I’m On Vero, It’s About Time
For Once A Social Media Platform For Photographers
Vero, has been around a while, but most recently gained a lot of attention as photographers and members of Instagram felt that Instagram was going in the wrong direction.
The problem with social media is it has changed a lot over the last few years as the platforms started adding video, reels and a lot more advertising. The original concept of sharing work with family and friends was a great one and it is what lead to the platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter gaining such large and wide audiences.
These platforms are run behind the scenes with algorithms. These algorithms determined who would rise and fall in rankings as well as who saw your work. All in all the algorithms were designed to generate audiences for advertisers.
With Instagram, for every two posts you’d get an ad that for me were a distraction and had nothing to do with why I was looking at Instagram in the first place. For every three posts I see on Facebook I get an add then another three posts and another ad. Who needs that. I want to see photographs from photographers I like and admire as well as share my photographs with like-minded people.
Recently (in the last year) Instagram started looking at reels and stories which as short videos. These could be videos or a collage of still pictures. Frankly, if you weren’t doing video, clips or reels you weren’t hip. As a photographer I like to share my photos. I don’t necessarily do videos and reels. However, I have started to just so I don’t get left behind.
For many of you, social media might not even be in your wheel house. That’s fine and I understand it. My kids don’t do social media. And, I know a lot of friends who don’t. But there are still thousands that do and there are a lot of friends from my life that I enjoy sharing my work and also seeing theirs as well as keeping up with what my finds are doing.
I have been loosing enthusiasm for sharing my work a lot though on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And, with all the things going on with Twitter and the news I am hearing, I will most likely delete Twitter once Elon Musk takes ownership.
Don’t even get me started on TikTok. I loaded TikTok because my internet guys said as we should b eon there and do short photo clips. Wow, TikTok is one of the biggest time wasters I have ever seen. It sucks you into a whirlpool of nonsense and it’s like watching a car wreck you just keep scrolling to see what’s next. Enough already.
Along Comes Vero
About a month ago, a lot of photographers started to make their presence known that they were moving over to Vero to share their photography. Why? Because, it works and does what it is supposed to do and it is ad free.
I love it and have embraced it as well as a lot of well-known photographers and more are joining every day. It’s easy to join, you just add it to your mobile devices from the app store and you can also add it to your desktop. The desktop version is in Beta but it is great to see it heading that direction.
Setting up your profile is simple enough and adding photos is pretty intuitive. Once you have uploaded an image Vero suggests some hash tags and of course you can add more Hashtags allows your images to be found by people searching on these hashtags or tags. This helps more people view your images.
You will need to find followers and get people to follow you, so more people automatically see your images when you post them. So, I hope you go to Vero and look up @kevinraber or just search kevinraber and then follow my profile.
What’s really be enjoyable is viewing photographer friends and those whose photography I like, without the distraction of ads and other BS.
What’s also cool is you can click on an image or touch it on your iPhone or iPad (Androids work too), and the image enlarges. Touch it again and it fills the whole screen. How cool is that.
You can also bin your favorite images to the top and rotate those out as you find new ones.
Scrolling is fast. Searching for topics or photographers is great. You can also assign followers into different categories like acquaintance or friend.
You can also visit other pages of interest like movies, books, videos etc.
Closing
Vero may be the app that photographers will love. No ads, ability to click on an image to see larger and a growing audience of people that have common interests. I also find the images to inspire me and make notes of places I may like to visit or a different way to take an image or post process it.
May I suggest that you give it a try? You can find Vero in Google or Apple App store for your mobile devices and you can go to Vero.com on your desktop and download the beta version for your desktop.
Show off and share your work. Take a look at my page and follow me. I’ll do the same for you. Oh, and don’t forget to like my images and feel free to comment on them.
Good luck and have fun.
Kevin Raber
October 2022
Kevin Raber
Indianapolis, IN
Photography is my passion and has been for 50 plus years. My career in photography has allowed me to travel the world, meet some of the most interesting people on the planet and see things I could never have dreamed of. My goal is to share the passion of picture taking through photographs and teaching with as many people as I can, hoping it brings them as much joy and happiness as it has me. I do this through photoPXL.com, this site, as well as Rockhopper Workshops, and other projects, as well as teaching as Artist In Residence at the Indianapolis Art Center.
