Gray’s Anatomy – ‘So Many Platforms, So Little Time’ – By Richard Gray

It’s Friday, so that means it’s Gray’s Anatomy! Each Friday, Richard Gray graces us with his humorous mobile photography column, Gray’s Anatomy and this week Richard humorously expresses his frustrations with platforms. Whether this is weather induced, who knows… we’ll let you decide but you’re sure to enjoy this. Over to you Richard (forward by Joanne Carter).

My head is spinning. And it’s not because of the heatwave we’re having in the UK at the moment. I’ve just come back from a small visit to Google+. I’d been looking for the digital whereabouts of France Freeman who was recently featured on the App Whisperer. I loved her Slow Shutter work shown there and, perhaps feeling slightly nostalgic for the app since my move to Android, I decided to try and find her. Hello, EyeEm, anyone answering to that name here? How about Flickr, have you seen her (great song)? Instagram? France seemed to have passed through all these places briefly but there were no recent sightings. I decided to Google her. Ah, Google+. There she is.

But finding her there reminded me that at a recent social media conference an expert on stage said it was the next big thing for photography. I felt slightly guilty for not doing anything about it. But really, aren’t there enough social media platforms for photos? That’s four platforms vying for my photos. And that’s not to mention Backspaces, which I feel I have shamefully neglected recently. (Enough of the guilt already!) When EyeEm originally came out, despite having a slightly odd name, I thought it looked really very cool (rectangles!), but I decided not to get on the bus because it would have been just too much work to keep it going alongside Instagram, which despite its recent transgressions, I still retained some affection for. But that changed when I switched to Android and found out that photos posted to Instagram via Android look rubbish. And as if they’d read my mind, EyeEm announced an Android version of their app. I gave it a spin and it works great. So now I’m totally confused.com. I’d also recently resurrected my Flickr account after they launched their excellent mobile app. What’s a mobile photographer to do?

Of course it’s the law that you have to have a Facebook account and I’m finding Twitter very useful these days too. So I like my photo-posting platforms to be able to dual-post to those platforms. Very usefully EyeEm allows you to dual-post to Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. In the other direction, Flickr allows you to post to Facebook and Twitter, but not to EyeEm. Instagram is out of the question on my Android because photos look rubbish there. But unfortunately neither Flickr not EyeEm post to Instagram, so I can’t get in the back-door that way. So Instagram is rapidly ruling itself out of the equation on various fronts. Which brings me full circle to Google+, which I now find doesn’t condescend to any parallel-posting at all.
Again, my head is spinning. At least the sun is shining. I’m going out to the garden.