How To Create a Cinematic Photo Series for Instagram

Social media is a strange beast and one that's difficult to get working for you, particularly in recent times. This video will show you how to create a cinematic-looking photo series to increase your engagement on Instagram.

There once was a time that you took a photograph you liked and you put it on Instagram and received likes, comments, and followers. It feels so ago now that I can barely remember how rewarding it must have been. Then, algorithm change upon monetization upon algorithm change happened, and many of the users were left confused and deflated. In all honesty, it sapped my interest in the platform almost entirely.

However, it is still a great tool for photographers to share their work with large audiences and to even find clients and collaborators. The problem is, you need to be smarter than ever before to get even the thinnest sliver of the attention pie. One tried and tested method is to create carousels or multi-image posts. One of my favorite photographers does this often and to great effect. In this video, Ben Maclean goes through his workflow and approach to creating series of images for Instagram. One tip I would like to highlight for this tactic to pay dividends for you is to ensure that your images have synergy in both colors and style.

Robert K Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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1 Comment

First of all, I don't shoot for Instagram. That's not what my clients ask me to do. So when I share something, it's whatever work I have created, why would I waste time "fine tuning" it to the likes of an algorithm.

Second, I don't believe any of those techniques work for small accounts. Using a 313k followers account as an example is far beyond the reality of 99% of the readers of this website.

Maybe people should just shoot for fun/assignments, and not shoot for likes.