I've reached out to over 300 film photographers on Instagram in the past several months to feature their work on Analog Aesthetics. Response rate: less than 15%. Of those who did respond, nearly all apologized for seeing my message weeks or months late as it'd been buried in the app's "Hidden requests" folder, flagged as potential spam.

This isn't a complaint about my workflow. It's about how many legitimate opportunities photographers are missing because they've outsourced their professional presence to a platform designed to trap them there.

The Architecture of Invisibility

Meta doesn't want you to leave Instagram. Every external opportunity—a feature request, a licensing inquiry, a gallery submission—represents time you're not scrolling, engaging and generating ad revenue. So they make leaving difficult.

Messages from accounts you don't follow go to a secondary folder called "Hidden requests." No notification. No badge counter update. You have to actively look for it. Most people don't bother and some surely don't even know it exists. This is where publication offers and collaboration requests go to die.

When I message a photographer, Instagram thinks: external link + unfamiliar account = probably spam. Into the abyss it goes. The photographer assumes no one's interested in their work; I assume they're not interested in being published. Both assumptions are wrong but the outcome is the same. Nothing happens.

Here's what makes this worse: most photographers don't include an email address in their bio. No portfolio site. No alternative contact method. Just their handle, maybe a location, sometimes "35mm" or "film photographer."

This isn't malicious but it is careless. Instagram is where they post, so Instagram is where people can reach them, right? Wrong. Instagram is where people try to reach them. Whether they succeed depends on an algorithm designed to prevent exactly that.

The photographers who respond reliably share a pattern: email addresses in their bios, portfolio sites and the habit of checking their Hidden requests folder just in case. Not coincidentally, they're the ones getting published, earning commissions and building relationships.

The Irony

Film photographers reject digital convenience as a matter of principle. We shoot on 40-year-old cameras. We develop film by hand. We choose the harder path because it produces better results and the process is fulfilling.

Then we trust Meta—a company that changes its Terms of Service whenever it wants—to manage our entire professional presence.

We host portfolios on a platform that could ban us tomorrow for reasons we'll never know or understand. We let an algorithm decide who sees our work. We accept that a corporation controls if and how the outside world contacts us.

An Instagram story disappears in 24 hours. A film negative lasts a hundred years. Yet the portfolio lives on the ephemeral platform while the negatives sit in archival storage. The priorities are backwards.

The Compound Cost

Over time, reachable photographers build networks. They get repeat work. Their names circulate. The right people remember they're reliable and responsive.

Those who aren't reachable stay stuck at an Instagram engagement level—likes, follows and "love this shot" comments. What they don't get are the opportunities that happen off-platform: licensing deals, gallery shows, editorial features that lead to other opportunities.

The conversations that advance careers happen over email, through portfolio reviews, via direct professional contact. If you're missing in action, those conversations happen with someone else.

Talent matters. But if you're nowhere to be found, your talent is irrelevant. The people you'd want to hear from won't chase you. They'll move on.

The Solution

You don't need to abandon Instagram. It's useful for discovery and community. But it shouldn't be your entire professional infrastructure.

A portfolio site costs $10 to $20 per month. That's less than one roll of Portra 400. Free options exist. You could even build a simple one-page site with ChatGPT and self-host it for the price of a cup of coffee.

You already have an email address. Put it in your bio. Four seconds of work and suddenly people can get a hold of you without friction.

This isn't about being professional in some uptight sense. It's about making it possible for good things to find you. Let Instagram be a part of your presence, not all of it.

A portfolio site is affordable. An email address is free. Being reachable is a choice.