This year, I've had two images featured on the Nat Geo Your Shot Instagram account. Besides that, 13 other images and reels were shared on two other National Geographic Instagram accounts. My first image featured was a shot of the sun rising through the clouds. It was shot off the coast of Busan, South Korea. These images alone got over 40,000 likes. Most recently, a reel that I shot got featured on National Geographic Magazine Russia's account.
This is a National Geographic's community of photographers. Many of them share their images on Instagram using the hashtag #YourShotPhotographer for the chance to be featured. With just under 6 million followers at the time of writing, having your images shared on the Nat Geo Your Shot handle is a great recognition and will undoubtedly lead to new followers. Rather than telling a user to act, I guided our users with simple word choices. We wanted to accomplish a few things with this onboarding flow. It needed to re-introduce existing users to the updated experience, and welcome new users to the Nat Geo Your Shot community. The photo our community has voted as their favorite is showcased on the @natgeoyourshot Instagram account. Your Shot photographer Kent Mok used a reflection in Hong Kong to document this quiet moment in the city. Photograph by Kent Mok Top Shot features the photo with the most votes from the previous day's Daily Dozen, 12 photos selected by the Your Shot editors. Dunja Djudjic is a writer and photographer from Novi Sad, Serbia. You can see her work on Flickr, Behance and her Facebook page. John Aldred is based in Scotland and photographs people in the wild and animals in the studio. You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube.
I also think that these terms do not live up to the lofty goals that the National Geographic Society sets for itself: I cannot comment on National Geographic's history, but there have been critical stories about their practices. Does National Geographic have a history of exploiting amateur photographers? Is there anything in their history that would make this contract seem like common practice? That is correct; not to mention all those pageviews, likes, and shares they will be getting during the voting period. We've chosen cameras that can take great photos and make it easy to get great looking video, rather than being the ones you'd choose as a committed videographer. These capable cameras should be solid and well-built, have both speed and focus for capturing fast action and offer professional-level image quality.
You can find the community on Instagram at @NatGeoYourShot and tag your photos with #YourShotPhotographer for a chance to be featured! By uploading Your Content, however, you grant National Geographic (which includes its subsidiaries, affiliates, joint venturers, and licensees) the following rights: a worldwide, perpetual license to display, distribute, reproduce!
We've done the hard work for you and researched some of the most popular and tested the Instagram Photography Feature Accounts for street, travel, urban, nature and cityscape shots. This is, in my opinion, one of the few places in which their exposure can really help you to be seen. These accounts are very exclusive when it comes to featuring photographers out there. Here you'll find a lot of humor, which in my very opinion is an extremely difficult thing to capture on the streets. A broad array of aesthetics and even ready-made-graphic-design street photographs can be seen in this account. Learn from their best practices on Instagram and incorporate them into your strategy. Getting your photo reposted by a feature account is your shortcut to Instagram fame. Most of these feature accounts have millions of followers. You can find them across fashion, wildlife, travel, portrait, wedding photography, and many more streams. Each feature account has specific hashtags that you need to add in your posts for them to discover you and possibly feature you. Instagram is inundated with millions of hashtags. But not all hashtags will help you in increasing engagement with your manifold photos on Instagram. The popularity of hashtag is inversely proportional to your photo's chances of getting discovered. Unless you recently started using Instagram, it would be difficult for me to believe that you haven't come across this point. Almost every blog post on how to use Instagram to promote photography emphasizes this point.
Ready to build a photography portfolio website that captures clients' attention? We've got photographers covered. Blogs are great for bringing in more traffic to your site but are also a great way to take your followers behind the scenes and explain how you got those sweet Insta shots in-depth. Pick a website that comes with a blog built right in, so you don't have to have separate sites for your website and blog. The more specific the keyword the more specific the search results so you can use something more specific like #NatureWalks or #NationalParks you get the idea. Think of a hashtag as a keyword that identifies your content that relates to its topic and what it represents. It is not good enough to create beautiful images with killer captions if no one can find it amongst the millions of other images. It can be so tempting to just throw a dozen random hashtags on your images to quickly upload them and hope for the best, but it is worth taking that extra time to build a hashtag strategy. Although the limit is 30 per post, many marketing experts will say that it looks like spam when you use that much. Therefore, it's best to use 5 to 25 hashtags per image. Not only will you get more exposure with the hashtag, but you'll also be able to tap into the feature account's audience. Note: Hashtags aren't case sensitive, so don't worry about capitalization because it won't make a difference!
