Why Photographers Should Use Medium

There are lots of “social media” sites for photographers. We have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Flickr, 500px, Pinterest, and many more. What about MEDIUM?

Medium is a free online publishing platform established in 2012. It was primarily created for writers. But there’s no reason photographers can’t also use Medium.

In fact, Medium may help photographers who CAN write become professionally published much faster than Instagram or any of the other usual suspects.

Why? Simple. Ask any photographer who’s been regularly published in a newspaper or magazine (or their online equivalent) and they will tell you it was the ability to WRITE a story to go with their photos that got them at least some of or all of their gigs. Or at the very least got them noticed.

With media budgets being constrained like never before, editors and publishers are looking for stories — these contain text AND pictures and if you can provide both, you get the job.

I know whereof I speak. I have no formal writing training so I just dove in and the second I started writing blog posts about my photography, I started getting more and more assignment work.

I’ve now written more than 6000 online articles — more than 200 that have appeared in magazines and newspapers and I’ve authored or co-authored or edited more than 15 books.

While assignment work is harder to come by these days, editors and publishers will still pick a photographer who can write over one who can’t almost every time.

You see — to them, the picture just fills a hole. The story is what they really want. You can be an average photographer but if you’re an above average writer you will make more money.

So Medium, (which has tons of tutorials on writing and they are all free) is a good place for you to post your photos. And really, where else are you going to go?

Let’s face it. Most of the big social sites used by photographers suck in one way or another. Either they are cesspools full of trolls and political garbage or they are no longer photography-centric and instead focus on videos (reels) and almost all are full of advertisements to the point of distraction. Most also all use some algorithm that’s impossible to figure out before your total audience sees your work.

Medium on the other hand suffers from none of those problems. Or if it does, I haven’t encountered it in the six months I’ve been on the platform.

Let me run down what I see are the pros and cons of publishing your photos on Medium.

Pros:

1. It’s free to publish — but it wouldn’t hurt you to pay the $5 a month for a subscription because it lets you read everything you see on Medium without restriction.

2. You can attach as many photos as you like inside any Medium post.

3. It’s super simple to use and takes no time at all to learn how to post. Unlike sites like Wordpress which can have a steep learning curve, Medium is as simple as it gets.

4. It’s pretty easy on the eyes, users can scroll through a series of photos, although there is a con here too — see below.

5. You can easily publish consistent themes or bodies of work without restriction.

6. You can (and in my opinion should) attach a narrative to each photo.

7. You get to use up to five different keywords when you publish — although there is a con here too — see below.

8. Your work gets featured on a very large and very active blogging platform. And it’s a platform with not only a large audience, but a great quality audience.

9. You can keep a portfolio under your own publication and you can link out to any other portfolio site you like. You can post as many outbound links as you like with any photo/story.

10. There are no ads, no algorithm, no trolls, no politics (unless you want that.)

11. It’s just better than so many of the other options and is very well established. It was founded by Ev Williams, the same guy who founded or co-founded Twitter, and Blogger as well as other high-tech companies.

Cons:

1. You can’t do much with the layout. It looks like it looks. There are limited options.

2. You don’t have control over the size of the images.

3. You have five keywords but ONLY five keywords. 10 would be better.

4. Right now, it’s not thought of as a photographer’s platform and while that is possibly a con, it could be a pro too because it means you can stand out.

CONCLUSION

Nothing is perfect, but I have generally enjoyed my time publishing on Medium. I have experienced no trolls — no hate speech — no ads — no spam — no algorithm and no stress. It seems to be very well run. It’s taking me a while to build a following. After all, I am starting from scratch. But the people I do interact with are all high-quality contacts and after being shat upon at Twitter for more than a decade by anonymous people who I don’t even know, it’s nice to have some real-world interaction, even if it’s on a smaller scale.

Effective November 7, 2022, I am no longer on Twitter. I have also already cancelled my Instagram account and am not active on Facebook or Flickr. I have pretty much stopped publishing content anywhere but Medium and VERO.

For me it’s choice of simplifying my life and avoiding negativity. Everyone has their own needs and goals. My approach may not be the right one for you, but I wanted to share my approach just the same.

If you do decide to follow me on Medium I will follow you back. Thanks for reading and good luck to us all.

Remember, toys are joy.