns out, online me is a lot like offline me - better at cultivating a few good connections than inspiring a playground for many of them. I’m not a big socialite in real life, and I’m not sure why I keep thinking online life would be any different.

What has been fulfilling instead is watching some of the people I’ve met on here go on to produce thoughtful work, people who stand as guiding lights of how to communicate in this place. I’ve eagerly read Zachary at Plain Sight, whose insight on film and photography feels sharp and valuable. I’ve enjoyed Tom and Diana at Writing with Light showing that a photography process is not just limited to pictures, but that it works its way into so many parts of your life. I’ve chuckled along with Travis Huggett at East Side Art Supply whose wry histories of the photography lessons he learnt the hard way always bely a tenderness and desire to make meaningful work.

It’s made me feel like a part of a community that shares this desire to make things. While we might not always have regular conversations, there’s been enough to feel Substack is a place where connections can be made.

Time

I’ve been tripping over myself writing this newsletter for more than two hours already, because I’m still not at the point where communicating here is a breeze for me. It may never be. When I sent out my first newsletter which had taken forever to write, I thought that it’d be the hardest one. It turns out every one is the hardest one. My little sign off at the end of these newsletters is a recognition that you’ve chosen to spend some of your attention on me. I try to live up to that by only sharing what I hope may be worth your time. This means I spend a lot more of mine than I had ever expected trying to imbue each one of these sentences with necessity.³

It also means I spend a lot of time making super clear diagrams like this from a Serial Music update.

I wasn’t prepared for the amount of time a newsletter would take to produce, and this has lead me to one fairly major calibration: I don’t consume as much of what is produced on the platform as I once did. When I started I read more and I’m always open to finding new and interesting people here. Nevertheless I try to be clear-sighted about my intentions, and that has always been to produce more than I consume.

---

So is it worth it?

In my case, the answer is an unalloyed yes. I’m guessing in your case it would be too. Simply put, it doesn’t make me feel weird to write and share images here, like it often does elsewhere. Substack provides a little corner of the internet where it’s possible to grow all the parts of your photography that aren’t the camera’s click itself. There are people producing insightful newsletters, and those are great to read, but its what goes into making your own that I think is the true value of the platform.

Going Ahead

Let me wrap this up by talking about my intentions for the next year of newsletters⁴. I’ve come to realize that the most important thing to me is that what I share here is useful. There’s a loneliness in wanting to make something but not being sure quite how, not having a blueprint of the process. If you’re interested in making photos, and the zines, books⁵ and prints that contain them, then I’m trying to help with that. Using what I’ve learned working on my project Serial Music, as well as on older projects and running a little print shop, I’m going to share the kind of information that hopefully makes anyone reading it feel like they can make something too.

I’ve also decided that, while not immediately, I will eventually offer a paid tier here on Substack. It will help me dedicate just a little more time to hopefully making helpful things here. Me being me, I would also want anyone paying for my newsletters to get something physical out of it like a zine, a print or something special that shows your support really does mean the world. I haven’t worked out the mechanics of that yet, but I wanted to mention it now, ahead of time, because I think that’s the way to do it.

Thank you for having been here for a year of me finding my feet on this platform, for the comments and messages, for the interest and the attention.

Cheers,

Chris.

1. I think that has to do with everything posted there being contextualized by the feed. You can pour your heart out on Instagram, but it’s a roll of the dice what will come up before and after your poured heart.

2. Me!

3. Maybe I should have cut that one.

4. I know most people do this at the end of December. I’m just sneaking it in early.

5. Ok, I haven’t exactly made a book yet, but I will and when I do I’ll be sharing the ins and outs of it here.