How to Keep Up With Photography Trends
Whenever we talk about being successful as a photographer, one of our main tidbits is to ‘follow worldwide trends’. This sounds simple enough. But when you actually attempt to stay in tune with global trends and apply them to your own photography, the difficulties soon become pretty evident.
Because the world of 2024 moves fast. One minute, photographers are all over vintage photography, the next they’re experimenting with AI and ultra-clean images that couldn’t be less vintage if they tried. You could then upload your attempt at this trend to our photo book maker, and within minutes, the collection would be drastically out of date.
The world is constantly changing. Trends spin around and around, picking up great speed and momentum, until they’re spun right out into the ether. The question, in this case, is not how to follow worldwide trends, but how to keep up with them.
In other words, what avenues can you take to see what’s trending now and apply new techniques as fast as possible to your photography? We’re going to look into some of the best methods below, helping you to take advantage of new trends in real time, apply them to your photography, get more people interested in your work, and be as ready as possible to pick up on the next one.
Google is Not Your Friend
The first thing to note is that Google is not your friend. Or, well, it is. But it’s the kind of friend that whispers ‘groundbreaking’ gossip at a get-together that’s so far past its ‘Use By’ date it’s gone stale. If you were to Google ‘best new photography trends in 2024’, you’ll likely find a number of articles that are seemingly recent, but a lot of the time, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
In the current age of SEO and social relevance, it’s become common practice to update old content, change the publication date, and make it appear more relevant – subsequently bumping the website up the search rankings to garner more clicks and engagement. This is lazy SEO, and it doesn’t help you when you’re trying to find photography trends that are happening now.
But in the same breath, that doesn’t mean you should stop using Google, you just have to be more careful about what you’re reading and when it was originally posted. There are a few ways to do this. Firstly, you can check the URL and use the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, determining whether there were previous versions of the page and when exactly the amendments were made.
Secondly, you can get your online information from a trusted blog – one that you’ve followed for a while and know the patterns of newly released content. Here at MySocialBook, for instance, we post weekly content that’s fresh, current, and – when it comes to our ‘trending’ content – designed to be applied as soon as the user reads it.
Use all the Tools on Offer
In our opinion, one of the best social media platforms to find new photography trends is Instagram, but not everyone knows how it works. It’s important to note that Instagram has a variety of tools and avenues that can help you find content as and when it is trending.
One of these tools is the ‘Explore page’. This is tailored specifically to show you popular and trending content based on your interests and interactions – meaning you not only find up-to-date photography trends, but photography trends that are more likely to interest you as an individual. You’ve also got the Hastagify tool, which helps you narrow down your hashtag searches and find the most relevant hashtags, and the ‘Top’ and ‘Recent’ tabs near the search bar, allowing you to toggle between what’s trending and what’s popular.
Apart from this, it’s also important to follow the most reliable accounts, just as you would follow the most reliable blogs on Google. Around the world, thousands of top photography accounts keep their content fresh and guide you through trending topics. There are also popular feature accounts – accounts like @natgeo, @portraitpage, and @streetdreamsmag. These accounts curate trending photos from various photographers, giving you a better bird's-eye-view of the photography world and what seems to be drawing in the hype.
If you follow these kinds of accounts, engage with the community, and keep your finger on the pulse of reliable photography blogs, you’ll always be one of the first to hear about what’s hot. But you still better be quick! As mentioned before, it won’t take long before the trends go cold.
