Daniel Laan Instagram

Moving away from social media

To be honest, I’ve always found social media to be a necessary “evil”. You should know that algorithms determine if you ever see my work. One of the metrics they use for that, is how much I use the platform. But I’m inspired by other things than pictures of others. I don’t like looking at my phone the entire day and follower numbers don’t mean anything to me. That means the algorithms of both facebook and instagram have decided to not show you my latest images. Exposure is getting lower and lower and I’m looking to get away from the “likes”, marketeers and bots on there anyway.

But I’ll be transparent with you. About 20% of my income comes from social media at the time of writing. Slowly but surely, I will move away from instagram and facebook altogether and will not be active there anymore. In order to make that happen, a paradigm shift needs to take hold. I don’t want to be the product of big tech. As an artist and introvert, I’m at my best in silence.

Sign up for my newsletter

If you’re interested in my work, consider signing up for my newsletter. About once a month or less, I share relevant news and a discount or two just for you when you do. When that 20% eventually shifts towards purchases made from my newsletters, I’ll even update my website with new work as soon as I have one. And that will be the final step into leaving social media altogether.

Mental health and meaningful connections

For me, it’s time to start considering my mental health. Seeing only the best side of people on insta or having to see what people have for dinner is not for me. I like deep one-on-one conversations with like-minded people, which I have found on a handful of occasions using these platforms. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve met Kai Hornung, Isabella Tabacchi, René Algesheimer and a few others by means of connecting through direct messages on these platforms, for which I am very thankful.

My hope is that we can continue our relationship here, in my virtual home. I’ll get a fire going and put the kettle on. I’ll walk you through my gallery in the other room after sunset and tell you my story.

Thank you for considering subscribing. It helps to know that you care.

Update 1: 6 months off Instagram and Facebook

It’s been great. I feel more relaxed and productive at the same time. No pressure from the numbers, no having to like pictures to feel inspired. My inspiration has come more from within than ever. I do use social media to shamelessly promote my processing videos. Me teaching you which button to click and why that makes your images more like mine, is how I pay my bills. However strange that sounds if I read that back.

Update 2: 9 months: The Social Itch

Yesterday I sent out my monthly newsletter, and as I was waiting for the northern lights, I started posting a story about it on Instagram, right after I uploaded a new post featuring the similar northern lights I shot long ago. Now, I’ve been away from social media for 9 months or something like that.

It’s time to talk about the ugly truth behind organic reach. I can understand that about half of my subscribers have opened my newsletter. A bunch of bots, people who are too busy an the rest who didn’t open the newsletter just don’t unsubscribe, but want to.

But the important thing is, my newsletter reached 50% of people whom I messaged. Let’s compare that to reach on Instagram:

At the time of writing, I had a little under 65.000 followers on Instagram.

With 5796 impressions, that photo reached 8.44% of my total followers.

I can imagine that after not having used the platform other than post and run since late 2021, the algorithm has decided that I’m not relevant to the platform anymore. So I thought, let’s compare that with an image when I was still actively using the platform. Well, as much as I did:

To be fair, this is an image that’s been on instagram much longer than the one above, but instagram is a platform that generally only puts posts forward that have been uploaded recently. I did have about the same amount of followers back then, which is entirely logical since my announcement that I would abandon the platform. Still, this image only reached 18.8% of my followers back then.

So it’s fair to say that I wasn’t happy with the results. When 64 thousand people follow you to see your work, and at best 20% gets to see your uploads, it’s very frustrating.

Let’s look at Facebook with the image from yesterday. Again, totally no interaction from me there since last year. Maybe even longer, because I got fed up with Facebook long before Instagram became a chore:

Don’t really know how to reconcile page likes vs. follows, but let’s take the lower number.

4928 people reached of 32605 sounds a lot better, right? Well, that’s still only 15.11% of page likes.

“What do the numbers mean, Mason?”

