I often do work for a friend who has their own brand. I’m not a huge stickler about a little cropping but there is something that they have being doing that irks me and I’m looking for an honest perspective.

I shoot both portrait and landscape orientation - whatever I think is best for the shot. On instagram if you’re posting multiple photos in a single post, it automatically makes the aspect ratio of all photos the same as whatever the first photo is. What would make sense to me is making two posts with the different orientations seperately if there’s photos you like from both. What they have been doing is shoving all the photos into one post - so if the first photo is vertical all the horizontal ones will be extremely cropped in, or if the first is horizontal all the vertical ones are cut in half. It basically makes the photos the opposite aspect ratio of which they were shot.

Not only is the quality is lowered when it’s cropped in more than it was meant to be, but it completely changes the composition and often times just makes what I thought were good photos look straight up bad. Its a drastic change. This happens every time we shoot together.

I haven’t said anything yet and I’m wondering what others think. Am I getting annoyed over nothing? Should I let her do with the photos as she pleases? I just feel it’s representing my work poorly and it does kind of bother me.

  • AlarmingStarPhantom@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    What would make sense to me is making two posts with the different orientations seperately if there’s photos you like from both.

    this absolutely does not make any sense. if you use the platform for marketing you want to group the pictures by their content, not how they best suit the feelings of the photographer.

    how do you push two different posts of the same thing? you lose reach and interaction, it doesn’t make sense.

    you need to learn that you’re doing product photography here, not art. it’s your job to make it work for your client, not the other way around. she’s trying to sell her brand, not your photography.

    what you should do is provide vertical shots only for her instagram. crop them to 4:5 for regular feed-posts and to 9:16 for stories and reels. that way you still have creative control and she can post them as she needs.

    landscape is not suitable for instagram, especially when you’re trying to sell something.