Growth is always a good indicator of a successful, thriving account and once you have 1,000 followers, a lot of monetization opens for you. All in all, if you are seeing great engagement and creating quality content, you are on the right track to making money on Instagram. This can lead to a huge boost in new followers who find you after your content shows up on their Explore Page feed. When your followers double tap and like your Instagram posts, your post will now show up on the Explore page of users following them. Therefore, the more people you get to like your content, the more people will see it, and in turn even more people will like your content (increasing your chances of blowing up your Instagram — hooray for positive feedback loops!).
Now that you know what types of hashtags to use on your posts and stories, try these 4 tips to reach more people with your hashtags. Use a variety of hashtags on your posts and stories, so your posts can reach different communities. For instance, if you have a bakery in NYC, you can use #nycbakeries to reach those looking specifically for bakeries in NYC, but also use #bakerslife for those who are interested in your day-to-day life as a baker. Something as simple as this video makeup tutorial by Laura Mercier can get great traction on the Explore page: You might be used to nailing the product shots for your feed, but if you want to get on the Instagram Explore page, it's time to start thinking about creating video content to showcase your products!
The best way to get featured on Instagram pages is to provide high quality content and to engage with others about your post. Interactivity is a big signal to Instagram about your content's quality. Tag locations, users and products and manage all your hashtags in one place to save 5+ hours every week. If you consistently provide value, encourage engagement, and resonate with your audience through your Instagram posts, you're sure to authentically connect with your audience - and end up on the Instagram Explore page of their friends and followers. And that's the audience you want to reach. It should be your primary goal to create and cultivate content that gets featured on Instagram Explore. If people are not engaging with your post, it will not be featured.
When people watch a video all the way through, like a video, or comment on a video posted on Instagram Reels they are engaging with the content. This engagement shows the Instagram Reels algorithm that the content is of high quality and that it is worth of being featured. The more people like, comment on, and watch your video on Instagram Reels, the more likely it is to be featured. Especially when creating stories for Explore, you want to make sure that the timing is perfect and that you post high-quality content. You may also see curated topics we think the Instagram community will enjoy. The Instagram Explore Tab is that little search icon at the bottom of the app screen (looks like a magnifying glass). I have it circled in orange in the screenshot below. A page or section of customized results opens up based on all your other Instagram activity. Whether you are a big brand, a social media influencer, or just an everyday user that wants to see more activity and interaction on his or her account, to get profiled on this page is the holy grail for those who want to be found and grow their online presence.
Now, the magazine has launched a new photo-sharing platform called National Geographic Your Shot that allows photography lovers to fulfill virtual assignments with the help of National Geographic photographers and editors. The first assignment, explore our Changing World, ends October 22. Submit a photo from your favorite travel destination here. Vertically oriented photos and compositions that leave clean space in the top and bottom of the frame are best, according to the judges. The 30-year-old magazine is one of the properties of the National Geographic Society, and every year it dazzles with its travel photo contest. National Geographic Your Shot content will now be solely exhibited on the Instagram feed, featuring all engagement, assignments, and promotion of photos. Inspired by our most recent film, Paris to Pittsburgh, National Geographic launched a new Your Shot photo assignment, calling for citizen photographers to document local climate leadership in their communities for the chance to be featured online on National Geographic's digital platform. It was such a wonderful experience to witness this beautiful thunderstorm far across the Grand Canyon! The Ki Monastery is situated high in India's Himalayan region in the remote Spiti Valley. A few hundred Buddhist monks live here permanently, studying and worshiping in probably one of the most serene places I've ever seen. Over its 125-year history, National Geographic has published a number of beautiful and iconic photographs!
National Geographic’s mission is to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world and people of every race, identity, experience, and ability have a role in their work. Although National Geographic has much more work to do, the Society has made strides to achieve and maintain equity. National Geographic's Explorers work in applied artificial intelligence and technology, innovations in climate adaptation, natural resource and systems sustainability, outer space, and related fields.
Known for its photojournalism, it is one of the most widely read magazines of all time. By joining the Society, you will fund Explorers working to save wildlife, protect our oceans and ecosystems, preserve our ancient heritage, and solve the planet's mysteries and challenges!