It turns out that my itch to interact with the world through social media after 9 months was an angry itch. Fair enough, the absolute numbers are by no means comparable to the number of newsletter subscribers. And there’s so much more quality of quantity in writing you directly. Some of you guys and gals have been so generous with your words in giving feedback. That means a lot to me.

I’ll make use of social media as a dumb marketing tool to pay the bills, but I won’t interact there for the reasons talked about at the start of this message. Meanwhile, the number of subs grows and I’m already working on next months newsletter, full of rich content.

Update 3: 15 months later: Post and Run

Here are my rules for social media usage.

  • After having posted an image on Instagram, X and 500px, lay down the phone.

  • Likes are off. Comments too, except when having a question for followers.

  • Do not engage with people (or bots), except replying on said question when you post the next image.

  • Don’t read direct messages.

  • Don’t scroll through the feed. Whatever is on top can get a like, but that’s it.

  • Use social media only as a marketing tool that points towards your website.

  • Post whatever. You don’t owe anyone an explanation.

  • Try to group posts together that look alike. I like a coherent front page, so new followers know what to expect next.

  • Use your creativity as a guide, not the numbers.

  • Fuck hashtags, but use them. About 1-5% of traffic comes from hashtags, which isn’t much but know that it compounds over time.

These rules help me use social media as a tool instead of becoming a tool by being used by social media.

Update 4: 3 years later: Automation and AI

I’ve further investigated what can be done with social media working for me, rather than against me. I ran into this automation site called Make. It’s basically taking images from my dropbox folder and uploads them all. I’ve asked ChatGPT to add unique captions to all of them. I don’t care about the story next to an image that’s supposed to be about the art of landscape photography anyway. I’ll save the thoughtful words for a new book or my blog.

Also, I kind of fell out of love with AI-generated art. The novelty quickly wore off. I still find people contacting me through Instagram and family leaving comments on Facebook. Somehow, friends and family keep assuming that I read their comments even when saying time and again that it’s all automated and I do not read comments and only use social media as a marketing platform a few times per year. I you’re reading this, thanks for wanting to keep in touch with me where it actually matters.

Update 5: 4 years later: Final deletion of Instagram, 500px and Facebook

That’s it. 30 Days before writing this, I’ve deleted my social media accounts. They weren’t working for me anymore. With a combined 110.000 followers, only 0,1% interacted with my posts; about one hundred people on average. Of those interactions, about 10% were comments. Of those comments, 90% are just emoji’s.

Needless to say, with all this stuff I wrote above, I don’t find the energy within me to commit to posting to social media anymore. The reason for social media in the first place was to grow my business as a photographer. But in that lies a contradiction. If social media is where my energy, time and dedication goes, how can I be a photographer? I’m not an influencer by any measure and I can’t stand the fact that every aspect of one’s life has to be documented. I’ve seen other photographers both excel at and succumb to playing the social media game where the rules keep on changing. It’s enough for me. Family and friends don’t understand. Nor will they understand how social media works. I mean tagging a location solicited questions on my whereabouts, while it’s just a 3 year old photo getting reposted.

With the growing presence of AI-generated images on social media, bots posting emoji’s in comments and algorithms favoring shocking short videos over quiet images, I’ve come to the conclusion my work does not suit that audience or type of platform.

Once in a while, I’ll be updating this website with new work, but I’ll do so on my own terms. With the decision to stop hosting workshops, I’ve decided to step down as a professional and photograph whenever I feel like it and share images when they’re good enough, while concentrating on other efforts aside landscape photography.

I feel like it’s the end of an era and that I’ve seen the light at the end of a tunnel of 5 years in photo-limbo. We all change, I’m sure, but this one is profound for me. Thanks for hearing me out and you continued support. Some of you guys like the majority of images I put out, which is bizarre to me. That means you are a true fan or someone who is in many ways similar as a person.

This is the last update on this matter. Let’s get on to better times. :)

Some sources

Silberling, A - “Social media follower counts have never mattered less, creator economy execs say” - TechCrunch - December 29 - 2025.